Through any means available: Connecting people with scholarship

This paper will focus on the 21st century research library's role for connecting people to scholarship. Meeting this challenge requires new organizational strategies, communication techniques, funding approaches, and pedagogies to enable students, faculty, scholars, and alumni to connect to the resources they need. Connecting means locating, using, creating, and interacting. Connecting is active rather than passive and goes beyond the traditional boundaries of the library, the campus, and higher education. Connecting means exposing the world to the intellectual output of the university community. The research library will thrive if its focus is on the broad and deep connections that make sense to people as they engage in daily life.