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As research library leaders confront turbulent times, they sorely need new tools to facilitate thinking about the future of the institution and to foster dialogue within the community. ARL's new project seeks to envision library futures and will engage the Association's member community in looking decades out at the situations that will confront research libraries. At the heart of this work will be the creation of a set of future scenarios and a toolkit to facilitate research library leaders in their planning and decision making.

It will be interesting to see in twenty years if any of the scenarios pan out. Would someone doing scenarios twenty years ago have predicted just how digital today's libraries are?

"It's time for younger librarians to claim the future. I was intrigued when I saw an announcement for an ARL-CNI meeting, "Achieving Strategic Change in Research Libraries", to be held in mid October, because Lord knows this is a good time for strategic change. Yet when I clicked through to the program, I was sorely disappointed. The program is oriented toward library directors talking amongst themselves. In the growing string of strategy meetings and whitepaper collections coming from research library organizations, I see many familiar names. While I find these individuals to be brilliant, thoughtful people, I don't believe much will come out of their talking amongst each other for another day. Library leadership has been discussing emergent roles for libraries for over a decade."

In the 21st century, ARL libraries are increasingly exploring and adopting a range of new roles in serving research institutions, researchers, scholars, and students, making the time ripe for ARL to organize a new report cluster focusing on key new roles. The series will identify and delineate emerging roles and present research on early experiences among member libraries in developing the roles and delivering services.

More about the future that is heading our way...

This article reminded me of a visit to Jefferson, Texas which used to be a major hub in Texas until its citizens turned down a connection to the railroad. Publishers need to plan for a digital future to prevent their own extinction. This article is a good start for getting them to think about what that future might look like.

These are my slides from the panel I did at TLA with Stephen Abram and John Blyberg. You know, if you look at these slides, you will find out everything I am secretly planning! :-)

So how do you take these Digital Native realities and build a set of strategies that support your organization's digital initiatives, especially when technology is quickly and constantly shifting? More information about our users and their expectations--and as a result, the skills we will need in order to make these new tools and experiences a reality.

"build your strategies to support the core values of your users, not to support the advancement of technology. " - Yes, but the article just showed how these values were shaped by technology, noting how the digital generation is different from older generations because of technology.

I think the "engagement, enrichment, and empowerment" ideas are really important for us and our future skill sets. We don't know how to do any of these really well, imo, (but especially the enrichment part) and we need to learn more techniques and strategies for interacting with our users in the spaces they prefer. Whether these user needs are the result of nature or nurture, we are going to have to pay attention to them if we want to continue to be of value.