The Academic Librarians: New Roles and Challenges: a Comparison with Kurt De Belder's "Partners in Knowledge"

Abstract

For many years libraries have adapted to digital change as this has been expressed on the immediate and tangible levels - books, journals, search & retrieval etc. But they have done so within established institutional and conceptual borders. A wider set of technological, economic and socio-cultural changes are now impacting universities at the framework level. This has consequences for all agents and subunits within the mother institution. In this new situation the academic librarians need to reassess not only their functions and modus operandi, but also their ethos and professional identity. With reference to general traits as exposed by de Belder this paper traces such core challenges facing a library at an institution of higher learning in transition and suggest practical solutions.