When I initially thought about this special issue on the evolving role of academic librarians, the idea was to demonstrate how librarians are moving forward, as though towards an ultimate goal or higher understanding. I wanted to show that librarians are getting smarter, more in tune with their patrons and more adept at reaching for that pinnacle. On reflection, more than a year after the pandemic started, I am convinced that this evolution is not toward some grandiose end of universal enlightenment—but rather it is, as Darwin would have it, a response to the environment. Librarians have weathered the pandemic in much the same ways they have weathered the growth of the Internet (and the doomsayers that it would replace libraries), seasons of austerity and accountability in higher education and other forces, external and internal.