In the future, what role will the academic research library play in achieving the mission of higher education? This essay describes seven strategies that academic research libraries can adopt to become future-present libraries--libraries that foster what Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown have called "a new culture of learning." Written in light of Johanna Drucker's vision of the next university described in her article "The University as a Fully Integrated and Distributed Platform" in this edition of "portal," the author argues that, to transform successfully, academic research libraries must ask themselves: How can we cultivate the imagination of students? What are we enabling students to do and become? The essay offers examples of how one academic research library, UCLA Library, is applying these strategies within its own institutional context, while learning from other forward-thinking organizations.