ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries July/August 1983 / 227 ACRL President’s Report, 1 9 8 2 -8 3 Carla Stoffle ACRL’s 44th President It is my belief that one of the primary responsi­ bilities of a professional association is to remind us of our values and commitments. This is a particu­ larly necessary role in economic times such as these we are now experi­ encing. In times of economic insecurity when our in­ stitutions struggle for survival, we may feel that we do not have the latitude to be generous with our ideals. I do not believe this is so. Periods of fiscal constraint de­ mand carefully consid­ Carla Stoffleered decisions, and these decisions must be based on our principles as well as economic reality. If they are not, there is little point in calling ourselves professionals. T his b e lie f in values as a guiding fo rce in decision-making is one which I apply to my own university and to my work in ACRL. In my con­ cluding remarks as ACRL President, I ’ve chosen to reflect on our values and commitments as aca­ demic librarians rather than focus on the Associa­ tion’s achievements during the past year. Our achievements are many, I assure you, and I do not intend to overlook the considerable work of ACRL members and staff in carrying out the Association’s mission during my term as your president. I intend, instead, to review that work within the context of principles which undergird our profession and this association. I do this not to deliver a sermon but rather as partial fulfillment of A CRL’s responsibil­ ity to raise societal issues and provide an opportu­ nity for reflection on the values we apply in day-to- day decision-making. As academic librarians our values and commit­ ments stem from four major, often overlapping, traditions: librarianship, higher education, profes­ sionalism, and our social responsibility as individ­ uals in society. Drawing on the four traditions I will briefly review what I consider to be the values of academic librarianship, discuss practical appli­ cations to decision-making in our libraries and highlight 1982-83 ACRL activities which I think are particularly strong examples of value-based decision-making. W e may not all agree with the emphasis I place on particular values or even with the applications of these values to ACRL. Each of us after all brings a personal value system to the practice of our pro­ fession. My purpose is to provide a base for future discussions, not to convince you of my perspective. Discussion of our values and greater awareness of their place in decision-making results, I believe, in a stronger profession and a stronger ACRL. I think we could all agree that central to our val­ ues as librarians is a commitment to the free flow of information. Some of us would say intellectual freedom; others first amendment rights; and still others access to materials. Whether our perspective is that of the research library, with its emphasis on preserving materials for future scholars as well as serving the scholars of today, or that of the college with its concern for maintaining an appropriate collection to support teaching activities, our pur­ pose as librarians is to make available and usable the wealth of knowledge, creativity, and informa­ tion produced by humankind. This purpose im­ plies an active stance on behalf of the user and the potential user, a stance which must be applied in all aspects of our libraries and our profession: col­ lection development, networking, bibliographic control, reference service, bibliographic instruc­ tion, and in the application of technological inno­ vations to our libraries. Our commitment to intellectual freedom in its fullest sense provides a value context for all our decision-making. W e automate our catalogs not only to minimize routine labor, but foremost of all to make our libraries more comprehensible and us­ able for our public, an application of our values. Because we are librarians, our professional values require that we not take the “easy way out” when forced by budget constraints to cut periodicals. I mean by this that we should not eliminate small journals, journals presenting unpopular opinions, or those targeted at minorities, because such jour­ nals may not have direct application to the curricu­ lum or to the immediate research needs of our fac­ ulty. This also holds true for the development of our book collections. Even in times of tight fiscal policy we must seek out the small publisher, the new idea, as well as react to the glut from the trade publishing industry. Our commitment to the free flow of information further requires that we pur­ chase materials which bring current social issues before students and faculty as well as meet the re­ search and curricular needs of our colleges and uni­ versities. Likewise, extension of our collections be­ yond the barriers of print must be part of our active in tellectu a l freedom stance and not m erely a grudging response to technological developments. A related academic library value basic to librari­ anship is expressed in the theme I chose for my pres­ idential year: “Building Bridges.” Librarians are linking agents, the addition sign in an equation which puts people