The Social Future of Academic Libraries: New Perspectives on Communities, Networks, and Engagement

The current focus in higher education on student engagement, holistic education, social responsibility and community partnerships demands a significant mind-shift for academic libraries to reclaim their place at the heart of academic institutions that are reinventing themselves as social enterprises.The professional response to social trends in the academy and society includes moves such as converged services, embedded librarians, relationship management, inside-out libraries and design thinking.But such work is often confined to small parts of the library and has not created the largescale change in strategy and culture required to turn libraries into dynamic social organisations in the connected digital world.Incremental enhancement of services, spaces and structures is not enough.The present context calls for radical rethinking of library mission and service philosophy to realign resources, processes and practices to institutional needs.New ways of working must be guided by new ways