The 2023 ACRL Environmental Scan - providing a broad review of the current higher education landscape, with special focus on the state of academic and research libraries - is now freely available on our website. https://t.co/J3c9SXINCT
— ACRL (@ALA_ACRL) March 2, 2023
From the Introduction
While themes such as scholarly communications, student assessment, and shared print continue to have impact, new themes around legislative interference, controlled digital lending, and digital transformation have also emerged. Common threads can be found across these themes including an increased focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion, the enduring legacy of COVID, and the continued impact of technology.
As a sample of some of the implications noted throughout the Scan are these having to do with libraries and data:
- To meet increasing demands to share data, librarians have tremendous opportunities to advance research through the creation and integration of workflow support, data management tools, technical infrastructure, and social events to foster collaborations between different scholarly communities.
- Success in this area for libraries will depend on addressing many issues including: developing and maintaining repository architecture, supporting long-term preservation of and access to research data, and streamlining data management workflows for researchers.
On the topic of library collections (page 24 of the report): Collection development and management continues to rapidly evolve. Academic libraries have recently witnessed an accelerated shift to digital spaces and services during the pandemic, an increased focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion in library collections, continued interest and experiments in controlled digital lending, and expanded shared print programs. As we pursue these opportunities and tackle challenges, libraries will need to strike an appropriate balance as “Key values of access, ownership, and preservation must be pragmatically managed within the boundaries of space, budgets, and licenses.”