This book offers international views of the opportunities and problems facing modern academic libraries; it consists of twelve chapters written by thirteen different authors and is edited by Sue McKnight, Director of Libraries and Knowledge Resources at Nottingham Trent University. Along with editorial responsibilities, Sue wrote a chapter and the introduction for the book. The other contributors are a mixture of librarians, publishers, academics and senior managers from across the globe, which gives the book not only an international flavour, but also a good variety of viewpoints; this is important in ensuring that the book does not become insular or too narrow in its focus.

The book focuses on the speed of change and pulls together overarching themes and some of the current initiatives on trial; this is picked up on and developed in the foreword by Dame Lynne Brindley. What the book doesn’t do, or indeed set out to do, is provide a set of answers to the future challenges facing academic libraries. This reduces the likelihood of the book becoming out of date as technology moves on. As many of the contributors mention technology as a constantly evolving tool to be utilised rather than feared by libraries the book has a sense of looking to the future with positivity and showing the contributors attempts at planning in for the unknown.

Stand-out aspects of the books, for me, were chapters by Derek Law and Penny Carnaby. Law’s chapter discusses aliteracy and the need to refocus attentions on pointing our users towards trustworthy resources, be they traditional library resources or not, whilst ensuring that we, as information professionals, do not try and mould users into our existing systems. Rather, Law’s urges, we should be ‘academic partners’ finding out what is required and designing our services based on the needs. On a semi-related note Carnaby’s chapter discusses citizen created content and the challenge of attempting to manage the huge quantities of information being created in a responsible manner. Carnaby also touches on the ethical issues surrounding gathering information and whether not recording some types of information or websites that do not conform to societies morals means we are effectively censoring the historical information of the future. Carnaby ends her chapter with 2 case studies from New Zealand which highlight the need for libraries to prepare for citizen created information and how we as professionals need to change our mindset in order to handle the associated issues.

The book is aimed at library leaders and managers in the main; however it is also valuable reading for academic library staff as well as library educators. The nature of the book in attempting to cover different facets of the future academic library and also to report about developments currently taking place means that dipping in and out of the book rather than reading from cover to cover is a more likely mechanism for its consumption. As with any book covering such a large topic, there will be parts of it that are of less interest to individuals, but given the quantity of different aspects looked at I feel there is something for everyone. The title of the book suggests it is aimed solely at academic libraries; however I would suggest that the ideas and concepts behind the book are likely to be of interest beyond the walls of academic institutions.

(http://www.ics.heacademy.ac.uk/publications/book_reviews/full_review.php?id=637) ( )