About the session
12.45pm, Wednesday 1st April 2015
Rick Anderson, University of Utah
Is the academic library’s primary purpose to support local
research and teaching, or to support and improve the
larger world of scholarly communication? There seems
to be deepening disagreement on this issue within the
profession, and this matters tremendously – how one
answers the question will have serious implications for
budget and staff allocation, programming, outreach
and liaison work, and acquisition practices. As funding
in higher education continues to tighten and scholarly
communication issues become more fraught, finding the
proper balance between local and global concerns may
turn out to be a key challenge for the future of libraries.
