feb06a.indd


In the 

Many instruction librarians are familiar with 
the experience of having one chance to 
reach out to students in a particular course 
each semester through an instruction session 
scheduled by the professor. The instruction 
librarians at Radford University have devel­
oped a method of improving these typically 
one­hour sessions by getting librarians to 
decide on uniform time frames for covering 
specific topics and helping professors to fo­
cus in on their expectations of each session. 
“And today we’ll be serving . . .: An instruc­
tion a la carte menu” (p. 80) shows how 
the menu approach to preparing instruction 
sessions has been a helpful tool that has in­
creased awareness among teaching faculty 
of what the library has to offer. 

A more traditional use of menus in the li­
brary makes sense when you’re talking about 
a library café. In “Coffee anyone?” (p. 97) a 
librarian from Moravian College describes a 
unique project in which students from mar­

keting courses submitted marketing plans 
that were used to guide the creation of a pro­
posed café in the library. The collaboration, 
developed through a not­quite­typical form of 
outreach, resulted in a thriving café that has 
expanded the appeal of the library. 

“Educating Iraqi librarians and library 
and information sicence educators” (p. 87) 
provides an update on the training devel­
oped by Simmons College’s library school 
and Harvard University Libraries for Iraqi 
librarians and library school faculty. Recently 
approved funding from NEH will enable them 
to continue this program in 2006. 

Cynthia Steinhoff and Julie Todaro, can­
didates for ACRL vice­president/president 
elect, share their visions for the future of 
ACRL on page 102. We hope that this will 
help you as your prepare to vote in the 
spring election. 

—Stephanie Orphan, Editor­in­chief 
sorphan@ala.org 

February 2006  75 C&RL News 

mailto:sorphan@ala.org