Administrative portals, e-braries, and other commercial information providers are challenging the academic library’s traditional monopoly as the campus information gateway. Are these new information marketplace competitors a threat or opportunity for academic libraries? Might they draw away the library’s user base or can they be harnessed to provide access to more and better digital collections? This document examines the impact of these new competitors, presents results from a survey of library directors about their responses to information competition, and discusses strategies library directors can use to maintain the library’s status as the user’s first choice of information provider.

Bell discusses the difficulty in searching for research information among online full-text journals. He discusses ways that librarians can reintroduce the concept that quality research and information retrieval can precede the acquisition of content.

Why do academic librarians do what they do? This article explores the sources of passion that make academic librarianship a rewarding profession. A framework is introduced that examines the relationships within and outside the academy that contribute to the academic librarian's professional passion. The challenge of sustaining professional passion is addressed.

A successful strategic keeping-up regimen requires more than a steady diet of content from within one's own profession. Murray and Bell identify resources for locating faculty blogs, identify some well-regarded faculty blogs worthy of review, and discuss how faculty blogs can benefit academic librarians and why they should be reading them as part of their regular keeping routine.

Design thinking can offer a new way of thinking about, acting on, and implementing our resources and services with a more thoughtful and creative approach that is focused on the design of the best possible library user experience. @ your library My first encounter with the application of design thinking in a library setting was the Maya Design firm's renovation and remodeling of the main branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. [...] librarians can still make use of design thinking in reengineering how users navigate the library and its electronic resources.\n Books and articles by and about design thinkers, such as the The Art of Innovation, can provide greater detail and more concrete examples of how design thinking is applied to the creation of products and services. The Blended Librarians Online Learning Community at blendedlibrarian .org is a free community open to all that is justbeginningto explore ways in which design thinking can be applied to further collab oration with community partners and help students achieve academic success.