In September the 2015 Library Edition of the Horizon report was published by the New Media Consortium (NMC). It explores what is going to affect academic libraries in the next five years. The report identifies and discusses 1) key trends, 2) the most important challenges to solve and 3) driving technology. All these issues are explained and illustrated with examples, resources and possible consequences.
Anything interesting? Well, you can see in the graphic summary above that we @TU Delft Library are involved, working on or at least have been thinking about most of the topics mentioned. Good to see we are even ahead of the far-term technology developments with Location Intelligence (Library Tour) and Machine Learning (soon to be explored in AssisTU 2 project). So no surprises, but the report is still useful for validating our own roadmap and for finding inspiration and lessons learned from the listed examples and reading list.
You can download a copy of the report from the NMC website. There is also a report on Higher Education that might be of interest! Leave a comment if you are interested in a discussion session about this report.
This 2015 Edition is the second NMC Horizon report for academic libraries. The first report is from 2014. Our Techlib partners from ETH-Bibliothek Zurich and TIB Hannover are partners in producing the report. The report is based on online discussions with 53 experts from all over the world. Guus van den Brekel from UMC Groningen is the Dutch member of the expert panel.