EDUCAUSE Review Articles and Library Planning

The authors discuss recent studies conducted to gage the academic librarian's and faculty member's view on the increasing use and offering of electronic resources. One could conclude from the studies that the "transition to an electronic environment poses significant strategic and management challenges for higher education" and that there is a "need for libraries to take leadership in helping academia's transition to the new environment".

The author provides a glimpse into the future without academic libraries and how that will affect the students and faculty.

Deep into the digital age, academic libraries have relinquished much of their fundamental and sustaining role. For most people, including academicians, the library—in its most basic function as a source of information—has become overwhelmingly a virtual destination.

The author discusses two new roles for the university library. Collaborators in the creation and dissemination of knowlege, and the collector, organizer and disseminator of institutional research.

The author discusses two primary challenges to research library collections; one is how to maintain current paper based collections while keeping costs down and investing digital collections. The second challenge is how to maintain a research library's academic standing when collecting less and less print collections.

Research libraries must shape an information environment that has sustainable, reliable systems of access to enduring information resources.