and ideas together. The values which support this role have led us to create interli­ 228 / C &RL News brary loan networks, union lists and catalogs, to ex­ periment with telefacsimile, provide telephone ref­ erence service, and mount displays. We must not, in the face of the economic crunch, sell short our values as linking agents and retreat onto our own campuses or into alliances only with those whose needs and resources are similar to ours. In building our library networks, we must remember that as li­ brarians we serve not only our college or univer­ sity, or even higher education, but also the needs of the nation. Platitudes, you may say; but if brought to bear on the decision-making process these thoughts take on a reality as compelling as the budget’s bottom line. Surely we as librarians should be the last to join the forces contributing to the erosion of access to information. Application within ACRL of our linking agent values has been a high priority this year, as might be expected given a theme of “Building Bridges.” The Bibliographic Instruction Liaison Project, which takes as its motto “Integrating Libraries into Higher Education,” has scheduled speakers at 13 meetings of higher education and scholarly associa­ tions with displays exhibited at even more. Through a second series of National Endowment for the Humanities-funded workshops to encour­ age humanities programming in academic li­ b raries, A CRL has sought to link hum anist scholars, academic librarians, and the general public, as well as academic libraries and the En­ dowment itself. Three task forces concerned with linking our Association with others have been es­ tablished as part of the continuation of ACRL’s planning process initiated through the Activity Model for 1990. These linking task forces are: L i­ brary Schools and Academic Libraries, Academic Libraries and Higher Education, and ACRL and ALA. Perhaps the year’s most telling decision-making application of our linking agent values is ACRL’s leadership in creating a communication network among ALA divisions. One concrete result of this network is the development of a multi-divisional training project to strengthen the leadership skills of divisional officers and board members. This training project, which was conceived and orga­ nized by ACRL, will aid divisional leaders with both their roles in ALA and in their respective units. Recognizing a need common to all ALA divi­ sions, ACRL contacted the presidents of the 11 ALA divisions and worked with them to prepare a proposal for a one-time pre-conference for all divi­ sional leaders, an annual leadership orientation for newly elected division officers and board mem­ bers, and a training package which can be used within divisions to develop leadership below the Board level. This proposal, endorsed by the Boards of 9 of the 11 ALA divisions, received the 1983 J. Morris Jones Award and will be implemented in the coming year, with considerable staff support from ACRL. As academic librarians, the second values tradi­ tion we draw on is that of higher education. It is my belief that in our libraries we should strive to de­ velop an active program advancing all three ele­ ments of the mission of higher education: research, teaching, and service. Obviously, the academic library must support the research efforts of faculty, staff, and students. For many academic librarians this role provides the raison d ’etre for the profession. A full applica­ tion of our research values, however, will cause us to look beyond our defined and visible campus- based clientele and the clientele of the libraries which belong to our own particular networking configurations to the independent scholars who function outside institutions of higher education. Our values imply a responsibility to these individ­ uals who contribute to the advancement of knowl­ edge just as our faculty do. The fulfillment of this responsibility is dependent on individual academic libraries as well as the profession as a whole. We must consider the independent scholar when estab­ lishing our public access and interlibrary loan poli­ cies and our cooperative stance with public li­ braries locally and across the country. The academic library’s research program must not only support scholarly research, it must also promote the development of the library’s own ser­ vices. Our libraries, as well as our profession, must anticipate issues and problems rather than react to circumstances. Research plays an important role in this anticipatory planning process. This is not to suggest that the research efforts of a library’s staff should be limited solely to the immediate concerns of a particular organization. Research questions, just as staff development needs, should be consid­ ered in planning a library’s program of service, and the library’s resources committed to addressing those questions of particular relevance. ACRL takes this approach in planning its own program and in responding to the needs of the pro­ fession. To fill in a major gap in academic library statistics, staff conducted and published the results of a survey of non-ARL libraries. This project was com pletely supported by A CRL funds. Two research-related