Editors’ Introduction.

Abstract

When we commissioned the authors to write for our book we anticipated that these practitioners, operating at the forefront of their respective fields, would stimulate and provoke debate about academic libraries now and in the future. When we read the chapters as they were delivered we were not disappointed. We hope the reader will be struck by two seemingly disparate aspects of their content. On the one hand each chapter is highly individual, not only in style and content, but also in approach and reflection. On the other hand common themes emerge: notably the opportunity afforded by technology (especially mobile technology), the importance of training and development for library staff, and evaluation, as well as the interdependence of teaching and research and the role technology plays in bringing these even closer together. To focus these synergies and differences we decided to use word clouds to introduce each chapter. As we ran each chapter through Wordle[1] we saw themes and patterns emerging; we hope that readers of the book will find this a useful and stimulating contribution to each chapter and the book as a whole. A word cloud for the entire book has been created for the cover, demonstrating in a very graphic way the breadth and depth of the content.