The urgency of this work is particularly evident in the transformation of the information environment through artificial intelligence. As R. David Lankes recently observed in Information Matters, generative AI may constitute an “Information Shock,” challenging established assumptions about information and the work of information professionals. As Lankes’s analysis makes clear, the information environment is undergoing profound change. For LIS education, this is not simply a challenge to be managed; it is an opportunity to prepare information professionals with the capacity to understand change, explore possibilities, and help shape the future of their organizations and communities.

One way to develop this capacity is through strategic foresight. Foresight is not about predicting one future and hoping to get it right. It involves examining signals of change, considering different possibilities, questioning assumptions, and thinking about what actions can be taken now. The work of futurist Sohail Inayatullah provides a useful foundation for thinking about this approach. He emphasizes that futures thinking requires us to look beyond immediate problems and consider the systems and assumptions in which we ourselves are participants. In a recent interview with the United Nations System Staff College, Inayatullah described foresight as a way of exploring possible futures while recognizing that we are part of the complex systems we seek to change. His work also demonstrates how trends, signals, disruptions, scenarios, and deeper cultural narratives can help organizations think differently about difficult problems. This raises two questions that I believe are particularly important for LIS education: What assumptions about the future are we bringing into our professional education? And what kinds of futures are we preparing our students to imagine and create?

These questions matter because AI is only one of the forces transforming the environment in which information organizations operate. Climate change, demographic shifts, migration, economic uncertainty, geopolitical competition, technological disruption, and changing patterns of political and social power are also reshaping communities and institutions. More importantly, these forces do not operate independently. They interact in ways that can make traditional planning based primarily on past experience increasingly difficult. Libraries and other information organizations sit directly within these changes. They are connected to knowledge, technology, education, culture, public life, and community resilience. Their future cannot be understood simply by looking at the history of libraries. Information professionals also need to look outward—to the larger systems and forces affecting the people and communities they serve.

I developed and teach the graduate course “Strategic Foresight for Libraries, Institutions and Businesses: Managing Social and Geopolitical Change in a Rapidly Transforming World” for the LIS program at the University of Puerto Rico in response to this need. The course introduces students to environmental and horizon scanning, trend analysis, systems thinking, futures studies, geopolitical analysis, scenario development, and strategic decision-making. But perhaps the most interesting part of teaching the course has been seeing how differently students apply these ideas across sectors. Students have brought experience from libraries, museums, nonprofit organizations, and business. A museum student may be thinking about the future of cultural access and preservation. A library student may be concerned with changing information behavior, public trust, or the future of community services. A nonprofit professional may be looking at demographic change, funding, social needs, or community resilience. A business student may be focused on markets, technology, competition, or new forms of work. Their questions are different, but they are also connected. All of these organizations operate within an increasingly interconnected information environment.

My own work at the intersection of libraries and international policy has reinforced this perspective. Through advocacy for libraries at the United Nations, US Congress and European Parliament, and conversations with information professionals across the world, I have seen firsthand how policy, economics, geopolitics, technology, and competing priorities shape the environments in which information organizations operate. In 2019, I delivered the opening remarks at a Library Day session at the European Parliament, attended by library advocates and parliamentary staff. From that experience to an EUsolis event at the House of Europe hosted by the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Zagreb to the Dubai International Library Conference at the Mohammed Bin Rashid Library, these experiences have strengthened my conviction that information professionals need to look beyond the immediate boundaries of their organizations and understand the larger forces shaping their futures.

They need to recognize signals of change, understand how seemingly separate developments may be connected, and ask better questions about their possible consequences. This is where foresight can add something important to traditional LIS education. It does not replace professional knowledge or organizational planning. Rather, it gives students another way to use that knowledge—to challenge assumptions, explore alternatives, and make better decisions amid uncertainty.

The challenge for LIS education is larger than teaching students how to use the next generation of information technologies. We need to help them understand the forces producing change and develop the confidence to think beyond the present. The goal of strategic foresight is not to teach students to predict the future. It is to help them become professionals who can recognize emerging possibilities, question what seems inevitable, and make thoughtful choices about the futures their organizations and communities might create. In an uncertain information environment, perhaps one of the most important skills we can give the next generation of information professionals is not an answer about what comes next, but the ability to ask better questions about what might be possible.