Knowledge in Time: Strategic Perspective for Danish University Libraries

Abstract

In a letter dated 7 December 2001, the Danish Rectors' Conference asked its Library Committee to describe the prospects and problems of university libraries seen from a visionary, strategic perspective. Subsequently the Committee decided to make a survey of how the more important university libraries viewed their future. Wilbert van der Meer of the Danish Rectors' Conference Secretariat carried out this survey, and it was integrated into a vision paper, which the Committee discussed at number of meetings. Following this phase, the Library Committee of the Danish Rectors' Conference prepared the present report "Knowledge in Time" / "Timely Knowledge" on the strategic perspective for Danish university libraries. The Paper was not conceived as a Master Plan for the future library development of Danish universities, but as an outline of the most important developmental perspectives discernible today. At a time in which events develop with unparalleled turbulence, it is important for university libraries to ensure that their knowledge development is not determined by plan-thinking, which is not tantamount to saying that it should not be based on functional planning, and that important elements in their strategic competence - in addition to a clear-cut perspective - are the ability to improvise together with healthy self-assurance. Only if they posses these qualities will they be able to aim for a strategic horizon which is itself constantly moving.