Where is the future taking academic libraries in relationship to universities?
One hears much about costs and savings and how these argue for consolidation, increased offsite storage, and more. However, an honest evaluation comes down to making a determination about whether the library is a cost center or a value center for a university. If it is a cost center, then there is no need for continuing university libraries as we know them. For example, there could be one Ivy League (or any other type of) library. All eight Ivy League universities could pool their money for one catalog, one central processing unit (or each school could have its own processing unit while sharing one grand Ivy League catalog). The catalog server could be located in India and maintained by IT people at significantly lower wages. One electronic acquisitions center could maintain all the IP addresses for buildings throughout the Ivy League. All books would be tagged with radio frequency identification so that their locations could be monitored continuously and recalls directed to cell phone
