ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries 344 / C&RL News E x ecu tiv e D ir e c to r ’s rep o rt By Julie Carroll Virgo A C R L Executive Director The view from HQ in 1984. s Onee more I am pleased to report that this past year has been an excellent one for the Association of College and Research Libraries. The membership an d co m m ittees have carried out a wide range of activities, which are detailed in the Associa tio n ’s a n n u a l re p o rt handed out at the ACRL p ro g ra m m eetin g in D allas. (Members u n able to attend the meet ing may obtain copies of the report by writing the ACRL O ffice.) P resi dent Joyce Ball in her re port on pages 342-43 de Julie Carroll Virgo scribes highlights of the Association year. This report focuses on the operational aspects of the As sociation. Membership ACRL finished the 1983 membership with 8,580 members. This was a slight decline from the pre vious year and was caused mostly by a drop in the organizational membership category. In 1984 we have achieved a much higher renewal rate of per sonal members than is usual, although organiza tional members continue to fall off. This latter ex perience was anticipated with the change in the ALA dues structure. ACRL has experienced les fall off than any other division and has moved this year from being the 5th largest organizational membership division to being the largest. Overall, ACRL membership is running 4.4% (348 mem bers) ahead of where we were at this time last year. Budget Both ACRL and Choice finished 1983 in a strong fiscal position. ACRL had revenues of $440,766 and expenses of $403,716 for a net income of $37,050. Choice attained revenues of $944,697 and expenses of $854,384. Subtracting the adjustment for changes in deferrals and accruals ($57,400) left a balance for Choice of $32,913. The 1984 fiscal year, with projections based on the first eight months, looks as though revenues will be ahead of budget and expenses as they were budgeted. A budget impact statement has been de veloped for the ALA Committee on Program Eval uation and Support. A program budget and narra tive has been p re p a re d for the Board for the 1984/85 budget year. Staffing Two major staffing changes are taking place this year. Rebecca Dixon is leaving Choice at the end of July to move to Philadelphia and Patricia Sabosik will be taking her place. The Dallas conference is my last conference as ACRL staff. JoAn Segal will join ACRL as the executive director on September 1, 1984. Choice 1984 marks the 20th birthday of Choice maga zine. In recent years we have seen the addition of non-print materials to its scope, this year’s change from unsigned to signed reviews, and the begin July/August 1984 / 345 ning of a move from a manually produced opera tion to a more automated environment. Publications New ACRL publications appearing in the past year have included: •E v a lu a tin g B ibliographic Instruction: A Handbook. • Genre Terms: A Thesaurus fo r Use in Rare Book and Special Collections Cataloguing. •C L IP Note #4-83: Online Bibliographic Data base Searching in College Libraries. •L ibrary Statistics of Colleges and Universities, 1982 Institutional Data. • The Bibliographic Instruction Clearinghouse: A Guide. •Curriculum Materials Center Collection De velopment Policy. •P IL Series, number 43: Paul Metz, The Land scape of Literatures. • P I L Series, num ber 44: Neil Radford, The Carnegie Corporation and the D evelopm ent of American College Libraries, 1928-1941. The publications program has increased approx imately 50% in the 1983/84 year, under the direc tion of Sandy Whiteley. Books for College Libraries, 3d Edition An ad hoc committee has been working on plans for a new edition of Books for College Libraries. A Request for Proposals has been issued and a draft proposal for soliciting funds to carry out the project has been written. Section newsletters Two new section newsletters were issued for the first time this year, published by the Bibliographic Instruction Section and the Rare Books and Manu scripts Section. C&RL News For the first time in ACRL history, the income brought in from classified and display advertising exceeded the expenses of the News. This is a result of consistent hard work by George Eberhart and Gloria Grev for classified advertising, and by Con nie Barone and Art Beck from Choice who handled the display advertising for the first time this year. Some typographic re-styling in the News has re sulted in a more crisp and pleasing format. Begin ning with the May 1984 issue, C&RL News began to receive preferential 2d Class treatm ent from the U.S. Postal Service, allowing for home delivery 5-6 days earlier than in the past. New award One new award program was begun this year. Tom Kirk was the first person to be awarded the BIS-sponsored “Bibliographic Instruction Librar ian of the Year Award” funded by the Mountain side Press. This brings to five the number of awards being administered by ACRL. Seattle National Conference Under the chairmanship of Gary Menges, the Third ACRL National Conference was held in Se attle in April 1984. Staff handled housing and meeting space contracts, exhibits, registration, placement, fund raising, and the continuing edu cation program. The conference was a great suc cess. There were 1,754 registrants; 184 partici pated in the eight continuing education courses; in the exhibit area there