Libraries and Library ideal types in Italian universities’ strategic plans: a survey on alignment and expected impact

Abstract

According to the international theory of recent years, academic libraries are changing their relationship with stakeholders. Alignment is the right expression to describe the new kind of relationship between academic libraries and universities, and it means that libraries’ goals and activities should be aligned to university’s values, goals, and strategic actions. The concept of alignment becomes more topical and important now that libraries are involved in sustainable development and are interested in measuring and managing impact, being more open to the context and cooperating with other organisations.
Based on a survey on Italian universities’ strategic plans, this article proposes a reflection on the alignment and investigates whether universities recognise libraries’ strategic role. The interpretative analysis presented in this article aims to define whether and how universities consider the role and the impact of libraries and university library systems when planning their strategies. The survey also led to an analysis of the role and strategic repositioning of academic libraries. Furthermore, thanks to the various contributions on the theme of universities’ strategic planning, the survey allowed to identify and discuss some ideal types of Academic Library.