An Academic Librarian's Response to the “ITHAKA Faculty Survey 2009: Key Strategic Insights for Libraries, Publishers, and Societies”

The mission of libraries and librarians is to serve the information needs of our patrons. Thus we continually adapt to their changing requirements and interests. However, when we are presented with our future diminished role or total technological answers with which we disagree, we seldom speak out publicly. ITHAKA, a digitizing organization, sees libraries as a budget line and predicts a background role maintaining digital archives for academic librarians based on answers to their recent faculty survey. Interlibrary loan is often placed in this background role even as use of our services grows, defying predictions. We benefit from digitization and electronic communication, but we need to build upon the initial patron point of contact we enjoy to expand into a larger resource sharing role.