Envisioning Our Preferred Future

Volume 8 of the series Creating the 21st-Century Academic Library is focused on new services, directions, job duties and responsibilities for librarians in academic libraries of the 21st century. Topics include research data management services, web services, improving web design for library interfaces, cooperative virtual reference services, directions on research in the 21st-century academic library, innovative uses of physical library spaces, uses of social media for disseminating scholarly research, information architecture and usability studies, the importance of special collections and archival collections, and lessons learned in digitization and digital projects planning and management. Data management services are highlighted in the context of a consortium of smaller liberal arts and regional institutions who share a common institutional repository. Survey research plays a role in a number of chapters. One provides insight into how academic libraries are currently approaching w