ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

In the news

In choosing values for his theme, President W. Lee Hisle challenges us to really think about what we value most. How does our service in the profession of librarianship address these values?

In an interesting, though unscientific, survey, Katherine Branch polled those attending a discussion forum on values at the Midwinter Meeting. Those in attendance overwhelmingly (49%) chose “service to clientele” as the value most important to academic librarians. Taking second place in the poll, intellectual freedom garnered 20% of the vote, and these were the only two values to show double-digit percentages as the first choice (page 176).

As academic librarians, we can use our commitment to service to help us build new partnerships on campus. We want to provide the information and resources our constituencies need, and yet, at times, the realities of the budget, staffing, collections, and other resources at our disposal make it difficult. By educating the faculty and administrators outside the library about our services and the resources needed to provide them, we can develop a powerful support group that understands the ramifications of adding new services—even when it means cutting back on existing ones.

Continuing with the values theme, Frances Maloy shares with us how her high valuing of intellectual freedom (there is that 20%) brought her to librarianship and reminds us that this freedom sometimes means defending ideas/materials that are personally offensive (page 169).

I look forward to the President’s Program this summer when the discussion on values continues.

This issue is filled with other ACRL and ALA business. A report of ACRL activities at the Midwinter Meeting begins on page 174, and statements from the candidates for ALA president may be found on page 186.

Mary Ellen K. Davis Editor-in-chief medavis@ala.org