To be or not to be, is NOT the question

Unlike Shakespeare's iconic question, it is not a question, as some may think, that is related to the future of the library. Despite the sentiment expressed in the popular press and actions by legislators, the library as a cultural and educational institution is alive and making a significant impact on our students, researchers, and our communities.

The real question for libraries and librarians is "What's next?” As the world changes, how do libraries, especially academic and research libraries, change to meet the needs of a new generation of students and faculty. What's the next role of the library? Are we courageous enough to create and redefine the library to meet 21^st century needs?

Change is the new black. Library leaders must build a culture that is, as Steven Bell says “change-ready.” The role of the library continues to grow and evolve as we move into the future. Changes are driven by globalization, shifts in pedagogy, new and evolving forms of scholarship, the information universe, and of course technology. In a world of change, libraries also celebrate the key values and services that have been part of their historic raison d'être.

Today's academic and research libraries are centers for intellectual engagement, social conversation, reading, writing, creating, reflection, physical and digital collections, technology and infrastructure to support digital scholarship, digital creation, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence. Today’s libraries are also people centered with spaces, furniture, technology, and services based around user needs.

Librarians and support staff are critical to the libraries’ success. The role of the library and its staff is much more complex than building a collection of materials and making sure the lights are on, and the doors are open. They are critical partners with faculty in the education and success of students and supporting faculty teaching, research, and scholarship.

We live and work and breathe the world of information and knowledge in all of its complexity. Change in our world is not incremental but exponential. With Google ingesting the equivalent of the Library of Congress every day, we work to provide a collection of print and digital resources that support the teaching and research needs of students and faculty. We provide discovery and access tools that help students and faculty find the information resources they need, whether they are on campus, in the libraries of our partners, or in a library or website on the other side of the world. We build strategic partnerships and buy resource sharing tools that help provide physical and digital access to these resources, and we use the information sleuthing skills of our staff to find the "needle in the haystack" information that no computer system can uncover.

We are stewards of both physical and digital information resources, and we work to collect preserve the cultural, scholarly and institutional record. We work with campus IT and other data services to assist with data management and data curation. We buy, license, create, digitize, catalog, describe, curate, and make our resources available and we do it over again as technology and resources change and grow. We push the envelope with new digital scholarship tools such as virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and large-scale digital visualization. We keep our traditional skills and add new ones.

We champion intellectual freedom and the right to read and discourse on any topic without censorship. Our areas of interest and concern encompass intellectual property rights, copyright, copyleft and fair use, free culture and open access, and ethical use of information.

Like classroom faculty, we work with students to be critical thinkers, to understand how to find, evaluate, and use information effectively. We help students understand the scholarly record and how disciplines advance knowledge, publish their research, and how libraries and information providers make these resources available. We keep abreast of the changing world of scholarly publishing and how these changes affect access to information necessary to advance scholarship.

We are passionate about social issues, especially when it comes to the intersection of information access and historically marginalized groups. LGBTQ rights, homelessness, treatment of immigrants, minorities, and privacy are all issues that make us take notice. While our efforts in these areas are to be applauded, we do make missteps at times and contribute to the problem rather than help. We are getting better at recognizing these missteps, apologizing, and moving forward in positive ways. We want to build and live in a diverse and inclusive world.

We build partnerships across campus that help us fulfill our role in the educational process. We work with the Writer's Center, Tutoring, the Research Office, Dean of Students office, the Museum, campus IT, Dining Services, facilities, and others to provide resources, facilities, and services that help the teaching, learning, and scholarly enterprise. We strive to provide space and services that are information and technology-rich and spaces that are quiet and contemplative. We have cafés and vending machines to keep you full and caffeinated. We are not your grandmother's library.

We also build partnerships with other academic and research libraries across the US and around the world. We do this to build capacity, share resources, provide preservation services and accomplish things that no single library can do on its own. These partnerships help build staff expertise that we share across campus to better serve our students and faculty.

In our spare time, you might find us talking about cyberinfrastructure, the growing role of the citizen scientist, digital humanities, a first edition of James Joyce's Ulysses, preserving print collections, building a collection of classical music on iTunes, what to do with eBook readers, streaming audio and video, the Human Genome project, dance performance in the library, civic engagement or the latest iPad app. We live and work in a world where every aspect of the changing world of information is our discipline. We tend to be information junkies with interests in every discipline. We live as both agents of change and also agents of cultural preservation.

What's next? We can’t clearly see all that will happen but bring it on - we’re up to the challenge.