task forces have been established this year as part of the ACRL planning process al­ luded to earlier; one on performance measures for academic libraries, the other on academic library research needs. ACRL leadership was also vocal in support of the American Library Association’s Of­ fice for Research, an office whose functions must not only be preserved, but developed further. Another manifestation of our research values is ACRL’s inauguration of two awards, both donated by the Institute for Scientific Information. The A CRL Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship was awarded to Stanton Biddle for his study of the plan­ ning function in the management of university li­ braries. Denise Bedford received the Samuel La- zerow Fellowship for her proposed research on technical processing costs in large research li­ braries. These awards honor individual commit- July/August 1983 / 229 ment to research, remind us of the values we draw from higher education’s research mission and should stimulate further research. The teaching mission of higher education pro­ vides the values on which I have personally based much of my career as a librarian. I believe librari­ ans are educators with a body of knowledge to im­ part and a range of opportunities in which to carry out their educational mission. These opportunities run the gamut from one-to-one encounters to classes to preparation of guides available for those who choose to use them. The values which stem from our commitment to education have caused us to develop bibliographic instruction programs, to participate actively on some campuses in the setting of educational policy and to look to educational and developmental the­ ory for greater understanding of how people learn. In libraries with strong commitments to the educa­ tional values of academic librarianship, staff are not content with establishing and maintaining a program of library orientation or introduction to reference tools but rather seek to integrate their in­ struction programs into the curriculum, to revise their teaching styles based on application of learn­ ing theory, to teach problem solving and critical thinking as applied to information use as well as the more traditional library skills. The activities of the BI Section are conspicuous examples of A CRL’s commitment to the teaching mission of academic libraries. I ’ve already men­ tioned the work of the Bibliographic Instruction Liaison Project. The BI Section has also worked this year to implement the project which was a 1982 J. Morris Jones Award winner: duplication at eight state and regional library association meet­ ings of the highly successful 1979 BIS Dallas Pre­ conference. To honor the leadership of Miriam Dudley in developing the full participation of aca­ demic libraries in the teaching mission of higher education, an award has been instituted in her name. This award, like the others given by ACRL, will not only highlight individual contributions but will identify role models like Miriam Dudley who reprasent the embodiment of our values as a profes­ sion. The final academic librarianship value drawn from the tradition of higher education which I will discuss is service. When coupled with our belief in access to information, this value compels us to ex­ tend our libraries into the communities in which our colleges and universities are located. I realize this is a controversial and difficult issue on many campuses, fraught with concern for preserving precious resources for our primary clientele and, at times, concern for safety. But again, the values of service which are inherent in the mission of higher education must be weighed in making decisions on community access. Certainly access to the library can be extended to alumni, and to the spouses of faculty, staff, and students without an unreasona­ ble drain on resources. The needs of independent scholars have already been mentioned. W e must also consider our ability to contribute to the devel­ opment of the community through information provision to our professionals and businesses. The 230 / C&RL News economic health and well-being of the communi­ ties in which our colleges and universities reside must be our responsibility as well as that of munici­ pal and civic leaders. How we act on our service values will depend on the variables of our commu­ nities, but our values require that we critically ex­ amine our potential service role in the community. ACRL exercised our collective service values in planning, organizing and committing staff time to the multidimensional training project which re­ ceived this year’s J. Morris Jones Award. Through­ out the year, ACRL leadership has attempted to raise issues and build coalitions which are of service to ALA as a whole. Certainly there are elements of self-interest in these efforts. Without a strong ALA, all the divisions, including ACRL, are weakened in our national efforts. But the primary motivation underlying the decision to approach other divisions and the leadership of ALA on matters as divergent as the survival of the Office of Library Outreach Services and the possible reclassification of ALA staff is to be of service to the profession as a whole. It is