Opportunities for systematic change in the academic research library: elements of the post-digital library

This paper, based on a talk delivered at the University of Leeds on 19 April 2011, seeks to outline a series of important trends that are influencing the roles and responsibilities of the academic research library, and a program of radical collaboration that would enable deeper integration of resources and a more systemic approach to the critical collection and service challenges. The academic research library must sustain its core responsibilities, albeit in an increasingly digitized, networked and mobile condition, enrich fundamental relationships with its user communities, and assume powerful new roles in support of learning and scholarship. New measures of quality, impact, productivity, innovation and leadership must be advanced. The paper suggests that the evolution of the academic library will focus more on an evolving period of polygamy, parabiosis and particularism, as we think beyond the transition to electronic and more about a post-digital context