ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries December 1989 / 981 Oberlin Group meets for the fourth time Fifty-two librarians from liberal arts colleges whose graduates receive an unusual num ber of science doctorates had their fourth annual m eeting at th ree colleges in Southern California: the C lare­ m ont Colleges, W hittier College, and Occidental College. T he hosts w ere E leanor M ontague, acting library director and vice-president at Claremont, Phil O ’Brien, library director at W hittier, and Jackie Morris, library director at Occidental. The program centered on th e topic o f planning. Two futurists, Bob Olsen from the Institute for Alternative F utures (Virginia), and Paul Saffo, Institute for the F u tu re (California), made key presentations. T here w ere two panel discussions, one on aspects o f planning and one on staffing. T hese featured librarians from the group and other speakers. Social events incorporated personal recognition by the presidents o f each o f th e institutions, an address by R obert Skotheim, librarian o f th e H u n t­ ington Library, tours o f the libraries and campuses of the three colleges, th ree most elegant dinners, and many opportunities for informal com m unica­ tion, including lengthy bus rides from one location to another! Bob Olsen’s presentation on Saturday afternoon addressed aspects o f planning. H e suggested that one ought to start with the best view one can get of the circumstances one is facing, create alternative scenarios o f the future and hypothesize about how the institution could react to each. H e advocated creating a strategic vision o f the future and letting it drive one’s goals. Olsen m ade a n um ber of p re ­ dictions about th e information technology of the future, and indicated some o f th e problem s and challenges such changes might bring. H e endorsed a process of constant environm ental monitoring, leading to review and reform ulation o f one’s plans, b u t suggested this could not be done at th e institu­ tional level, urging that library associations, among others, might provide this service. Olsen worked with the group, asking people to identify their worst fears and fondest hopes for the future. This exercise involved people intensely, generating large num bers o f elem ents for alterna­ tive scenarios of the future. On Sunday morning, Saffo offered his exciting slide show and narrative on information technology change. H e speculated that the greatest changes to libraries will come from far outside and com pared the period in which we are living with th e period betw een th e invention of printing (about 1457) and th e developm ent of the octavo book form at by Aldus (about 1501). Likening the transition to the electronic information age with the transition of the late 15th century, he pointed out the analogous elem ents o f th e two eras. F o r instance, he cited inferior new works, replacem ent of one form of information storage (human memory' then, print m edia now) for another (print media then, elec­ tronic media now), the need for constant learning o f new skills, and social and economic changes brought about by the technological developments. Saffo repudiated the idea o f a paperless society; we are replacing paper as a storage medium, but using m ore and more of it in a transitory manner, with storage in electronic form (the “electronic piñata”). H e related “paperless” and “horseless”; we still use horses, but less for transportation than other applications. Having m ade an extensive study of large-scale social changes, Saffo has concluded that the intro­ duction o f something new moves ra th e r slowly at first and then accelerates. This leads to an overes­ timation o f th e short-range impact of an invention, followed by an underestim ation o f the long-range impact. H e described us as being in the eye o f the hurricane and therefore having an im paired ability to perceive what is happening. H e used historical Willis Bridegam (left) and ACRL president William Moffett (right) confer at the fourth Oberlin Group meeting. 982 / C&RL News photographs, cartoons, advertisements, and news­ paper clippings to illustrate his point that major inventions are rarely used for the purpose antici­ pated by their creators and quoted from Marshall McLuhan: “W hoever discovered water, it wasn’t a fish.” Technology enables change, Saffo asserted; it is th e cultural response to the technology that drives the change. Giving examples from th e past, he w ondered aloud with the audience, “How are we m isinterpreting th e future of information technol­ ogy?” H e referred to today’s developm ents as “electronic incunabula” and suggested we must all leam to live with a constant state of incom plete­ ness, an ever-evolving concept of things. H e closed by citing his own concept of “information surfing,” or learning to be selective about information. One is successful at this if one no longer feels guilty about all the books and articles one has begun, skimmed, and never finished! Planning panelist E d Wall (Pierian Press) ad­ dressed th e group on Sunday afternoon on the topic of environmental monitoring. Suggesting that it is absolutely necessary to keep ahead of progress, to keep abreast o f enabling developments, to keep updated on issues with an impact on planning, and to maintain the lead time needed for decision­ makers to becom e champions o f our objectives, he handed out a list of literally hundreds o f organiza­ tions whose work is having an effect on the informa­ tion environm ent and thus, potentially, on librar­ ies. JoAn Segal’s “Doing the Planning” segm ent gave participants some nitty-gritty advice on how to go about a planning process. She told the audience, “we m ust change,” supported planning as neces­ sary and beneficial, described a model planning process, asked those present to make a com m it­ m ent to take the first step in planning on their re tu rn hom e, and announced a major planning activity by ACRL’s College Libraries Section in conjunction with the Office of M anagem ent Serv­ ices of th e Association of Research Libraries. On M onday morning, the group heard from a panel of their peers on staffing aspects to be consid­ ered in planning. Michael Kathman, Ann de Klerk, Richard Werldng, and Suanne M uehlner identified key topics. Kathman asserted that library schools could not possibly carry out all th e training needed by librarians, and advised that on-the-job training and staff developm ent activities are of prim e im ­ portance (he ventured that we might com pare the 15 % requirem ent for equipm ent m aintenance with th e need for staff development). W erldng cited the work of several recent ACRL task forces in drawing a picture o f future public service staffing needs, m entioning new formats, translocal collections, user expectations, and added responsibilities. H e com pared staff growth in liberal arts college librar­ ies over a twenty-year period, showing a total in­ crease o f about 25%, b u t slowed increases betw een 1977 and 1987, with a zero increase in nonlibrari­ ans during th at period. H e also com pared job requirem ents as found in classified ads o f 1978 and 1989, looking at criteria such as th e second m aster’s degree (little change) and suggesting possible rea­ sons for this. F or instance, the person who has had an unsuccessful career experience in another field and has made a career change may not be a more valuable librarian than one who is com m itted to librarianship p er se. M uehlner concentrated on job broadening in h e r presentation. She described some changes m ade in staffing patterns in h er library that have encouraged librarians to take research project leave, have brought them closer to strict faculty comparability in length of contract, and have con­ centrated professional work on student interaction. At a business meeting, m em bers of the group agreed to hold their next m eeting at Rollins College in late F ebruary 1991, to design a statistical survey, to afford non-directors at th eir libraries the oppor­ tunity to m eet together, and to consider criteria for m em bership in the group. ■ ■ A C R L executive summary Fall came to Chicago very gently this year. Many groups held m eetings around the country in which ACRL m em bers and staff participated. M uch agi­ tation surrounded L C ’s threat to license th e MARC database in a restrictive fashion. Although a m ora­ torium was declared, the issues will need to be openly debated; a start will be m ade at Midwinter at th e ALCTS forum on Saturday afternoon. Many of AC R L’s chapters m et in October. T hree sites hosted visits from the ACRL Speakers Bureau: the Oregon/W ashington joint m eeting was addressed by Bill Moffett, who also w ent to Louisi­ ana; and the Georgia C hapter speaker was JoAn Segal. Copies o f th ree ACRL standards: for university libraries, college libraries, and two-year institu­ tions, were mailed to all m em bers of th e Council on Postsecondary Accreditation. The H. W. W ilson-funded study on Alternative Sources o f F unding for Academic Libraries began with a m eeting of the Advisory Com m ittee, chaired by Anne Beaubien, at which th e group worked with