ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

Annual Report of the President, 1972-73

The major event in the administration of ACRL was the appointment in September 1972 of Dr. Beverly Lynch as executive secretary. Dr. Lynch quickly established herself not only as the manager of our headquarters office, but also as an able spokesman for academic and research librarianship. She has represented ACRL as the liaison officer with many other professional associations in various aspects of postsecondary education and has put us at the forefront of new developments among these groups. She also serves on the ALA Staff Committee on Mediation, Arbitration, and Inquiry (SCMAI). This is an essential assignment since approximately one-half of the cases considered by SCMAI involve academic librarians. Her workload is prodigious and it is unfortunate that ALA has not been able to fund a position for a professional assistant for the division. ACRL is the only unit working on SCMAI that does not have this kind of staff assistance.

ALA’s serious financial problems continue to hamper the development of divisional programs and projects. The divisions were instructed to prepare budget proposals for 1973-74 that held the line on program and, in addition, were asked to comment on the effect of a potential 5 percent reduction in funding. The ACRL Board of Directors estimated that it would take an increase of approximately $4,000 just to maintain ACRL’s current level of activity. In addition, we felt strongly enough about our needs to recommend an additional $7,600 for urgent new programs. As a guide to the budget deliberation process, the Planning Committee proposed the following priorities for the division: (1) additional support for the headquarters staff; (2) ACRL’s liaison activities with other organizations; (3) ACRL’s program of communication and publication; and (4) strengthening of ACRL’s section programs.

ACRL’s entire slate of programs for the Las Vegas meeting was threatened by the allotment of less than 40 percent of the funds requested for conference expenses. Program plans were sharply curtailed, and a successful appeal was made to the ALA Executive Director for additional funding to hold the truncated sessions. Advertising revenue for College & Research Libraries dropped sharply last year, threatening that journal’s level of operation.

The same social conditions that have induced the changes in the administration and the programs of the American Library Association must be faced by the Association of College and Research Libraries. We must clearly understand the issues that are affecting postsecondary education and thus library and information services. From this understanding we should be able to delineate the problems that a professional association can and must address and thus derive a program and structure for ACRL. To this end, the Planning Committee has created an ad hoc committee with a mandate to identify appropriate goals for the association and to recommend organizational mechanisms to achieve these goals. The committee will present its preliminary findings at the New York conference in 1974.

ACRL is also negotiating a proposal for a planning study on the role and problems of academic libraries with the Association of American Colleges and the American Association of University Professors. Hopefully, the planning period would be followed by a continuing program of research on the problems identified. As a preliminary event to a study of the future, the ACRL Las Vegas Program featured the findings of the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education and of the Commission on Non-Traditional Study.

Changes in the United States government’s attitude toward funding and administration of work on the problems of the nation’s social institutions shook the library world in 1973. As a harbinger, the U.S. Office of Education did not replace Dr. Katharine Stokes when she retired in 1972 from her position as the academic library specialist on the staff of the Bureau of Libraries and Learning Resources. Congress twice failed to pass an HEW appropriations bill acceptable to the president, and early in 1973 it was made clear that the administration would phase out categorical grants for many programs in favor of subsidies for locally selected projects. A scheduled meeting of ACRL and the Association of Research Libraries’ representatives with the Commissioner of Education in late 1972 was postponed. We were subsequently represented by the executive director of ALA at a meeting with the commissioner in which the administration’s decision to discontinue categorical grant programs was confirmed. In early 1973 the forthcoming statistical survey of libraries was threatened. I met with Commissioner of Education-Designate John Ottina and Dr. Dorothy Guilford, Chief of the National Center for Educational Statistics, in April, at which time Dr. Ottina agreed to conduct the 1973 survey. He was particularly impressed with arguments that indicated the utility of statistics in planning library services—a potential that ACRL may have to demonstrate in order for the series of surveys to continue.

Deliberations between Congress and the administration over the issue of categorical grants are still underway. ACRL was asked in early May to provide background information to support testimony by representatives of the American Council on Education for continuation of basic grants under the provisions of the Higher Education Act. In order to respond quickly in the future to the need to supply Congress with information vital to legislation, the ACRL Committee on Legislation has been asked to help reestablish a network of librarians in every state who can be mobilized for this effort.

