The rankings and discussion appear in the June 2012 Issue of College and Research Libraries News (C&RL News).
In order to identify the trends, the committee members review the literature, attend conferences, and contact experts who are familiar with current trends in higher education. One of the largest groups of experts is the ACRL membership; therefore, the committee organized a discussion forum at the 2012 ALA Midwinter Meeting to provide an opportunity for ACRL members to meet and discuss the trends and issues affecting academic libraries and higher education.
Here’s the Top 10 List (in Alphabetical Order):
1. Communicating value
2. Data Curation
3. Digital Preservation
4. Higher Education
5. Information Technology
6. Mobile Environments
7. Patron driven e-book acquisition
8. Scholarly communication
9. Staffing
10. User Behavior and Expectations
Three leaders in academic librarianship were the catalysts for this discussion: Martin Halbert, dean of libraries at University of North Texas; Joan Lippincott, associate director of Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), and Mark Puente, director of diversity and leadership programs, Association of Research Libraries (ARL). This discussion forum augmented the trends identified by the committee.
The complete article including discussion about each trend is available here. ||| PDF Version