This issue of Library Trends contains an impressive slate of articles from prominent practitioners and researchers in the field, who offer a range of perspectives on the current state of IRs in academic institutions and reflections on their future. We start with Dorothea Salo’s “The Innkeeper at the Roach Motel.” Salo, an experienced repository manager, unflinchingly describes the current dilemma of institutional repositories, that they are predicated on unrealistic goals. Salo takes apart much of the hopeful rhetoric that surrounds institutional repositories and in its place offers a realistic way forward.