The status of librarians continues to be a major association concern. The Joint Statement on Faculty Status of College and University Li- brarians was approved by ACRL at its Chicago meeting in 1972, and by the AAUP in April 1973. The Board of Directors of the Association of American Colleges, however, failed to endorse the statement. Beverly Lynch, Father Brendan Connolly, and I represented ACRL at an informational session on the Joint Statement at the annual conference of the Association of American Colleges. The door is not shut to further consideration of the Joint Statement by AAC, but the antipathy among academic administrators for extending academic benefits, particularly tenure, to librarians is clear. In the meantime, ACRL received communications from librarians and library groups of four institutions where the status and tenure of librarians is threatened or has been revoked. As a result, the ACRL Board of Directors has directed the Committee on Academic Status to formulate procedures for ACRL’s use upon notification of a potential loss of tenure or status. The committee was also directed to develop guidelines for local use in selection, promotion, and retention, and to promote the Joint Statement.

The ACRL Ad Hoc Internship Committee has prepared a proposal for an academic library internship program for administrators of predominantly black college and university libraries. This $340,000, three-year program, for which a grant will be sought, would identify black librarians who are capable of and willing to serve as interns at selected academic libraries for learning experiences in aspects of library operations, management, and administration that would otherwise be difficult for them to obtain. The proposal is pending approval at the June 1973 meeting of the ALA Executive Board.

After a long hiatus, the post of editor of Choice was filled with the return of Richard K. Gardner to the job. Mr. Gardner held a series of meetings with subscribers in Washington at the time of the ALA Midwinter Conference which resulted in a number of proposals for further development of the publication. Rising costs forced the first increase in subscription rates for Choice and its card service since their founding in 1964. Virginia Clark replaced Richard Tetreau as editor of the Core Collection for College Libraries, and, by the time of her departure in May 1973, work on production of the manuscript for the publication was organized for completion. The able Michael Herbi- son resigned as editor of CRL News and was replaced by Allan Dyson of the University of California, Berkeley. At year’s end, three works are in production in the ACRL Publications in Librarianship series: Pearce Grove’s Nonprint Media in Academic Libraries; Charles Laugher’s Thomas Bray’s Grand Design; and Charles Churchwell’s Education for Librarianship in the United States … 1919-1939.

It has become increasingly difficult to sustain interest and effort among the division’s committees and sections, given the severe shortage of funds in the ALA drive for generalization and professionalization. But work on problems in the substance of librarianship manages to go on as is shown by these ACRL activities:

• ACRL received $9,250 as a J. Morris Jones-World Book Encyclopedia-ALA Goals Award to start work on a revision of the Standards for College Libraries under the aegis of its Committee on Standards and Accreditation. We are reasonably assured of an additional award in 1974 to complete the task.

• The concept of networks among academic and research libraries was the focus for both the preconference meeting of the University Libraries Section and the regular program of the Agriculture and Biological Sciences Section. And the Board of Directors approved the establishment of an Ad Hoc Committee on Interlibrary Communications and Information Networks to study the implications of the recommendations of the ALA Airlie House Conference on that subject in 1970.

• The Rare Books and Manuscripts Section provided a forum for the discussion of the problems of access to collections of papers awaiting publication. The Committee on Community Use of Academic Libraries is preparing to study guidelines for individual library policy statements on access to academic libraries.

• The Board of Directors approved two policy statements for use by the profession concerning the attainment of legal title to collections and the appraisal of gifts to libraries. The Rare Books and Manuscripts Section is preparing two more statements to cover photocopying of and access to special collections.

• The Junior College Libraries Section has completed bibliographies of periodicals in seventeen career areas. The section will gather documentation on courses on library instruction for deposit and use at ACRL headquarters.

• The ACRL Ad Hoc Committee on Bibliographic Instruction has begun preparation of guidelines for library instruction. The results of its survey of instruction were submitted to ERIC/CLIS for distribution under the title “Academic Library Bibliographic Instruction.”

I cannot leave office without thanking many persons—other officers, committee chairpersons, association members, and hard-working friendly office staff at headquarters—for their support.

Russell Shank President, ACRL