id	author	title	date	pages	extension	mime	words	sentence	flesch	summary	cache	txt
crl-16127	Walter, Scott	“Distinctive Signifiers of Excellence”: Library Services and the Future of the Academic Library	2011	3	.pdf	application/pdf	1367	50	43	I maintain that understanding the process by which such distinctive services develop and contribute to the evolving mission of the 21st-century research library is as critical to its future as is understanding the environment for resource sharing, the need to rethink retention of print collections, or the challenges inherent in supporting e-scholarship. ARL has not yet chosen to “celebrate” the distinctive services of its member libraries in the way it did their special collections, but it has taken important steps by including studies of services in its “New Roles for New Times” initiative, and by bringing a services focus to its series of institutional profiles.4 O ver t he past t h ree yea rs, we at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign have conducted an ongoing discussion of services as “signifiers of excellence” on par with our long-time focus on collections.	cache/crl-16127.pdf	txt/crl-16127.txt