my belief that we must continue bringing our service values to the fore when considering our role within ALA. ACRL is ALA’s largest division. We have resources and expertise which can help resolve ALA’s current fiscal crisis and provide our profes­ sion as a whole with the kind of healthy organiza­ tion we enjoy as academic librarians. We have be­ gun to suggest solutions for ALA’s problems rather than merely respond to the suggestions of others. This is an expanded role for an ALA division, which others are beginning too. Our service stance will require further delineation but our intent to be of service to our profession has been clearly an­ nounced. The third values tradition influencing academic librarianship stems from our roles and responsibili­ ties as professionals. Among the values we share with other professionals are a commitment to the maintenance and development of our professional abilities; a sense of responsibility and accountabil­ ity to our profession and to our clients; and a desire to preserve and promote our profession and its ser­ vices. As a professional association, ACRL places a high priority on action derived from our values and commitments as professionals. In fact, these values provide the framework for A CRL’s basic functions and structure: our journal and publication pro­ gram, conferences, the chapters, sections, and committees, lobbying, and our continuing educa­ tion courses. It is because we are a professional as­ sociation, committed to the values common to the professions, that ACRL provides opportunities for members to develop their abilities. Commitment to the professional value of maintaining the abili­ ties of practitioners has been a high priority of ACRL leadership in recent years as demonstrated by the development of our national conference pro­ gram, ACRL funding of the chapters and our con­ tinuing education courses. Our professional sense of responsibility and accountability leads us to share with library colleagues the results of failures as well as successes. ACRL journals and our na­ tional and annual conference programs provide us with opportunities to do so on a national level . Our 32 chapters provide similar opportunities on a re­ gional basis. The desire to preserve and promote our profession results in lobbying efforts with our local administration, with funding agents, and on the state and regional level with our elected offi­ cials for greater library funding, for legislation which enables us to cooperate more effectively and formally with other libraries, for an awareness of the library’s role in society. ACRL both supports individual efforts with information and advice and organizes efforts on the national level such as the testimony given by ACRL members at the regional hearings of the National Commission on Excel­ lence in Education. ACRL also works closely with ALA’s Washington Office on the concerns of aca­ demic libraries and librarians. Our values as professionals clearly mandate such activities. The issue which continually faces us as a professional association is the amount of support designated to those activities which clearly ad­ vance the individual professional as well as the pro­ fession. Should the cost of activities such as the con­ tin u in g ed u cation courses or the n a tio n a l conference be borne completely by those who par­ ticipate, and thus directly benefit? Should these ac­ tivities be subsidized by the membership as a whole because they advance the profession? Or should those who participate in these activities pay fees high enough to generate income for the develop­ ment of other programs? There is and will continue to be a natural tension which exists along the con­ tinuum of our values as professionals when they are applied to our Association’s program. W e must truly probe and use these values when we attempt to achieve the balance between a fiscally healthy association able to undertake new programs and an association which offers its members affordable, readily usable opportunities. The final source of academic library values which I will address is that of our social responsibil­ ity as individuals in our society. This is the area where personal values are quite likely to affect the intensity of our commitment to professional values. One such value to which we as a society have com­ mitted ourselves is affirmative action, an area where the strength of our values is currently being tested. Without the visible and firm commitment of our federal government and with the number of vacant or new positions continually shrinking, it may be all too easy not to extend the effort required to m aintain a dynamic affirmative action pro­ gram. W e must continue actively to recruit minori­ ties to the profession and for our libraries; to aid in the advancement of minority staff and women; to encourage them to act as role models for all our stu­ dents; to develop programs facilitating the use of our libraries by minority students and others for whom the rights of our society may not be readily At Midwest Library Service, We Take The Team Approach To Assist Your Library T o best serve your needs, we have fo rm ed five problem -solving service teams to help take the