ARL has released Transformational Times: An Environmental Scan Prepared for the ARL Strategic Plan Review Task Force.
Here's an excerpt:
In looking across the key trends that are described below, some common threads recur.
- Libraries need to change their practices for managing traditional content and develop new capabilities for dealing with digital materials of all types, but especially new forms of scholarship, teaching and learning resources, special collections (particularly hidden collections), and research data.
- Content industries inevitably seek to extend control over the copyright regime and over content, in general, while libraries, authors, and research institutions endeavor to provide more access to and active management of the intellectual assets produced by the academy.
- Accountability and assessment are essential for data-driven decision making within libraries, on campus, and with funders and policy makers.
- Collaborative approaches are being applied to new activities both with regard to traditional operations as well as emerging functions.
- Radical reconfiguration of research library organizations and services is needed coupled with an increasingly diverse and talented staff to provide needed leadership and technical skills to respond to the rapidly changing environment.
- New relationships must be formed with library users to support rapid shifts in research and teaching practices.
- ARL and its member libraries must cultivate alliances and partnerships to advance all strategic arenas identified as important for the Association.