The Readings That Started It All...

During the Faculty Retreat back in August, part of the day focused on "Rethinking Research Libraries in the 21st Century." The basis for the discussion was a group of papers compiled by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR).

Here's the CLIR abstract:

How should we be rethinking the research library in a swiftly changing information landscape?

In February 2008, CLIR convened 25 leading librarians,
publishers, faculty members, and information technology specialists to consider this question. Participants discussed the challenges and opportunities that libraries are likely to face in the next five to ten years, and how changes in scholarly communication will affect the future library. Essays by eight of the participants—Paul Courant, Andrew Dillon, Rick Luce, Stephen Nichols, Daphnée
Rentfrow, Abby Smith, Kate Wittenberg, and Lee Zia—were circulated to participants in advance and provided background for the conversation. This report contains these background essays as well as a summary of the meeting.

CLIR has since published the collection as a report entitled "No Brief Candle: Reconceiving Research Libraries for the 21st Century." It's available as a PDF (along with many other interesting and relevant publications) at the CLIR website.