Digital Resources and the Future of Libraries

As e-research and digital scholarship mature, academic libraries and archives are re-assessing their roles in relation to scholarship. While the traditional responsibilities of academic libraries have not ceased, evolving research practices across all disciplines have changed the expectations of library users. Patrons depend upon desk-top access to a wide range of information in multiple formats and across diverse resources, and increasingly they do not expect for this access to come via their libraries (ARL Joint Task Force on Library Support for E-Science, 2007; B. P. Lynch and Smith, 2001). In addition, the proliferation of informal channels of scholarly communication and data sharing now include working paper repositories, data repositories, blogs, wikis, and a growing list of other non-traditional outlets of scholarly activity beyond the journal article and scholarly monograph.