Academic Librarianship: A Profession in Peril?

Abstract

This workshop surveys educational, technological, and social trends in an attempt to discern prospects for the future of academic librarianship. The nature of the academic library profession is in question due to the transformation of higher education, changing patterns of information dissemination and retrieval, corporate competition with libraries, evolving roles of the library as place, and the growing sophistication of information management technologies. Academic librarianship will remain viable to the extent that it positions itself to provide academic support rather than mere information management. Individual academic library facilities will remain the heart of their respective institutions only to the extent that they intertwine themselves with learning.

Slide content appears under the following headings:

• Historic Library Functions

• Designing Higher Education

• Radical Change

• Paper Collections Displaced

• Path from Author to Reader

• Horizon Report (2006)

• The Primacy of Search

• Alternatives to the Library

• User Space vs. Stacks

• New Library Building Names

• Technical Sophistication

• Boundaries of Librarianship

• Value Proposition Defined

• Our Value Proposition

• Implications

Want to learn more about academic librarianship and related topics?

Click the buttons below to see relevant entries in my bibliography, SmithFile.