Abstract
Academic library leaders have long acknowledged the need for the library to transform itself in order to meet the needs of the 21st century University. The transformation implies a major change in form and function, suggesting that library organizational structures and functions will change along with how professional librarians conduct the work of the library. Today, academic librarianship is overburdened and preoccupied with attending to the details of providing traditional services to students and faculty. For library leaders and librarians it is a time for independent thinking, innovation, and the courage to undertake risk and embrace major change. Library professionals will not only look forward but, according to John M. Budd, will also need to step back and examine the profession – “purpose, ethos and the world we live in.” In the end, courageous leadership and management will be required, as Jordan M. Scepanski affirms, “to abandon what has worked and often worked well, to strike off on a new and perhaps perilous course.”