A window of opportunity: libraries in higher education

Abstract

In progressive universities the next 25 years will see graduate qualities, massification, technology, flexible delivery and new disciplines drive pedagogical change. The lecture and online transmission of rapidly outdated content will continue to give way to a focus on the qualities required by students for employability and lifelong learning. Heavier and more diverse workloads on university teachers will encourage the disaggregation of their teaching. This will provide a window of opportunity for academic librarians to demonstrate their educational partnership role. They should contribute proactively to that disaggregation and, as a key accountability, to the development of information literate students. A version of this paper was presented to the 24th annual conference of the International Association of Technological University Libraries (IATUL) Ankara, Turkey, 2-5 June 2003 as “Changing the paradigm: libraries, education and networking”.