Abstract
This opinion piece on the role of libraries in the scholarly communication environment covers the following issues: the notion of librarians as the proxies and ‘middleware’ of the scholarly communications landscape; the need for librarians to be willing to adapt their practices in order to ease some of the complexities inherent in research communications; a plea for publishers to provide simpler, more straightforward and transparent subscription and open access (OA) offers to libraries; and some thoughts on where rapid developments in digital technologies might lead the information professions.