The stable and predictable days of the 20th century, when research libraries could rely on their prized local collections to define their distinct and distinguished place on campus, are long gone.
The 21st-century’s user-centric networked world and the concomitant Sturm und Drang of cyber scholarship have caught research libraries in a seemingly unending flux. Traditional practices and services are no longer adequate to support scholars, but how best to reassess and redefine services, how best to reposition the library within the scholarly enterprise, how best to add new value, remains an ongoing, critical challenge.
Thirty-two research librarians gathered March 5-6 in Scottsdale, AZ, at a symposium hosted by Ex Libris to discuss this challenge, which is as prickly, vast, and shifting as the nearby Sonoran Desert.
