4 Ways Academic Libraries Are Adapting For The Future

4 Ways Academic Libraries Are Adapting For The Future. Brad Lukanic. Fast Company. October 24, 2014.
Instead of becoming obsolete, academic libraries are changing and becoming more relevant.

• Libraries have become the heart of the spirit of collaboration and innovation--going beyond being places to merely access knowledge to become hubs to truly explore and create.
• Universities around the country are evolving their libraries into catalysts for discovery, learning, collaboration, and scholarly breakthroughs.
• Each institution requires a unique vision for creating an intellectual center for 21st-century teaching, learning and collaboration. That vision must reflect the institution’s own voice and decide what it means to support the creation of academic scholarship. 
• Libraries must offer learning opportunities and access to local and global networks of information, with the ability to easily create and share knowledge. 
• Libraries must offer the settings and tools to foster discovery and learning in a dynamic academic framework.

Four key areas critical to the changing landscape for academic libraries:

1. Respond to strategic campus and business needs
2. Infuse technology infused in every aspect of service 
3. Embrace flexibility
4. Create places to engage

Academic libraries are changing from a repository of collections to a catalyst for discovery and creation, where people, knowledge, and research intersect to resolve our world’s greatest challenges.