Part of the ARL-CNI-EDUCAUSE joint initiative to advance research libraries’ impact in a world shaped by emerging technologies, this report by Sarah Lippincott identifies strategic opportunities for research libraries to adopt and engage with emerging technologies, with a roughly five-year time horizon.

Lippincott considers the ways in which research library values and professional expertise inform and shape this engagement, the ways library and library worker roles will be re-conceptualised, and the implication of a range of technologies on how the library fulfils its mission. This study builds on a literature review covering the last five years of published scholarship—primarily North American information science literature—and interviews Lippincott conducted with a dozen library field experts in fall 2019.