Description

As the library world we have known is changing rapidly around us, we are all getting older. At the NTNU Library 69 people out of a staff of about 145 are aged 55 or more. During this year alone 22 staff members will become eligible for retirement, if they should so choose. The coming ten years will show a massive changing of the guard in our library. This means a severe loss of competent staff members. On the other hand: Even though the Library Board has ordered staff reductions during the past few years, we shall now be able to hire some new staff according to our needs of the future.

We have recently started a process of “prophesy” and planning.

What type of changes do we anticipate? What will the university require from its library during the next years? What type of staff will become necessary in the year 2015?

The library seems likely to remain the prime provider of learning space on campus, as well as an oracle within information literacy questions. What is left of paper collections will mostly be in its domain, and it may be heavily involved in the publishing of university research.

There are a number of other questions pending, though.

How will the transfer of information from the publisher to the end user take place in a digitised world? Will researchers search, pick and buy from large repositories of digitised periodicals provided by the publishers, or by commercial Internet-libraries? Will students buy their own textbooks, borrow them from the library or lease access to whatever they need for the duration of their study?

Traditional university libraries, with large collections of physical items of information, may become wholly or partially obsolete.

Direct marketing may facilitate sales of digital information straight from the publisher to the end user. The music industry is doing this today! You may download what you wish from a large selection on the Internet, at a reasonable price.

The university library may become the central marketing tool for information to the university community, rather than a repository of information in its own right.

University staff and students may become their own librarians, the same way we already have, to a large extent, become our own travel agents.

This paper will look at the way the NTNU Library is meeting its age bomb and the age of globalisation. Predictions of future trends within our different library departments will be discussed, along with a variety of possible scenarios for the future.

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May 31st, 12:00 AM

The Age Bomb and the Age of Globalisation

As the library world we have known is changing rapidly around us, we are all getting older. At the NTNU Library 69 people out of a staff of about 145 are aged 55 or more. During this year alone 22 staff members will become eligible for retirement, if they should so choose. The coming ten years will show a massive changing of the guard in our library. This means a severe loss of competent staff members. On the other hand: Even though the Library Board has ordered staff reductions during the past few years, we shall now be able to hire some new staff according to our needs of the future.

We have recently started a process of “prophesy” and planning.

What type of changes do we anticipate? What will the university require from its library during the next years? What type of staff will become necessary in the year 2015?

The library seems likely to remain the prime provider of learning space on campus, as well as an oracle within information literacy questions. What is left of paper collections will mostly be in its domain, and it may be heavily involved in the publishing of university research.

There are a number of other questions pending, though.

How will the transfer of information from the publisher to the end user take place in a digitised world? Will researchers search, pick and buy from large repositories of digitised periodicals provided by the publishers, or by commercial Internet-libraries? Will students buy their own textbooks, borrow them from the library or lease access to whatever they need for the duration of their study?

Traditional university libraries, with large collections of physical items of information, may become wholly or partially obsolete.

Direct marketing may facilitate sales of digital information straight from the publisher to the end user. The music industry is doing this today! You may download what you wish from a large selection on the Internet, at a reasonable price.

The university library may become the central marketing tool for information to the university community, rather than a repository of information in its own right.

University staff and students may become their own librarians, the same way we already have, to a large extent, become our own travel agents.

This paper will look at the way the NTNU Library is meeting its age bomb and the age of globalisation. Predictions of future trends within our different library departments will be discussed, along with a variety of possible scenarios for the future.