same boat. They thrive or decline together. The powerful information gathering, categorizing, and disseminating abilities that you command can be of great assistance in motivating needed investment. I conclude by asking you to take on one additional task: use those abilities to help your universities in their quest to maintain and grow state and federal funding and private giving. Without such growth, the synergy of the undergraduate, graduate, and research environment cannot be nurtured and if it is not, the role of research university libraries will inevitably shrink. Without the set of research university accomplishments Jonathan Cole describes in The Great American University, life today would be far less productive, far less rewarding, far more mysterious, and far shorter. I am optimistic that we as a society will realize the enormous cost of letting our research universities deteriorate and will take the actions required to preserve and strengthen these great institutions. 1 Jonathan R. Cole, The Great American University: Its Rise to Preeminence, Its Indispensable National Role, Why It Must Be Protected, (New York: Public Affairs, 2009). © 2011 David Shulenburger This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial- Share Alike 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/. To cite this article: David Shulenburger. “The Future of the US Research University.” Research Library Issues: A Bimonthly Report from ARL, CNI, and SPARC, no. 274 (February 2011): 1–10. http://www.arl.org/resources/pubs/rli/archive/rli274.shtml. RLI 274 10 The Future of the US Research University ( C O N T I N U E D ) FEBRUARY 2011 RESEARCH LIBRARY ISSUES: A BIMONTHLY REPORT FROM ARL, CNI, AND SPARC