ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

In the news

In this issue you’ll find ACRL’s Annual Report for 2001-2002. It was a productive year, during which new initiatives and member services were implemented. If you compare the Annual Report to some of the articles appearing this month, you’ll notice how quickly things can move once the ball gets rolling.

A major goal of ACRL’s Scholarly Communication Initiative was to hire a consultant to serve as a part-time staff person dedicated to working on scholarly communication issues. Susan K. Martin stepped into the role of program officer for scholarly communication this fall and flew into action. On page 786, she outlines the areas she’s begun working on and our goals for the future in the scholarly communication arena.

Last month, W. Lee Hisle presented the work of the 2001-2002 Focus on the Future Task Force in the article “Top issues facing academic libraries.” The task force asked our readers to respond to the items put forth. This month Shirley K. Baker took the lead to comment on the issue of creation, control, and preservation of digital resources (p. 789). Your continued responses to these issues are encouraged.

The changing nature of reference service is the topic of this months’s “New Realities, New Relationships” column. James Rettig addresses the need to cultivate relationships to bridge the gap between the library and its users in an increasingly “wired” environment and serve our institutional missions of teaching, learning, and research (p. 790).

Also cognizant of the impact of the Web on student research and library services, Virginia Massey-Burzio offers her opinion on the “critical issues of reference service” in “The Way I See It” (p. 774).

—Stephanie Orphan, Editor-in-chief sorphan@ala.org