If you look at the number of books that are included in a library’s reserve collection, or for that matter that fill the many columns and rows of a library’s shelving units, and consider for just one moment that the latest Horizon Report projects the mass adoption of e-books in 2 to 3 years, you might ask yourself what this same library is going to look like in 10 years, or even 5 years time.  If you are a librarian, you might also begin to wonder why you are sitting where you are now sitting at this very moment, and if your new best friend might actually be the accreditation agency, running interference over your career.  Clay Shirky’s comment – that “institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution” – resounds, leading me to believe that all higher education librarians need to think very clearly about the roads they will choose moving forward.  Do not be fooled.  The stakes are indeed quite high.

As Wayne Gretzky’s father, Walter, famously advised his son, “Go to where the puck is going, not where it has been.“ Applied to any environment outside of pee wee hockey this aphorism offers a great indication as to how librarians might re-envision themselves as educators.  I read recently of Dee Hock’s efforts to re-envision ‘chaordic’ institutions, sometimes taking an entire year to construct refined mission and goal statements, authentic statements of what an organization is about, and principles that provide an indication as to where one might begin when thinking about the future.  Make no mistake, this is painstaking, hard work, that can only take place from the ground up.

In A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink asks what it means that “an English-speaking 13-year old in Zaire who’s connected to the internet can find the current temperature in Brussels, or the closing price of IBM stock or the name of Winston Churchill’s second finance minister as quickly and easily as the head librarian at Cambridge University.“

At the moment, I believe it means that librarians must re-position themselves as educators and information coaches, experts in the field of lifelong learning in a largely fragmented and confusing online world.  Librarians are supporters and enablers to all professions and endeavors, both great and small.

And when considering this, when thinking about the impending changes that will be brought about by OER, I-Pads, and movements already afoot, one would be wise to keep in mind what is already true; namely, if you are not online, quite frankly, you are dead to me.