High impact leadership roles for the 21st century academic librarian

Abstract

As the closing speaker for the ALSR 2010 conference, I will draw upon the themes of the conference and extract from the papers presented a collection of insights into the future of academic libraries and librarianship. I will focus particularly upon the future of academic librarianship in terms of impact and leadership. As we move into the second decade of the 21st century, university education and research is challenged to confront the big issues facing our world ‐ energy, the environment, global health, mass‐urbanization etc. These issues demand solutions that are interdisciplinary, datacentric, global and multi‐lifespan. The university community will require information leadership from its academic libraries. This presentation will draw upon the papers of this conference and my own thoughts on this theme to identify future possibilities ‐ high impact leadership roles for the 21st century academic librarian.