were 159 (including 5 com plimentary) booths and 10 exhibit tables; 162 jobs were listed in the placement service and 55 resumes were received from people seeking new positions; and twice as many donations were received than planned. The conference proceedings will be pub lished by ACRL in the fall. RBMS Preconference The Rare Books and Manuscripts Section con ducted its 25th preconference in Austin, Texas, in June. The program theme was “Collecting in the Twentieth Century.” Continuing education The co n tin u in g edu catio n program has ex panded this past year in both the number of courses being offered and the number of participants. Fifty people registered for 4 courses at the Midwinter meeting, 184 participants attended 8 courses in Se attle, and 7 courses were offered in Dallas. Seven new courses were developed this past year. The co n tin u in g ed ucation course syllabi sales are strong—with three months left in the fiscal year sales are already twice the amount budgeted for the whole year. A standing order program for the pur chase of these publications has been established. All ACRL participants in the continuing educa tion program, including local presentations, all ALA meetings, and ACRL national conferences, have now been recorded on word processing disc for easy access. NEH Grant A follow-up survey was made to all participants in the first NEH grant workshops and the final re port submitted to NEH. In October 1983 ACRL was awarded a new grant for $210,000 to conduct six workshops in cooperation with the Public Li brary Association. These six workshops will be given at geographically dispersed locations from October 1984 to November 1985. J. Morris Jones Leadership Grant ACRL was awarded the J. Morris Jones Award for $5,000 to implement an ALA Leadership En hancement Project. Barbara Macikas was named the project director. The first stage of the project 346 / C&RL News was successfully completed with a one-and-a-half day preconference at the ALA Midwinter meeting. Approximately 100 board members from ALA’s eleven divisions and the ALA Executive Board came together to examine ways of strengthening divisional leadership and to identify areas of m u tual concern. The project continues as planning for another preconference and the development of training packets for divisional board members is underway. Chapters Two new chapters, Colorado and North D a kota, were formed this year, bringing the total num ber of chapters to 33. Nine chapters received ACRL funding for ACRL officers to attend their meetings (Oklahoma, Colorado, Texas, Indiana, Missouri, Wisconsin, Iowa, PNLA, and Eastern New York). Four issues of Chapter Topics were published. Speakers Bureau A new edition of the ACRL Speakers Bureau was compiled. The publication lists the credentials and topics a b o u t w h ich th ey w ill speak, for th e President-Elect, President, Past President, Execu tive Director, Deputy Executive Director, ACRL Representative to Council, and the Editor of Col lege & Research Libraries. Discussion groups One new discussion group was formed in ACRL this past year—the Microcomputers in Academic Libraries Discussion Group. Librarians’ Exchange Program As a result of requests received from the profes sion, the ACRL office operates a modest exchange program. This year an unsuccessful mailing was done to 40 Slavic library collections seeking U.S. li brarians to participate in an exchange with a Slavic collections librarian in France. A French person will nevertheless be placed at the University of Illi nois. An exchange that will take place will be be tween librarians from France and the Smithsonian Institution. ALANET In January 1984, ACRL switched its electronic mail system from CLASS to ALANET. A Texas In struments terminal was purchased to transm it and receive text. After a survey of Board interest, only the Executive Committee, the Budget and Finance Committee, and certain ACRL committee chairs were signed up on the system. O n a personal note, I w ant to thank you for the opportunity to spend seven exciting, growing years as your executive director. The personal satisfac tions have been rich and many. I wish each and every one of you a good future and thank you for contributing to w hat I am, and for touching me in so many ways. ■ ■ A Choice update Librarians concerned w ith allocating acquisi tions funds might find a useful tool on the price in dex based on the reviews published in Choice in calendar year 1983. The ALA Resources and Tech nical Services Division’s Library Materials Price Index Committee has prepared an index using the Choice reviews as its base. The index has been pub lished in the July/August 1984 issue of Choice. The data on prices was compiled by Kathryn A. Soupi- set, head of acquisitions at Trinity University, San Antonio. Choice has frequently received questions from li braries on the subject distribution of its reviews and the cumulative costs in these subject categories. Al though Choice does not currently tab u late the costs, it does tabulate the num ber of reviews in each category. The breakdown by subject for vol ume 20 was published in Choice in the November 1983 issue. The volume 21 breakdown has been published in the July/August 1984 issue. The September 1984 issue will inaugurate two changes of potential interest to librarians. After tw enty years of publishing unsigned reviews, Choice will publish