ACRL College & Researc Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

The View from HQ

C. B rigid Welch ACRL Program Officer

Editors Note: Written in response to membership requests, this column features news from ACRL headquarters and discusses features of the office’s operations.

C. B rigid Welch

In 1980 and 1981 ACRL initiated two new programs in continuing education and bibliographic instruction. This column summarizes the direction these programs have taken and the plans for their future development, and will point out several ways in which members may become involved.

Continuing education courses at the ALA Annual Conference in San Francisco and at the ACRL National Conference in Minneapolis are among the first steps toward establishment of the long-range program of continuing education mandated by the ACRL Board of Directors in June 1979. The program’s goal is to provide quality continuing education at a reasonable cost to ACRL members.

Short, concentrated courses will include topics from the following five subject areas: management, library skills, technology update, the academic environment, and professional development. These short courses (one to two days in length) will feature an intensive treatment of a particular topic, thus enabling the participants to gain more than an overview of the subject. In order to facilitate and enhance the educational experience of the participants, courses will build upon one another, enrollment will be kept low (35 registrants maximum), and specific levels of background and experience will be required.

A proven means of providing quality, costeffective continuing education, the Medical Library Association’s continuing education program has been adopted as ACRL’s model. The ACRL continuing education program will utilize, like MLA’s program, standardized instructional materials—course outlines and exercises, syllabi, bibliographies—for each course. ACRL will contract with qualified course designers to develop the instructional materials; a network of instructors at the national and regional level will be asked to teach the courses. This approach reduces the design costs frequently incurred with each continuing education course offering and at the same time increases the accessibility of the courses to ACRL members.

Current work on the continuing education program s development includes identification of qualified course designers as well as instructors from the academic library and information science community. Planning is underway for courses to be offered prior to the ALA Annual Conference in Philadelphia. Proposed topics include writing and publishing the journal article, maps in libraries, bibliographic instruction teaching methods, academic library consulting procedures, and group skills—to name only a few.

Response to the continuing education courses in San Francisco and Minneapolis indicates a strong membership interest in the ACRL continuing education program. Members with suggestions for courses, possible course designers, and/or instructors are urged to contact C. Brigid Welch at ACRL Headquarters or any member of the ACRL Continuing Education Committee. Chapters wishing to work with ACRL in a pilot project aimed at offering these courses on the regional level in the spring of 1982 are also urged to contact ACRL.

In 1980 The ACRL Board of Directors approved funding for a two and one half-year project to provide information concerning academic librarianship to organizations and individuals involved with higher education through the development of channels of communication with professional and higher education associations. The result of this action was the establishment of the ACRL Bibliographic Instruction Liaison Project.

Based upon the promotion of bibliographic instruction as a basic library service, the project is an answer to members’ perception of a critical need for faculty and administrators to understand bibliographic instruction and its relation to the mission of higher education. In addition to promoting bibliographic instruction among these organizations and associations, the project helps members coordinate activities directly related to the furtherance of bibliographic instruction as a basic library service.

Since annual meetings and conferences provide the best opportunity for communication with the greatest number of individuals, a primary objective of the project is assistance in planning and executing bibliographic instruction related programs at these conferences. These programs will feature librarians and faculty members involved in successful bibliographic instruction programs at academic institutions around the U.S.

The project has decided upon the following as target organizations: American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Association for Higher Education, American Council on Education, American Federation of Arts, American Historical Association, American Political Science Association, American Psychological Association, American Society for Ethnohistory, Modern Language Association, and the American Sociological Association. ACRL member involvement in these associations was a strong factor in their selection as target groups.

The success of the project depends upon the cooperation of library and faculty involved in bibliographic instruction programs and in the associations selected. Individual names will be compiled in a resource list, and they will be contacted for participation in programming efforts. Interested members are urged to contact C. Brigid Welch at ACRL or any member of the ACRL BIS Cooperation Committee.

ESTHER J. PIERCY AWARD NOMINATIONS INVITED

The Esther J. Piercy Jury Awards Committee of ALA/RTSD is now accepting nominations for the 1982 award.

The candidates for the award may be nominated by anyone who is well acquainted with the candidate’s contribution to librarianship in the field of technical services. The award will be given to a librarian with not more than ten years of professional experience who has shown outstanding promise for continued contribution and leadership in technical services by professional activity, innovation, publication, or research.

The jury selection of the award winner will be based on the documentation submitted by the nominator. Nomination forms should be submitted not later than December 15, 1981.

Forms are available from Julieann V. Nilson, Head, Automated Processing Dep’t, University Library, Bloomington, IN 47405.