Die Association of Research Libraries hat im Frühling 2010 ein Forschungsprojekt begonnen, in dem die Zukunft wissenschaftlicher Bibliotheken in verschiedenen Szenarien durchgespielt werden soll: “Envisioning Research Library Futures: A Scenario Thinking Project“. Aktuell sind im Rahmen dieses Projekts die „ARL 2030 Scenarios“ erschienen. Diese Szenarien sollen ein „User Guide“ (PDF) für wissenschaftliche Bibliotheken sein, in dem vier mögliche Zukunftsperspektiven aufgezeigt werden.

Scenario 1: Research Entrepreneurs

This is a future shaped by the rise of entrepreneurial research; individual researchers are the stars of the story. The path of technological developments has acted to empower researchers as creators of high-value new knowledge. Speed and innovation are rewarded by corporate sources of support. New conceptions of translating research to market have opened avenues for more entrepreneurially rooted models of business investment in research, including venture capital. Relative reductions in government funding have freed researchers to seek funding from new sources and have encouraged philanthropists to seek opportunities to influence knowledge creation by supporting researchers directly.

Scenario 2: Reuse and Recycle

This is a world where recycling and reuse predominate in research activities. Disinvestment in the research enterprise has cut across society. Ongoing scarcity of economic resources has led to an emphasis on reuse of basic research and repetitive applications of research findings to basic “business problems.” Government’s ability to fund research and research-intensive education has become limited to non-existent. As networked communication and other popular mass technologies evolve and spread knowledge widely, the perceived value of new information becomes reduced, accelerating the devaluation of the research enterprise and individual researchers.

Scenario 3: Disciplines in Charge

By 2030, research using computational approaches to data analysis dominates the research enterprise. The new research modalities prove to be powerful drivers for organizing the research enterprise to address grand research challenges and support technology evolution. As a result, scholars, whether humanists or scientists, have been forced to align themselves around data stores and computational capacity that address large-scale research questions within their research field.

Scenario 4: Global Followers

In this future the research enterprise is relatively familiar, but the cultural context that frames the enterprise shifts profoundly. Key structures such as universities, faculty, and graduate students persist, but the locus of the funding that drives the enterprise migrates from North America and developed western nations to nations in the Middle East and Asia. These Middle Eastern and Asian cultures, which are able to build technical infrastructures that catalyze breakthrough research and attract top talent, can organize the activity into projects of relevance to their societies. Existing organizations and individuals act to realign themselves with the new sources of support.

Die Szenarien werden jeweils durchgespielt am Beispiel der fiktiven Informationsspezialistin „Hannah Chen“. Wie plausibel die einzelnen Szenarien – allein oder in Kombination – sind, sei dahingestellt. Die Wichtigkeit, verschiedene Handlungs- und Reaktionsoptionen durchzuspielen, steht außer Frage. Vor allem, wer mehr als 10 Jahre bis zur Rente hat und/oder sich dem Informations- und Bibliothekswesen verbunden fühlt, sollte sich daher ohnehin Gedanken über die Zukunft der wissenschaftlichen Informationseinrichtungen machen.

Achtung: Die Szenarien sind hier nur äußerst verkürzt mit dem ersten Absatz des jeweiligen Kapitels wiedergegeben!

Weitere Infos:

Stephen Abram: The ARL Futures Scenarios
Adam Gordon: Libraries Are Showing the Way for Everyone
Jennifer Howard: 4 Very Different Futures Are Imagined for Research Libraries