its first signed reviews in Sep tember, in accordance with the Choice Editorial Board’s recommendation in June 1983. Implem en tation of the new policy has gone smoothly so far w ith response from users and reviewers informed of the change responding favorably in general. The Choice editorial staff awaits the response from reg ular readers of the reviews. Reviews of nonprint materials, including an in ceasing number of computer software packages, will be gathered in a separate section following the print reviews beginning with the September issue. Since the scope of Choice was broadened to include nonprint, the reviews have been integrated into the subject sections of the magazine. The decision to create a separate section of nonprint reviews came as a result of input from media librarians whose work will be facilitated by the change. These and future changes will be described in the “In the Balance” section of Choice. — Rebecca Dixon, Editor, Choice. ■ ■ July/August 1984 / 347 Patricia Sabosik appointed Choice editor The ACRL Board of Directors has approved the selection of Patricia E. Sabosik as the next editor of Choice, AGRL’s review journal for college libraries p u b lish e d in M iddle- town, Connecticut. Sa bosik was most recently d ire c to r of m a rk e tin g services a t th e H .W . Wilson Company in the Bronx, New York, a m a jo r p u b lish e r of book and periodical indexes a n d re fe re n c e w orks. H er a p p o in tm e n t at Choice will be effective July 30. Sabosik has been ac Patricia Sabosik tive in ALA’s American Association of School Li brarians and is now completing a term as a mem ber of th at division’s Secondary School Materials Selection Committee. She is currently vice-chair of the Serials Industry Systems Advisory Committee, a unit of the Book Industry Study Group, a non profit research arm of the publishing industry. F or the past six m onths she has been doing freelance consulting for the publishing industry in the areas of m arket-share analysis and in tern a tional book distribution. Sabosik presented a paper on “Marketing Serials to Libraries” at the Third Annual Serials Confer ence organized by Meckler Publications in Novem ber 1983. She also contributed a paper to the Sev enth Annual Conference of the U.K. Serials Group in England last March entitled, “Serials Industry Systems Advisory Committee: Industry Group De velops V oluntary Standardized Form ats for the Processing of Serial Inform ation.” From 1977 to 1982 she held the position of m an ager of the Publications D epartm ent and editor at the Baker & Taylor Company, Somerville, New Jersey, where she edited two periodicals, Direc tions and Forecast, sent to academic and public li braries respectively. Directions includes subject- a r ra n g e d b ib lio g ra p h ic selections from th e company’s academic approval program. Sabosik developed and managed databases of Directions and Forecast inform ation w hich provided on- dem and subject bibliographies to support collec tion building for academic libraries. Directing a committee of school librarians in 1981-1982, Sabosik was also editor-in-chief of the School Libraries Guide, an annual, national bibli ography of selected books for school libraries. This July she will receive an MBA in marketing (with a concentration on international marketing and m anagem ent) from Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey. She also holds a bache lor’s degree in English from Kean College of New Jersey. ■ ■ ACRL Women’s Studies Group Although barely a year old, the ACRL W om en’s Studies Discussion Group has m ade substantial progress in identifying and tackling issues of con cern to librarians w ith assignments or interests in W om en’s Studies. Members now num ber over 60, m any of whom contributed to lively meetings at the past three ALA conferences. At the Los Angeles Conference issues for future discussion and action were identified, ranging from the development of needed reference m aterials in W om en’s Studies and liaison w ith potential publishers to outreach to faculty on campus and within the National W om en’s Studies Association. At M idwinter, participants addressed concerns and shared information on collection development and bibliographic instruction in W om en’s Studies. The challenges presented by an academic disci pline which is itself so interdisciplinary, and which is in fo rm e d by an ac tiv e social m o v e m e n t, prom pted the initiation of a project to compile a collection developm ent checklist for W om en’s Studies. Sources will include feminist review me dia, feminist and other small presses, antiquarian and used book dealers who specialize in works by a n d a b o u t w o m en , a n d a u d io -v isu a l sources among others. A task force is currently working on this project w ith completion expected this summer. The group co-sponsored w ith the RASD Discus sion Group on W om en’s Materials and Women Li brary Users a program at the Dallas conference en titled “Women O nline,” a panel discussion on the strengths and weaknesses of currently available databases for research on women and the need for developing a W omen’s Studies database. The Discussion Group encourages new members or inquiries about our activities. For more inform a tion, please contact Joan Ariel, Chair, W om en’s Studies L ibrarian, Main L ibrary, University of California, Irvine, CA 92713. ■ ■