ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

ACRL executive summary

Professional development

Local presentations of ACRL continuing education courses were held as follows: Preparing for Technology (CE 301) at SUNY-Buffalo, 40 participants; Writing the Journal Article (CE 501) at the University of Florida in Tampa, 57 participants; and CE 501 at the Western New York Library Council in Buffalo, 26 participants. Librarians as Supervisors (CE 101), offered jointly in Chicago with Northern Illinois University, was successful with over 50 participants. More than 175 people took ACRL courses in March 1988.

Four thousand postcards were mailed inviting people to submit papers and programs for the ACRL National Conference in Cincinnati. Cathleen Bourdon is working with a very active committee on this exciting event. Attractive and informative publicity materials are helping us get the message out.

ACRL’s awards program now includes nine awards. Mary Ellen Davis announced all the award winners through press releases and has worked with the committees to prepare citations and arrange for presentations.

The 12th National Endowment for the Humanities Programming Workshop was held in Burlingame, California, with 27 attendees. Julie Virgo was the main presenter.

Enhancing service capacity

ACRL submitted a proposal to the National Endowment for the Humanities to offer one humanities programming workshop for historically black colleges and universities and their communities. We will find out in August if we have received funding.

Advocacy

Several ACRL members attended meetings of the American Association for Higher Education; they met as a Position Round Table, chaired by Joanne Euster, and attended many sessions.

Joanne Euster, Sharon Rogers, and Jo An Segal met with staff members from the American Association of University Professors and the Council of Graduate Schools in a preliminary planning session for a workshop for librarians and faculty members. An ad hoc committee will be appointed to continue the planning efforts.

Publishing and research

Pat Sabosik, editor and publisher of Choice, spent two days at ACRL Headquarters in March. She and Jo An Segal met with ALA Publishing regarding the 3d edition of Books for College Libraries (coming soon) and other publishing projects, defended budgets before ALA management, and worked on ACRL and Choice management projects.

College & Research Libraries Newshas now switched to microcomputer-based production. Coding of editorial and advertising text for the April issue was done in Xywrite III Plus and transmitted to our typesetter via modem. The March issue of the Fast Job Listing Service was composed on Aldus Pagemaker for the first time by Gus Friedlander.

Management

Personnel.George Eberhart presented a paper on “UFOs in the Library: Where Popular Culture Meets Popular Science” at the annual meeting of the Popular Culture Association in New Orleans.

Members of the ACRL Quality Circle completed work on their first assignment. They used brainstorming, interviews, data collection forms, analysis and creation of charts and graphs to study and report on how service to telephone callers could be improved without causing added interruption to regular work activities. After testing a new procedure for two weeks, they suggested it to the Steering Committee, who immediately accepted it. The procedure will reduce the number of times callers have to be transferred.

Beverley Washington is Cathleen Bourdon’s new administrative secretary. Sandy Donnelly has been transformed from a regular staff member into a consultant. She will continue to provide many of the same services she has in the past, but will also be developing her own consulting business.

Membership support.Cathleen Bourdon helped many sections with their appointments and nominations process. Alia Al-Taqi prepared the ballots for the election. Plans for the April 18 Executive Committee meeting are underway. Kathy Briggs- Smith began sending out appointment letters for Joe Boissé.

ALA cooperation.ACRL staff served on the ALA Job Evaluation Committee, the Data Processing Steering Committee, the Accounts Payable Task Force, the Payroll Task Force, the Orientation and Training Task Force, and the Hardware Task Force.—JoAn S. Segal.