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Report by Commission on the Future of the Library – UC Berkeley

Report of the Commission on the Future of the UC Berkeley Library, October 2013 [snipped]

Librarians versus Search Engines – These opening observations lead us to conclude that the most important contribution of the Research University Library in the next twenty years will be to provide the increasingly  sophisticated human expertise required to successfully navigate this rapidly shifting  heterogeneous terrain. To ensure the academic preeminence of the UC Berkeley Library; to cope  with the diversification of forms of knowledge production and “channels” of information; and to  accommodate and the legal complexities and uncertainties of access, reproduction, and  publication; the Library and its staff must develop ever-greater technical capacity, expertise,  intellectual discernment, and flexibility.

Discoverability versus Availability – The explosion of scholarly resources available via the Internet in the past half-century —both  proprietary and non-proprietary—is astonishing, and the rate of expansion is unlikely to slow.  Availability, however, is not discoverability. The second principal finding of the Commission is that the general trends in scholarly research and student inquiry described above—the multiplication of information streams from both within and beyond the University Library and  the expanding spectrum of media through which researchers and students conduct their  academic activities—will require investment in the physical and digital infrastructure of the University Library.”

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