ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

ACRL executive summary

At the Dallas Conference, we hope, the Operating Agreement issue will have been settled for a while. The manifold revisions have been distilled into something division leaders and staff and the COPES can live with. The negotiations have been alternately hot and cold, but in the end we have arrived at a document that is acceptable to all. Neither ALA nor the divisions are “winners,” yet in coming to agreement, we all win. ALA will recoup more of its indirect costs than in the past, but will still have major overhead expenses that are not recovered. Divisions will pay much more in overhead to ALA, but will have some phase-in time to plan for implementation. A delicate balance has been achieved as we go to Dallas; we are all hoping for the best at the Conference.

Professional development

Once again, CJCLS will be holding a teleconference. This one, scheduled for November 15, 1989, will address CD-ROM technology but will be at a more advanced level than the previous session, which attracted an audience of about 11,000.

ACRL began preparation for next year’s RBMS Preconference, “Issues Facing Special Collections in the ’90s.”

We received an additional contribution from Katharine K. and Daniel J. Leab for their American Book Prices Current Exhibition Catalogue Awards.

We also received additional support from K. G. Saur to allow multiple authors each to receive $500 when there is more than one author of the winning entry for Best Article in College & Research Libraries.

Preliminary results of the Cincinnati Conference evaluation indicate that attendees were very satisfied with their experience. On a scale of 1-5, they found it “worthwhile in meeting goals” at a level of 3.82 (slightly higher than the Baltimore respondents) . 84 % said they planned to come to the next conference in Phoenix! The highest marks for the conference went to the theme sessions, which ranked 3.87, then exhibits at 3.79, and facilities at 3.73. Financially, the non-official word is that we definitely did better than break even, despite heavy expenses.

Enhancing service capability

Clarification of the status of standards, guidelines and related documents will take place as a result of work by the ACRL Standards and Accreditation Committee. A packet has been sent to all ACRL units having such documents in their purview; at Dallas they will inform the Committee about the category in which these documents should fall and whether they need title changes to conform with the definitions of standards and guidelines.

We received the first draft of the Output Measures Manual for Academic Libraries manuscript from Nancy Van House. The project is on time; if all continues well, the Manual should be published in the Spring of 1990.

Publishing and research

Choiceautomation is progressing nicely. Use of the H. W. Wilson Company as a service bureau for production of the magazine has proven successful; now we are moving into automation of the office operations. An RFP has been circulated and responses are being considered.

The Choice staff will serve as project management for ALA’s Guide to Reference Books. Bob Balay will serve as editor of the guide and Pat Sabosik will be project director. The immediate project is a supplement to the 10th edition. Negotiations for preparation of the database are underway. Arrangements with major academic libraries for authorship have advanced.

Newly approved publications procedures (see pp. 582-87) have been sent to chairs of all committees and sections. The clarity of ACRL publishing procedures and guidelines will make it easier for units to decide how to publish and succeed in getting their materials published.

Progress has been made on the disk version of the ACRL Academic Library Statistics. An announcement of publication will be coming soon.

Strategic management directions

We began negotiations for carrying out a survey of ACRL’s membership in connection with the ongoing planning process. It has been five years since we last asked members their opinion about ACRL activities; we will sample the membership this fall. The questionnaire is under development.

ACRL membership grew over 2% this year, at least partly due to the Cincinnati Conference. We remain the largest division at ALA, but also the one with the greatest market saturation, so growth is not easy. We hope the membership survey will help us continue to implement programs our members and other academic librarians want.— Jo An S. Segal, ACRL Executive Director. ■ ■

Letters

Unfriendly takeover

To the Editor:

I would like to call attention to some additional facts related to your news item, “Unfriendly Takeover Attempted” (Có-RL News, May 1989, p.385), which states that Wayne State University Press (WSUP) was successful in fighting off an unfriendly takeover of the journal, Human Biology. While the journal may continue to be published, a more careful examination of the new competing journal, American Journal of Human Biology (Alan R. Liss, $90, v.l- , 1989- ) suggests that it is WSUP that must compete.

I reviewed the first issue of the new journal and noted the following: 1) the editor-in-chief and associate editor performed the same duties for Human Biology until April 1988; 2) twelve of the new journal’s fourteen editorial board members were on the editorial board of Human Biology, and one person is now associated with both journals; and 3) American Journal of Human Biology now carries the designation, “The official journal of the Human Biology Council,” which appeared on Human Biology until April 1988.

When I called Wayne State University Press I learned that press administrator Robert Mandel resigned effective October 1989 and is on administrative leave until then.

There certainly seems to be more to this story than was related in Cò-RL News. The tone of your news item suggests sympathy and solidarity for the friendly, non-profit university press and a sense of satisfaction at the defeat of an unfriendly commercial publisher. For whatever reason, the fact remains that there are now two journals where a year ago there was only one. The problem for libraries is familiar. It will be interesting to follow both of these journals for the next few years to see how they survive.—Daniel H. Jones, Assistant Library Director for Collection Development, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. ■ ■