[Air-L] 2010 Top Ten Trends In Academic Libraries: A Review Of The Current Literature

[gerrymck]

Colleages/

Mobile Libraries In The News Again And On The Same Day ! [:-)

/Gerry

College & Research Libriaes News / vol. 71 no. 6 / pp. 286-292 / June 2010

ACRL Research Planning and Review Committee

The ACRL Research, Planning and Review Committee, a component of the
Research Coordinating Committee, is responsible for creating and updating a
continuous and dynamic environmental scan for the association that
encompasses trends in academic librarianship, higher education, and the
broader environment. As a part of this effort, the committee develops a list
of the top ten trends that are affecting academic libraries now and in the
near future. This list was compiled based on an extensive review of current
literature (see selected bibliography at the end of this article). The
committee also developed an e-mail survey that was sent to 9,812 ACRL
members in February 2010. Although the response rate was small (about five
percent), it helped to clarify the trends.

The trends are listed in alphabetical order.

[snip]

Explosive growth of mobile devices and applications will drive new services.
Smart phones, e-book readers, iPads, and other handheld devices will drive
user demands and expectations. The 2009 ECAR study of undergraduate students
and information technology found that 51.2 percent of respondents owned an
Internet-capable handheld device and another 11.8 percent planned to
purchase one within the next 12 months.8 Students indicated that they most
wanted to use their institution’s e-mail service, administrative services,
and course management system from their handheld devices. While only 14.8
percent of respondents indicated that they wanted to use library services,
this percentage is likely to grow quickly, as vendors offer mobile
interfaces to electronic resources, mobile applications for OPACs increase,
and more libraries offer reference services via text messaging and mobile
interfaces to their own digital collections. Librarians will need to think
creatively about developing services for users of mobile devices and take
into account both user needs and preferences and the relationship of
services to the academic program of their institution.9 Regardless of the
services a library chooses to offer, there will be staffing, training,
budgeting, marketing, and instruction implications.

[snip]

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/Gerry

Gerry McKiernan
Associate Professor
Science and Technology Librarian
Iowa State University Library
Ames IA 50011

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