hassle out o f b ook-b u yin g. E a c h team is c o m p o s e d o f a Sales Representative in the field and a C u stom er Service Representative in our home office. O n ce alerted by you r phone call m ad e on ou r T o ll-F re e W A T S Line, 1 -8 0 0 - 3 2 5 - 8 8 3 3 , (M issouri c u sto m e rs, please call C O L L E C T 0 - 3 1 4 - 7 3 9 - 3 1 0 0 ) your problem-solving te a m , geographically assigned to you r library, goes into actio n immediately. It is a n o th e r facet o f Midwest Library Service’s tradition o f excellence. Midwest Library Service 11443 St. Charles Rock Road May we have the privilege Bridgeton, Mo. 63044 o f serving your library? “ 23 Years of Service To College a nd University Libraries” 232 / C &RL News accessible. Our social responsibility should also make us particularly wary of participating, know­ ingly or unknowingly, in the lim itation of the availability of new information technologies solely to the affluent. Academic libraries too must come to grips with the user fee question. The values-in-action philosophy I have been dis­ cussing is epitomized by the naming of the ACRL Academic/Research Librarian of the Year. This award, funded by the Baker and Taylor Company, recognizes an individual member of the library profession who has made an outstanding contribu­ tion to academic or research librarianship and li­ brary development. I think of this award as an op­ portunity to reflect on the values of our profession as well as honor high achievement. This year’s re­ cipient, Richard J. Dougherty, has, in the words of the citation honoring him, “in a short span of time … left his mark on academic librarianship and the library profession through his prolific writings, able administration and committed professional involvements.” Under his editorship, th e Jou rn al o f A cad em ic L ibrarian sh ip has become a major fo­ rum for the exploration of all the professional val­ ues I have been discussing. He is a forw ard- thinking librarian willing to take on the issues which confront our profession, someone who can serve as a model for the entire profession as well as his chosen specialty and ours, academic librarian­ ship. As I said in introducing this discussion of the val­ ues of academic librarianship, I do not expect that all members of the Association share my perspec­ tive or particular values or even my belief in clearly- relating actions to values. Yet I know that all of us do make value-based decisions. And I know that in the future we as academic librarians face serious questions related to professional identity and pur­ pose. In ACRL, we have an organizationally mature, strong professional association, an association in which, as has been pointed out, activities are based on professional values drawn from the traditions of librarianship, higher education, professionalism, and our individual societal responsibilities. We have worked very hard to achieve A CRL’s organi­ zational strength and maturity. Our activities dur­ ing the year have continued the Association’s struc­ tural enhancement begun with the Activity Model for 1990. W e end the year more aware of our values as academic librarians and their implications for the Association’s future. The challenge which now faces us is the further development of A CRL’s role as a forum for the exploration of our values. I for one plan to continue looking to my professional as­ sociation for reminders of important issues to be considered in day-to-day decision-making. I urge you to do the same. C arla S toffle President, A C R L m m Letter Moving Collections To the Editor: A few comments on Mr. Amadeo’s article on moving collections in the M arch 1983 C &R L N ews: Marking: it is helpful to make a full plan of the area into which the books will be moved, identify­ ing each range and section by a number-letter com­ bination. One can then key the future location of books to this plan, working out the full location be­ fore moving a single book. A 3x5 slip with the range number, section letter and (if necessary, shelf num­ ber) can then be attached to each section. A tall col­ ored slip bearing the new range/section/shelf code can then be inserted in the first book on each old shelf before moving commences. Loading onto book trucks: contents of old shelves should be transferred onto book trucks one shelf at a time, never putting books from more than one old shelf onto a shelf of the book truck. Since truck shelves are frequently longer than stack shelves, a block (easily made of rolled corrugated paper) should be put on each truck shelf to reduce it to exact stack shelf length. The truck is then loaded top shelf, middle shelf, bottom shelf, then the other side top shelf, middle shelf, bottom shelf (not as in Amadeo’s diagram), wheeled to the new location and unloaded onto the new shelves as shown by the colored slip which bears the exact new shelf loca­ tion. Loading one side and then the other permits much more rapid and efficient unloading with less op portu nity for confusion than a lte rn a te loading/unloading. Care must, however, be taken to prevent over-balancing. If the truck is to go a great distance or over une­ ven surfaces, it is wise to wrap the truck round