ABSTRACT
The academic library has but one purpose, and that is to support the educational and scholarly objectives of the institution it serves. The new information era we are now gradually entering, however, calls into question the ability of the library’s traditional operations to support those institutional objectives. The continued participation of the library in the academic enterprise will therefore depend increasingly on the facility with which the library is able systematically to replace those current operations-on the basis of which it has defined its existence for so many decades-with new ones that will be able to respond more effectively to the new information needs and expectations of higher education. The many challenges the academic library presently faces in the current environment, including especially the endemic erosion of library resources, must be confronted and can be overcome, therefore, only within this context of transition.
