Embracing open access

The more successful open access becomes, the more irrelevant our traditional view of library budgets will be. This is an issue of institutional economics, not library economics, and we need to engage our institutional leaders at that level if we are to continue to play our crucial role in information management. Now, more than ever, librarians have to position themselves as change agents for their institutions and be willing to advance into a very uncertain future. It would be truly unfortunate if the open access movement passed librarians by because we were too busy worrying about the library’s bottom line.