ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries November 1988 / 653 Mission statem ents for the community college LRC By Madison M. Mosley J r . D irector, Learning Resources Center South Florida C om m unity College Clarifying the role of the Learning Resources Center. T h e comprehensive community college attempts to provide a wide range of instructional programs to an even wider, heterogeneous student body. The learning resources center must respond to the in­ structional needs of this student body as created by their instructors. With its finite resources, particularly the materi­ als and equipment collections, learning resources centers cannot meet the instructional and informa­ tional needs of students in all college programs on an equal basis. Priorities for the allocation of re­ sources and services must be established. The backdrop for the setting of priorities is the mission statement of the learning resources center. It is no longer sufficient merely to say we support the curriculum. We must decide and articulate what that time honored phrase really means. We must be able to express to our significant others why the learning resources center is unique among the components of the college and how th at uniqueness allows us to contribute to the intellec­ tual life of the college. A mission statement does just this. The determination of the learning resources cen­ ter’s mission within the college rests largely with the chief learning resources administrator.1 Ac­ cording to Steiner, “Mission statements are highly 1George A. Steiner, Strategic Planning: W hat Every M anager Must Know (New York: Macmil­ lan (The Free Press), 1978), 158. dependent on the values of the chief executive offi­ cer. The chief learning resources adm inistrator should determine the educational climate of his or her community college and assess his or her philo­ sophical stance on the role of the learning resources center in the academic setting against this climate. From this analysis the administrator will be able to clarify what he or she feels the learning resources center can do in the present environment. To students, faculty, and staff outside the learn­ ing resources center, the mission statement serves as a “unique window through which [they] gain a clearer understanding”2 of the learning resources center’s role in the college. The need for learning resources center mission statements is upon us since most community col­ leges are engaged in some form of strategic plan­ ning. As Brown, Smith, and Scott point out, “… When evaluating both libraries and computing activities, the first question to ask is not how to, but what for? Since libraries…cannot be all things to all people, the administrator must ask, ‘What is their role within the institution.’”3 2L aura Nash, “Mission Statements: Mirrors and Windows,” H arvard Business Review 88 (March- April 1988): 155. 3Donald R. Brown, Shirley M. Smith, and Rob­ ert A. Scott, “Evaluating the Effectiveness of Aca­ demic Libraries and Computing Facilities,” in Robert A. Scott, ed., Determining the E ffective- 654 / C&RL News Doris Dale, a frequent contributor to the litera­ ture on the learning resources center, asks, “Why is there a library in the community college?”4 Surely others are asking or will soon be asking the same question. Dale offers tradition as the answer. Her ness o f Campus Services, New Directions for Insti­ tutional Research, no. 41 (San Francisco: Jossey- Bass, 1984), 61. 4Doris Cruger Dale, “The Learning Resources Center’s Role in the Community College System,” C ollege & Research L ibraries 49 (May 1988): 232. answer will not sustain us. Learning resources center administrators must develop and publish mission statements so that our colleagues will understand how learning resources services contribute to academic excellence. We must respond in this manner so that when Rouche and Baker revise their book, Access and E xcellence: The O pen-D oor C ollege, there will be a chapter on learning resources centers.5 5As discussed in the closing paragraphs of Dale’s article. A case study in audio tape tran sfer By M artin L. Levitt Assistant Manuscripts Librarian The Am erican Philosophical Society Library How to preserve the sounds when the audio tape starts to go bad. T he Library of the American Philosophical Soci­ ety is an independent research library with signifi­ cant manuscript holdings in colonial history, his­ tory of science and technology, and materials related to the American Indian. In the latter cate­ gory in particular, the Library has developed a large collection, much of which originates from its administration of a fund endowed in 1895, called informally the Phillips Fund. This anthropological grant was established to fund scholarly research in native American ethnohistory and linguistics. The annual influx of materials to the Library re­ sulting from Phillips Fund research has included hundreds of audio recordings, dating from the 1920s. These are primarily field recordings of na­ tive American chants, songs, dances, languages, and folk tales. Some tapes are believed to represent the only known recordings of certain obscure dia­ lects, while others are considered invaluable lin­ guistic and ethnological oral records. The Library is also the repository for numerous other audio col­ lections, including oral histories, which are not re­ lated to the anthropological collections. In the fall of 1986, members of the Phillips Fund Committee expressed concern that the audio col­ lections might be deteriorating. The librarian re­ sponded by directing that a survey of the collec­ tions be undertaken, to determine the physical