from end to end with corrugated paper held tem­ porarily in place with a little masking tape and se­ cured by enormous rubber bands, carefully placed so that they bring pressure to bear on the shelf sides and not at all on the books. When we moved to Spencer Library (200,000 volumes, plus manu­ scripts, plus furniture, plus a press in ten days) this device allowed our book trucks to be rolled into an elevator, out the loading door, up a ramp into a van, and (after a short trip down and up a steep hill) down a ramp off the van, along a sloping side­ walk about 500 yards to the library door and to var­ ious locations inside a four-story building without the books taking any harm. They were rolled di­ rectly to the new shelf location and unloaded im­ mediately so that the trucks could be returned for another load. Nothing was hurt and nothing was lost. Another thought on loading: whether books can be loaded two facing rows to a truck shelf or not is a function of size rather than rarity. The two rows can be protected from one another during transit July/August 1983 / 233 by the insertion of a book-high, shelf-long piece of acid-free matboard or binder’s board.—Alexandra Mason, K en neth Spencer R esearch L ibrary, Uni­ versity o f Kansas L ibraries, L aw ren ce. ■ ■ Executive Director’s Report Ju lie C arroll Virgo Executive D irector, A C R L Although the climate for many academic li­ braries has remained a difficult one during the past year, the range of activities of our members con­ tinues to demonstrate a commitment to, and en­ thusiasm abo u t, our chosen profession. The activities of the ACRL committees, sec­ tions, and discussion groups have been out­ lined in the Association’s report handed out at the A CRL Program Meet­ ing in Los Angeles. (Members unable to at­ tend the meeting may Ju lie Virgo obtain copies of the re­ port by w ritin g the ACRL office.) President Stoffle in her report has described specific ACRL activities that reflect the values of this organization. My report focuses on the operational aspects of the Association and pro­ vides a glimpse of the challenges I see facing us in the year ahead. M e m b e r s h i p ACRL membership has been maintained at a constant level. If we continue to follow last year’s pattern we can expect to have approximately 8,700 members at year’s end (August 31). Personal mem­ berships are up, but organizational memberships are falling. B u d g et Both ACRL and C h oice finished the 1982 year in a strong fiscal position. ACRL had revenues of $478,000 and expenses of $391,000, for a net in­ come of $87,000. C h o ice achieved revenues of $870,000 and expenses of $822,000, for a net in­ come of $48,000. Balanced against these encouraging results has been the decision by the ALA auditors that money must be set aside for deferred subscription and ac­ crued vacation liabilities for C h oice, and deferred membership dues and accrued vacation time for ACRL. In short, during 1982 we built a healthier funds balance, but a significant portion of it must be set aside for these deferred liabilities. The 1983 fiscal year, with projections based on the first eight months performance, looks as though revenues and expenses will both be about $50,000 below budget, with the net income remaining as budgeted— a negative $20,000. ALA I n d ir e c t C o s t St u d y ALA has just completed its most recent indirect cost study. Indirect costs for ALA to support divi­ sions range from a low of 54 % (ACRL) to a high of 105 % (LAMA) with a median of 84 % for all divi­ sions. This means that for every dollar that ACRL spends, ALA provides 54¢ in additional services. Divisions are not actually charged that amount as it is recognized that divisions contribute to many members joining ALA (which they must do before they can join a division) and that divisions provide services to ALA members who may not necessarily join the division. The indirect cost figure for C h oice fell from 6.4% to 5.3% ‚ which translates into actual savings for C h oice of almost $10,000 a year. C h oice does pay ALA for its indirect costs. St a f f i n g Several important staff changes have taken place. In August Rebecca Dixon assumed the posi­ tion of editor and publisher at C hoice. Claire Dud­ ley joined the C h oice staff as assistant editor for non-print materials. Cathleen Krzyminski was ap­ pointed deputy executive director in April (her first week on the job was at Annual Conference) and Anne Garvey has been promoted to program assis­ tant, working with all ACRL units and assisting with chapter and member relations. We have ap­ preciated the warmth and enthusiasm Donna Harlan brought to her position as the acting deputy executive director and wish her well as she leaves ACRL and returns to her home institution this summer. A n n u a l O p e r a t in g P l a n The Planning Committee and the Budget and Finance Committee have begun work on develop­ ing a mechanism for tying the planning and budg­ eting processes together in a more coordinated and systematic way. Such an approach should be of as­ sistance to the Board in implementing the Associa­ tion’s priorities. P u b l i c a t i o n s New ACRL publications appearing in the past year have included: