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C&RL News April 2017 224

During the 2017 ALA Midwinter Meeting in 
Atlanta, the ACRL Board of Directors met on 
January 21 and January 23. The Board met 
with the leaders of its four goal-area commit-
tees: New Roles and Changing Landscapes, 
Research and Scholarly Environment, Student 
Learning and Information Literacy, and Value 
of Academic Libraries to assess progress on 
the Plan for Excellence. The Board also met 
with the chair of Community and Junior 
College Libraries Section (CJCLS) and dis-
cussed the process in place should CJCLS 

ACRL Board of Directors’ actions, 
January 2017
Highlights of the Board’s Midwinter meetings

want to develop a companion document to 
the Framework for Information Literacy for 
Higher Education. 

The Board also received reports from 
the following task forces: Awards, Libraries 
Transform, and Standards for Libraries in 
Higher Education Review. The Board also 
heard updates from the project leaders of the 
Action-Oriented Research Agenda and the 
liaison from the ALA Board to ACRL.

The ACRL Board of Directors took the 
following actions:

commitment to equity, diversity, inclusion, 
and access.

Enabling Programs and Services: 
Education

• Confirmed virtual vote approving Lisa 
Janicke Hinchliffe as the Standards Presenter 

Coordinator for the Standards for Libraries in 
Higher Education training workshop.

Enabling Programs and Services: 
Advocacy

• Approved a statement to affirm ACRL’s 

Enabling Programs and Services: 
Member Engagement

• Approved the merger of the Slavic and 
East European Section (SEES) and Western 
European Studies Section (WESS) to form 
European Studies Section (ESS).

• Approved the creation of the Institu-
tional Research Interest Group. 

Enabling Programs and Services: 
Publications 

• Approved the Proficiencies for Assess-
ment Librarians and Coordinators.

• Approved the appointment of Richard 
Saunders as editor of RBM: A Journal of Rare 
Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage.

• Approved start-up funding for CHOICE 
development of OER review services and 
resource registry.



April 2017 225 C&RL News

Enabling Programs and Services: 
Operations

• Confirmed the virtual votes approving 
the minutes of the ACRL Board meetings at 
ALA Annual Conference 2016; approving the 
minutes of the virtual ACRL Board of Direc-
tors Fall Meeting held on October 19, 2016; 
approving College Libraries Section (CLS) 
Innovation Award criteria.

• Approved revised Ground Rules for the 
ACRL Board of Directors.

• Approved next steps for the Framework 
for Information Literacy Advisory Board 
(FAB), which includes the addition of FAB 
members to the Student Learning and Infor-
mation Literacy Committee, so that they can 
help transition projects managed by FAB to 
the goal-area committee. 

• Approved working with a market re-
search firm to develop a needs assessment 
for non-members working in community col-
lege libraries to better understand how ACRL 
might engage them.  

ACRL Statement on the Dissemination of Federal Research

As the higher education organization for 
librarians, ACRL is dedicated to the advance-
ment of learning and to the transformation 
of scholarship. ACRL is unwavering in its 
long-standing commitment to promoting 
the free exchange of different viewpoints 
and ensuring privacy and confidentiality in 
academic libraries. In the spirit of previous 
statements, ACRL reaffirms its dedication 
to its core values: visionary leadership; 
transformation, new ideas, and global per-
spectives; exemplary service to members; 
diversity, integrity, and transparency; con-
tinuous learning; responsible stewardship 
of resources; the values of higher education; 
and intellectual freedom. 

One of ACRL’s objectives is that “librar-
ians accelerate the transition to more open 
and equitable systems of scholarship.” 
Recent actions from the new Executive 
Branch agencies have cast the realization of 
this goal into jeopardy, and they run counter 
to the ALA’s Library Bill of Rights and Core 
Values of Librarianship. These values are 
essential to academic advancement across 
the institutions we serve in the United 
States and abroad.

Agency orders to cease communication 
with the public—as well as a directive 
calling for the submission of EPA publica-
tions to administration review—had to be 
walked back in response to public outcry, 
but they set worrisome examples. These 
federal agencies are taxpayer-supported, 

and their outputs for public consumption 
and understanding are an essential service 
to everyone. Actions that silence scientists 
and other specialists employed by these 
agencies set dangerous precedents for 
fair and open, democratic governance 
and hinder the advancement of scientific 
knowledge by restricting the dissemination 
of research.

Privileging political viewpoints, rather 
than facts, erodes our country’s values of 
democracy, liberty, and equality. Limiting the 
ability of scientists and other educators to 
communicate with the public jeopardizes 
the creation of new knowledge. It is criti-
cal to maintain open communication from 
the government to the public, especially 
to support efforts to enfranchise disadvan-
taged and underrepresented populations, 
who rely on access to publicly available 
resources to make economic and health 
decisions. If these restrictive acts go unchal-
lenged, we potentially set in motion an era 
of complacency that could devolve into 
acceptance of suppression and a mindset 
that discourages civic engagement and 
undermines the principles of democracy, 
which rely on an engaged population.

ACRL considers it an ethical and profes-
sional responsibility to challenge attempts 
to call into question the validity of facts 
simply because they run counter to the 
establishment’s agenda, or to subvert access 
to information.—ACRL Board of Directors