ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


4 /C&RL News

In the News
Happy New Year! Most of us use the coming of 
the New Year as a time to reflect, take stock, 
and make resolutions and plans for the future.

ACRL, too, has plans for these traditional 
activities as the New Year starts. At the ALA Mid­
winter Meeting in Denver this month ACRL lead­
ers will gather at a priority planning session 
and attempt to focus the association’s diverse 
interests and set priorities for the coming years.

When establishing priorities, these members 
will consider the interests of the membership 
and past activities. But as Carol Hughes and 
William Pfannenstiel point out in this issue, 
planning based solely on past practices is prob­
lematic. In “Practical visioning for the decade 
of austerity” they have prepared for ACRL an 
environmental scan that examines external is­
sues, events, and trends that may have an im­
pact on higher education, academic libraries, 
and ACRL.

The scan examines trends in economics, 
politics and access to information, demograph­
ics, scholarly communication, information tech­
nology, education, libraries, and associations.

It will be up to ACRL’s leaders to judge the 
extent to which each of these trends will affect 
ACRL and then to incorporate this information 
as they set priorities for the association. Future 
issues of C&RL News will report the results of 
the planning meeting.

We are also reminded in this issue how much 
academic libraries are affected by external 
events. Barbara Ford reports on a meeting of 
the National Association of State Universities 
and Land-Grant Colleges and its plans for ex­
amining libraries and information technology. 
In “Washington Hotline” Carol Henderson reports 
on an NREN policy workshop which included rep­
resentatives from higher education, libraries, the 
computing industry, federal agencies, telecommu­
nications companies, and network providers. Tom 
Kirk and Noreen Alldredge give us the latest report 
from the Coalition for Networked Information.

Many thanks to Eldon Tamblyn w ho again 
has donated his time and talent to preparing an 
annual index for C&RL News.

Mary Ellen K. Davis 
Editor & Publisher