Many of you will be interested to learn that The New Media Consortium (NMC), University of Applied Sciences (HTW) Chur, Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB), ETH Library, and the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) jointly released the NMC Horizon Report > 2017 Library Edition at the ACRL 2017 Conference in Baltimore. This is the third edition of the NMC Horizon Report that explores the realm of academic and research libraries in a global context.
The topics in the report were selected by a diverse panel of 75 experts (I participated in this panel). Library leaders, librarians, technologists, industry leaders, and other key stakeholders from 14 countries comprise this year’s expert panel. They engaged in a three-month virtual discussion to share how the trends, challenges, and technologies are materializing in their environments.
The report identified 6 trends on 3 time horizons: research data management, valuing the user experience, patrons as creators, rethinking library spaces, cross-institutional collaboration, and evolving nature of the scholarly record. In addition, the report discusses challenges impeding technology adoption in academic and research libraries and describes important technology developments with a particular impact on libraries.
There is much rich detail in the report, freely available, including references, links to projects, and a comparison of trends over the three library-focused Horizon reports.
–Joan Lippincott, CNI
