ACRL College & Research Libraries News

Association of College & Research Libraries

University Libraries Section news

By Shelley Phipps Chair, ACRL University Libraries Section

In an effort better to communicate with the many members of the University Libraries Section, the ULS Steering Committee agreed at its meeting during Annual Conference to utilize CbRL News rather than tax the resources of ACRL for an additional section newsletter. The summary of section activities that follows is brief; the chair welcomes any questions or responses.

Steering Committee Appointments.Karen Seibert, University of North Carolina, and Patricia Swanson, University of Chicago, have been appointed to serve three-year terms on the Steering Committee. They join Julia Woods, Florida International University; Leon Raney, South Dakota State University; Murray Martin, Tufts University; and Janice Koyama, University of California, Berkeley, as members-at-large. Donna Goehner, Western Illinois University, has been elected vice- chair/chair-elect, and Martha Bowen, University of Louisville, has been appointed ULS liaison to the ACRL Board of Directors.

Section Review Committee.Cynthia Duncan, past ULS chair, will be holding a hearing during the ALA Midwinter Meeting on Sunday, January 19, from 9:30 to 11:00 a.m. The hearing will provide the opportunity for all members to participate in setting the Section’s objectives and directions for the coming years. Are your interests being served? Are there issues for which you think the University Libraries Section should serve as the forum for discussion? Is there work to be done on certain national projects of interest to all university libraries? Should there be working committees within the University Libraries Section? Come and join in the discussion, and help make our section responsive to your interests.

Standards for University Libraries Review Committee.Kent Hendrickson, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, has agreed to chair this important committee. The Standards, approved by ACRL in 1979, will be reviewed and recommendations for changes and updating will go to the Standards and Accreditation Committee for review and ultimately to the ACRL Board for ratification. During the Midwinter Meeting the Committee will hold a hearing on Sunday, January 19, from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. Copies of the current Standards are available from the ACRL Office at no charge for those who wish to participate in the review. They were last published in C&RL News, April 1979, pp. 101-10. Kent welcomes any written comments, and your presence at the hearings will help the Committee determine the focus of their review and a sense of the community’s need for updating the Standards.

The Mission of an Undergraduate Library (Model Statement).The ULS Steering Committee accepted the excellent report submitted by the Committee, chaired by Thomas Fry, that was charged with reviewing and updating the 1979 ACRL Mission of the Undergraduate Library Model Statement, and forwarded it to the ACRL Standards and Accreditation Committee. Anyone wishing to see the draft that will be submitted to the ACRL Board can contact Barbara Smith, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802.

ULS Application for ALA Goal Award.Despite the excellent work done by Donna Goehner’s committee, the ULS proposal to sponsor a program on “Performance Measures for Academic Libraries” was not accepted for an award this year. The proposal for a Pre-Conference program included discussion of “Output Measures for Public Libraries: A Manual Standardizing Procedures,” and discussions on performance measures for public and technical services in academic libraries.

ACRL Statistics (1983-1984): A Compilation of Statistics from Eighty-Six Non-ARL University Libraries.Thanks to the efforts of Sandy Whiteley, formerly on the ACRL staff, this useful compilation was published in the Spring of 1985 and is now available from the ACRL Office ($12 for members, $15 for non-members). The future of this publication, intended for publication every two years, now depends on the outcome of the new Board- appointed Committee on Statistics, which will review the statistics-gathering and publishing role of ACRL in light of the efforts of the Association to support the federally-funded HEGIS studies. Any thoughts you have about the importance of the ’86 report and ACRL’s involvement in statistics should be fowarded to ACRL President Sharon A. Hogan, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge.

Final Words.As chair of ACRL’s largest and most diverse section, I find it difficult to be able to know intuitively (or rationally, for that matter) what the Section’s agenda should be. There has been a recent proliferation of discussion groups that have seemed to attend adequately to the interests of most university librarians. Type-of-activity sections serve the specialists’ needs very well. The role of ULS has gravitated toward addressing larger, mostly administrative issues, as well as taking on the task of reviewing standards and working for more active involvement in the gathering and promulgation of statistics. Has our focus been too narrow? Is there something we ought to do that isn’t being done in another part of our Association, or that we could do better given the official structure of the University Libraries Section? Let’s hear from you. Write to me personally or attend the Section Review Hearing at Midwinter.—Shelley Phipps, Chair, University Libraries Section, Main Library A349, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721.