ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

ACRL executive summary

ALA began its fiscal year on September 1; it’s the month when the Jewish New Year is celebrated; schools usually reopen in September; and it’s also the month when I celebrate my birthday. So I tend to think of the month as a time of beginning. Here are some of ACRL’s major activities for September.

Professional development

We began work on the Historically Black College and University libraries humanities project, which is supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The workshop is scheduled for February 22-24, 1989, at Paschal’s Motor Hotel and Atlanta University. Invitations have been sent out to all appropriate institutions.

The ACRL Western New York/Ontario Chapter held an excellent program with juried, contributed papers on September 26. The author of the winning paper received a free round trip ticket and registration for the Cincinnati Conference. The authors of all the accepted papers received free registrations.

Enhancing service capability

Advisory calls on a variety of topics were handled. Some 20 questions were answered, and 350 ACRL standards and guidelines were mailed out to requesters.

Strategic management directions

This month’s hot issue is the drafting of a new “Operating Agreement” between ALA and its divisions. COPES members, several division officers, division executive directors, and ALA management staff have been involved in preparing for a meeting on November 11-12 in which consensus will be sought on the values of the ALA/divisional relationship, the principles underlying a new agreement, and the process to be followed to bring it into practice.

For the past few months I have been working with others on this task. Of course, I cannot predict what will happen when division spokespeople, COPES and Executive Board members, and other ALA staff actually meet. But I believe the groundwork now being laid has been undertaken in good faith and with great care, and I hope we can move ahead on this issue, which has been in abeyance too long.

The closing of the 1988 fiscal year on August 31 marked the beginning of a huge amount of work by program and accounting staff to ensure that finances have been properly recorded for the year just ended. A summary will appear in next month’s C&RL News.

On September 16-17 the presidents-elect of each of ALA’s eleven divisions came to headquarters to learn how ALA works, who is who, who does what, and to get to know their executive directors and their colleagues in other divisions better. The program, which had its genesis in the World Book/ALA Goal Award project in 1984-85, was a success for the third year in a row.

ACRL’s membership has plateaued. We ended the fiscal year with 10,170 members, an increase of just over 1.4 % over last year. —JoAn S. Segal.