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Creating Sustainable Futures for Academic Libraries

ABSTRACT Sustainability is the capacity to endure. For academic libraries, sustainability may well require a radical recalibration of their historic value proposition. The “Great Recession” has accelerated profound changes in higher education funding and in the perception of higher education as a public good. Can libraries use scarcity to fuel the imagination? Can the singular strengths of libraries boost the ability of higher education to thrive, not merely survive? What can be learned from strategies employed in the Great Depression and other periods of severe constraint? Ultimately, how might libraries increase revenue, engender flexibility, foster collaboration, align activities, reduce costs, strengthen infrastructure, and encourage innovation within the framework of a sustainable academic business plan? This article examines these questions by using the University of Washington's 2Y2D (Two Years to Two Decades) initiative and the UW Libraries companion effort, Building Sustainable Futures, as a case study. 2Y2D provides an inclusive framework for near term action (two years) that will realize an aspirational future in the long-term (two decades). Building Sustainable Futures places a library lens over 2Y2D. The Libraries Research Commons exemplifies the synergistic intersection of the two initiatives and may be instructive for other environments and institutions.