Taiga Provocative Statements

I received a tweet last week with a link to the 2009 Taiga Provocative Statements that came out of the Taiga Forum held in January in Denver. The Taiga Forum is a group of Library AULs and ADs. The statements all begin with "Within the next five years...". The draft version has an item about Google meeting virtually all of the information needs for both students and researchers, but is item was struck before the final version was released.

You can find links to this year's statements as well as the 2006 list. Information about the process can be found in the press release located here. This is a list that all librarians should sit up and pay notice to. Very interesting.

Examples:

2. ... collection development as we now know it will cease to exist as selection of library materials will be entirely patron driven. Ownership of materials will be limited to what is actively used. The only collection development activities involving librarians will be competition over special collections and archives.

6. ... libraries will provide no in-person services. All services (reference, circulation,instruction, etc.) will be unmediated and supported by technology.

9. ... the library community will insist on a better return on investment for membership organizations (e.g., CRL, DLF, CNI, SPARC, ARL, ALA). All collaboration of significance will be centered around either individual entrepreneurial libraries (e.g., HathiTrust, OLE), or regional consortia.

10. ... 20% of the ARL library directors will have retired. University administrators will see that librarians do not have the skills they need and will hire leaders from other parts of the academy, leading both to a realignment of the library within the university and to the decline of the library profession.