7 Association of Research Libraries Research Library Issues 298 2019 expertise—continue to change as the research and teaching goals and aspirations of Georgia Tech change. Data literacy, a pathway to data science, is one such service. Mission Continuity The Georgia Institute of Technology was founded in 1885 to help propel the agrarian South into the industrial economy. Today, the institute is a leading global research university, committed to improving the human condition through advanced science and technology. Georgia Tech’s first library building, which opened in 1907, is one of 108 academic libraries (out of the total of 1,687 libraries) that Andrew Carnegie funded in the United States.2 As the Georgia Tech Library redefines its role in the academic community for a new century, Carnegie’s words continue to inspire new programs and services for a new generation of students and faculty: “A library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people. It is a never failing spring in the desert.”3 Just as Carnegie libraries promoted reading and writing literacy in the 20th century, the Georgia Tech Library promotes data literacy in the 21st. For the past three years, Georgia Tech has been defining the changing role of higher education in the United States and continuing along its century-old path to becoming what Jan Youtie and Philip Shapira call “a knowledge hub to advance technological innovation and economic development in its region.”4 The 2018 final report of the Georgia Tech Commission on Creating the Next in Education (CNE) includes a commitment to lifetime education: “a future for college not conceived solely…as a physical place one enters at a particular age and exits when a degree is completed but rather as a platform for an increasingly diverse population of learners.”5 To make good on its promise, the commission states that innovation will be required to close knowledge gaps, develop and pilot new products and services, and build new technological infrastructure. Library Next developed in parallel to the CNE vision. The Georgia Tech Library worked with brightspot strategy on a master plan for
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