There is growing concern that a variety of factors threaten the sustainability of academic libraries: developing and preserving print and digital collections, supplying and supporting rapidly changing technological and networking infrastructure, providing free services, maintaining growing costs of library buildings, and lowering libraries’ ecological footprint. This paper discusses the multidimensional issues of sustainability in academic libraries and identifies needs for designing an integrated framework for sustainable strategies in academic libraries. Additionally, the paper presents a synthesis of existing literature on the increasingly popular topic of “green libraries” and prepares a background toward developing a framework for sustainable strategies in academic libraries.

Over the past decade information literacy emerged as a central purpose for librarians, particularly academic librarians. This article critiques the model, beginning with the information-processing paradigm that provides its underlying assumptions. In particular, problems are identified with the assumed connection between information and knowledge, with inadequacies of the cognitive sciences approach-including the view of language as mere communication-and the inadequate consideration of the role of computers in human-computer interaction. The appropriateness of the "learning methodology" of the information literacy model is reviewed. Alternatives-including visual literacy, multiple literacies, and interactive literacies-are surveyed. The challenge of relating information literacy to workplace competencies is outlined. The article proposes that information literacy be refocused away from information toward learning, and beyond literacy in the direction of sociotechnical fluency.

The library profession remains grounded in textual, print media, creating vulnerability amidst a culture increasingly characterized as visual. This essay develops a model of visual ecology to facilitate full appreciation of the challenge presented by the emerging visual-interactive culture. Librarians must engage the tools and practices of visualization in order to capture, preserve, and disseminate today's culture for posterity.

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