The state of academic librarianship Academic librarianship is at a critical professional juncture. There is growing ambiguity about our professional role and where our future lies in the academic enterprise during this period of tumultuous change. As a profession we are struggling with ways toharness and weave new technologies into our existing fabric of highquality informationservice delivery. As the wants and needs of our end users transform, librarians have sought to redefine what the library building and our services mean to our communities. And as the nature of the content librarians work with dramatically restructures, our profession has experimented with new ideas for its capture, organization, and delivery. All of this change is happening in a new, increasingly competitive information environment in which the academic library no longer is the de facto resource of fi rst choice for those it exists to serve. The quote with which we chose to begin this document comes from the Outsell, Inc.‘s