The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) has issued a new report titled Strategic Thinking Guide for Academic Librarians in the New Economy (pdf).
It joins the growing chorus of reports that indicate that we are in for a financially tight stretch in the near future. As I mentioned earlier, everyone in libraries needs to think about what we do and how we do it, and find ways to be more efficient.
The greatest opportunities for most of us lies in the area of Open Source and Web 2.0. By taking the time now to move from proprietary services and software to low- or no-cost self-hosted solutions, libraries can not only save money, but add functionality and features.
The critical aspect is to think incrementally… tackling a too-large project all at once invites stress and failure; adding or changing some specific functionality each month can mean that in one year you may have ten solid new applications which were implemented in a very cost-effective manner.
Read the report, and add their suggestions to your pool of ideas.
found via ResourceShelf
