In this networked world, some have gone so far as to predict the demise of the library and of the university.[63] Others have suggested that “if the core competency of the university is the capacity to build collaborative spaces, then the changing nature of the library itself may be the paradigm for the changing nature of the university… Maybe the future of the library is not simply that of the university but of civilisation itself.” [64]
Courant suggests that disruptive technologies will not change the defining characteristic of a good university — the creation of knowledge and understanding through careful scholarship — but they will, and have already, changed how scholarship is produced, made public, taught and learned. [65]
Courant urges universities to be both conservative and revolutionary — conservative in terms of mission and revolutionary in attaining that mission.