THE FUTURE OF THE ACADEMIC LIBRARY AND THE ACADEMIC LIBRARIAN: A DELPHI STUDY RELOADED

At the 20th IATUL (International Association of Technological University Libraries) Conference held in 1999, the authors presented a paper ‘The Future of the Academic Library and the Academic Librarian. A DELPHI Study’ (see http://www.iatul.org/conference/proceedings/vol09/papers/feret.html). The aim of that study was to identify trends and present a probable scenario for the year 2005. Much has changed since then. We live in a different world because of significant changes in technology and in information networking and access, internationalisation of teaching and research and fundamental changes in scholarly communication and publishing models, which in turn have imposed new legal regulations. All these factors have strongly influenced libraries and changed the library image in a way hardly to be predicted 6 years ago. This paper presents the results of a new study conducted in 2005. It has two main objectives: • to verify the results of the previous study (comparison of the experts’ predictions with the reality as of the year 2005) • to make further extrapolation, focused on competencies that librarians should develop as professional information suppliers and experts, to meet future needs. A Delphi method of forecasting involves two consecutive rounds of questions, subsequent analysis of the responses to the open and closed questions and a development of the expert consensus about the topic of the study. The panel of experts was composed of the librarians and information professionals, many of whom were also involved in the previous study.