ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries 624 / C &R L News b r a r y PR A w ard . Prospective e n tra n ts should know th a t contest winners this year such as the UC Irvine L ibrary and the N ational Geographic Soci ety L ibrary m entioned th a t they found this packet to be most useful in p reparing their entries. The contest guidelines and rules described in this packet are intended to steer entrants tow ard w inning an a w a r d . An ideal public relations program includes the essential elements of healthy staff relations, a com m itm ent to serving the public, m arketing, public ity and creativity. Yet, successful public relations is involved even more in the som ew hat intangible realm of having a genuinely positive attitude to w ard the public and in the dom ain of having an in novative concept of m anagem ent. All libraries lit erally have some sort of “relations” w ith the public. Public relations in the context of this discussion though, means having a deliberate, systematic and planned approach to m aintaining or im proving the relationship betw een the library and specifically identified groups. The UC Irvine L ibrary serves as a notew orthy example of how well academic libraries can do in this contest w ith th e creative m an ag e m en t of a seemingly com m onplace library activity like p u b lishing brochures, guides and newsletters. Only a small num ber of the estim ated 5,443 academ ic li braries in the U.S. and C a n a d a have entered the contest since 1980.3 As the accom panying tables in dicate, however, academic libraries entering the contest perform far better th a n the typical contest entry in other categories. Although the contest em ploys no quota systems for different categories of entrants, academic libraries experience an above- averag e c h an ce of w in n in g a w a rd s in this PR aw ard contest. ■ ■ 3American L ibrary Association, L ib rary A dm in istration and M anagem ent Association. A Market Overview of the John Cotton Dana Library Public Relations A w a rd Contest. Unpublis docum ent. Chicago: ALA, 1984. hed, internal RESEARCH FORUM Overlapping viewpoints B y P a u l M osher D eputy Director o f Libraries Stanford University T he point th a t Jeffry Larson makes about the de sirability of overlap am ong smaller instructional collections is well taken (C&R L News, O ctober 1985, p p .486-87). It seems obvious to m e th a t the smaller the collection the greater the probability, and even the desirability, of overlap—particularly in instructional com ponents—of the collection. B ut m y p o in t w as n o t t h a t sm aller lib raries should reduce the levels of duplication in their in structional collections. I w ould argue quite the re verse. My point was to emphasize the benefits of collaboration and resource sharing am ong libraries in the support of their research, not their curricular, efforts. W e all realize th a t th e research compo nents of our universities require us to develop re search collections of lesser or little used materials in m any fields. These m aterials m ay not need to be duplicated as heavily if w e are better aw are both of the patterns of acquisition and the strengths of ex isting holdings of other libraries in some of these a r eas w here we are pressed continually to expand our research holdings. It behooves large libraries to examine this issue carefully and determ ine th e degree to w hich over lap in collecting m ay be desirable, and hopefully to arrange patterns of collecting w hich tend to take advantage of the strength of other libraries’ collec tions. So I think Larson has misconstrued my point, w ithout it in any w ay dam aging the substance of the points he makes about instructional collections in smaller libraries. His conclusion th a t the finding of less-than-expected overlap am ong instructional collections should give collection developers pause a b o u t w h a t d ir e c t i o n th e y s h o u ld p u r s u e in strengthening these libraries is an excellent one and should be m ade. ■ ■