We’re in a very exciting time for academic libraries. The web is changing everything about the way we do business – reference, instruction, cataloguing, liaison, outreach, even the way we hold conferences. However, the changes that the web is causing have not fully taken hold yet, so the profession is in a period of profound transition.

We need to embrace new possibilities to remain relevant to students in the future, but we can’t fully abandon what we’ve been doing for fear of not meeting the needs of the students we have to support today. We can see the movement to e-books, for example, but students still very much need the print books we currently have in our collections, so the transition has to be carefully managed.