Today people question whether libraries still have a future. This is thewrong question. More pertinent is to ask what kind of libraries areneeded in tomorrow's world.

we also need the spaces to reflect user needs and enable us to delivernew and creative services; we need to respond to the declining need forstorage space by creating a range of new and zoned spaces for learningand studying both collaboratively and individually. It is in this areathat there is scope for further research. We need more evidence on howstudents, and indeed staff, operate in the digital age. The holy grailof library design as we move more deeply into the 21st century is toidentify the kind of building that will meet the changing learning andresearch needs of our users in the same way that for previous centuriesthe classic model of the academic library did with books as the mediumthrough which knowledge was made available… . It is hard topinpoint exactly when the longstanding typology for library buildingsbegan to change but it undoubtedly coincided with the move from print toelectronic resources – the dawn of the digital age.