ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

ACRL President’s Letter

Dear Colleagues:

We have just entered a new year with all its inherent sense of passage and freshness. I ask you to apply the same perspective of renewal as you consider the role of ACRL in your professional life for the upcoming year.

Carla J. Stoffle

Effective professional associations offer their members unique opportunities—opportunities for personal growth, for skill development, for influence on the development of the profession, for stimulation and probing of values, for contact with role models, for exposure to new ideas and peer review of personal ideas, and for legitimation and recognition from colleagues throughout the country. As the fifth largest library association in the world and the largest ALA division, ACRL offers its members all of the above and more through its publications, conferences, committees, sections, discussion groups, chapters, continuing education programs, information and referral services, and special projects.

To help you judge the effectiveness of ACRL as your professional Association, the following review of major activities and programs during 1982 is provided.

1. Planning. To position itself to be able to serve more effectively the needs of its members in this and the next decade, the ACRL Board at the Philadelphia Conference adopted a new mission statement and goals and objectives. These were developed by the Ad Hoc Committee on an Activity Model for 1990 and were accompanied by a recommended list of new activities needed by the Association. These recommendations were referred to the Planning Committee for an item by item review and recommendations for implementation. The charge and membership of the Planning Committee also was revised to make the Committee responsible for both short range planning and for the periodic review of the long range goals and objectives of the Association.

2. Budget. In 1981 ACRL members feared for the fiscal health of the Association and approved, as a consequence, a dues increase and a new $30,000 operating reserve budget policy. The happy result for the Association is that there was a $459,048 fund balance ($270,158 excluding restricted funds) at the end of 1982. The Association revenues for 1982/83 are projected at $1,390,186 and expenses are projected at $1,429,912.

3. Publications. This year the Association’s journal publishing program included the refereed journal, College & Research Libraries, the news magazine, College & Research Libraries News, and the highly respected and frequently used review medium, Choice. ACRL monographs included The Spirit of Inquiry by John Richardson, Jr., and Library Statistics of Colleges and Universities: Summary Data 1979, published for the National Center for Educational Statistics. Options for the 80’s, the proceedings of the Minneapolis ACRL National Conference, was also published this spring by J AI Press, making available to all members the many significant papers presented at the conference. Management and Staff Development, the proceedings of the California Chapter’s conference, was also issued.

4. Continuing Education. To meet the educational needs of our complex and rapidly changing profession, ACRL has created a continuing education program which is unique among ALA’s divisions. Eight courses were offered at the Philadelphia Conference and are now available for delivery at national conferences and at the chapter level.

5. Bibliographic Instruction Liaison Project. The three-year liaison project, created to increase awareness among college and university teaching faculty and administrators, was contracted out in September to Carolyn Kirkendall, director of Project LOEX at Eastern Michigan University. During the year the goals of the project and specific activities to be accomplished were clarified, files were organized, and librarians made presentations at the meetings of the American Sociological Association, the Modern Language Association, and the Organization of American Historians.

6. Awards. The seventh Academic/Research Librarian of the Year Award, established by ACRL and the Baker and Taylor Company, was awarded to William Budington, director of the John Crerar Library. Two new awards made possible by the Institute for Scientific Information were announced in 1982: the Samuel Lazerow Fellowship for Outstanding Contributions to Acquisitions or Technical Services in an Academic or Research Library and the ACRL Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship for a doctoral student working on a dissertation in academic librarianship.

7. Conferences. Under the leadership of Gary Menges, University of Washington, planning progressed for the Third National ACRL Conference scheduled for 1984 in Seattle. ACRL continued to offer a full menu of opportunities for learning, exchange of information, and celebration at the midwinter and annual conferences, and plans are underway for our 1983 conferences.

8. Chapters. Thirty-two state and regional chapters served 7,000 ACRL members in 36 states and one province of Canada. These organizations enabled greater participation in ACRL, provided programs of significance within reasonable traveling distance of members, and offered a focus and voice for the local, state, and regional concerns of academic librarians. This year ACRL strengthened the chapters’ ability to serve members through a provision allowing them to offer ACRL continuing education courses and share revenue with the national Association.

9. Three special projects. The Association also underwrote or received outside funding for three special projects. 1) The National Endowment for the Humanities awarded ACRL $62,423 for a second series of workshops to encourage humanities programming in academic libraries and the development of grant proposals to fund such programs. Two workshops will be held during the spring of 1983. 2) ACRL also received the 1982 J. Morris Jones Award of $5,000 for a project designed by the Bibliographic Instruction Section to duplicate at eight state and regional library association meetings portions of the highly successful 1979 BIS Dallas Preconference. This project, called Bringing Workshops to Members, aims at increasing the knowledge and skills of librarians involved in user education as well as strengthening state and regional educational programming. 3) To fill one gap in academic library statistics, ACRL headquarters staff is repeating the statistical survey of non-ARL university libraries. Questionnaires were distributed to 91 U.S. and ten Canadian university libraries in late 1982 with publication of the data projected for spring, 1983.

I hope that, after reviewing the accomplishments and commitments of ACRL, you will agree that ACRL has much to contribute to your own personal development and the development of academic/research libraries. In addition, if you have not already done so, I hope you will choose to renew your membership and resolve to be an active participant in Association activities.

Carla J. Stoffle President, ACRL