Libraries of the Future

A successful first workshop

The "academic libraries of the future" project got off to an excellent start at the first workshop in London on 4 February. The day started with a fascinating and thought-provoking keynote from Professor Geoffrey Crossick (Warden of Goldsmiths, University of London), who presented his thoughts on the future of Higher Education in the UK. This set the scene for the rest of the day which focused on identifying the key global drivers (eg demographics, values, new technologies, digital media) that will substantially influence UK HE over the next 30 – 40 years. Attendees were then asked to consider the key questions about learning, teaching and research – if they could be transported to the future, what would they want to know?

Attendees' views on the drivers and key questions are now being collated and analysed. They will form the input to the next workshop in March which will identify outline scenarios for UK HE that are interesting for libraries.

What progress have we made?

The project formally started in September 2009; the diagram below outlines our current progress.  For more information about our overall approach, see here.

Whilst the first workshop was only held last month, we have been very busy since September conducting background work. This has included horizon scanning, PEST analyses, interviewing key stakeholders, and organising and planning the first two workshops. Workshop attendees were carefully selected to ensure we had broad representation from senior decision-makers across the UK HE sector – as this project is looking so far into the future, it was essential to get input from outside of the library community. Our efforts were rewarded with the diverse and engaging conversations at the first workshop between funders (research, teaching and learning), publishers, library directors, IT directors, academics, service providers and representatives of professional organisations. 

Next steps

We are now busy preparing for the second workshop in March. The next progress update will be sent out at the beginning of April.