ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


546 /  C&R L  News

MALC 1 9 8 7

By Marva L. D eL oach

Head, Cataloging & Records Maintenance 
Illinois State University

an d  Lynetta Lewis A lexan d er

Cataloger
Illinois State University

The Midwest Academic Library Conference at Illinois 
State University.

T he Midwest Academic L ibrary Conference 
(MALC) does not have a creed, officers, commit­
tees, or dues. MALC’s organizational structure is so 
loose, in fact, that we are not even certain about its 
official name. For example, previous accounts in 
College & Research Libraries by II. Vail Deale re­
ferred to the gathering as the “Midwest Academic 
L ibrarians C onference.”1 This inform ality con­
tinues the tradition th a t began in May 1956 at 
Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michi­
gan.

One of its few traditions is that MALC has been 
jointly sponsored by several neighboring academic 
institutions. For the 1987 conference, Illinois State 
University (Normal) and Illinois Wesleyan Univer­
sity (Bloomington) cosponsored “Toward Holistic 
L ibrary Services: Putting the Pieces Together” 
(May 27-29,1987), a follow-up on the 1986 confer­
ence held at Iowa State University (Ames).

Approximately 175 people, including a visitor 
from California, gathered to hear such speakers as 
Congressman Major R. Owens (D-NY), JoAn Se­
gal, (ACRL’s executive director), Evan F arber 
(Earlham College), Michael Gorman (University 
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), and William 
Nugent (Library of Congress), present and ex­
change their ideas with participants. Segal, Evans

1See II. Vail Deale, “A Decade with MALC,” 
C&RL 25 (November 1964):475-82; and “MALC’s 
Second D ecade: C om m itm ent to C om m unica­
tion,” C&RL 36 (March 1975): 143-51.

and Gorman set the pace at the opening session 
with “Challenges for Libraries,” “BI: Past, Present 
and Future Challenges,” and “Technology: The 
Problem or the Solution.” The conference con­
cluded with the presentation, “Putting the Pieces 
Together: An A dm inistrator’s Perspective,” by 
Thomas Shaughnessy, University of Missouri. All 
of them were provocative!

A pig roast and banquet at the ISU Foundation’s 
Ewing Manor, the estate of the late Plazel Buck 
Ewing patterned after an English castle with a Jap­
anese garden, were held to provide librarians with 
an informal atmosphere for hammering out ideas 
about holistic library services.

Participants were encouraged to tour the Illinois 
State University Library. Unfortunately, Illinois 
W esleyan’s beautiful facility was tem porarily 
closed for asbestos removal, a situation that others 
may perhaps empathize with.

Thomas Shaughnessy summarized some of the 
problems discussed at the conference in his wrap- 
up talk. Shaughnessy pointed out that good library 
habits must be formed in one’s student years and 
that a campus–wide campaign must be mounted to 
alert students and administrators to the services 
and information available at their libraries. C ur­
rently, he said, university faculty and adm inistra­
tors are trying to resolve a myriad of diverse prob­
lems such as “bright flight,” student retention, 
minority recruitment, and training foreign teach­
ing assistants to speak English. Quite often campus 
planning does not include libraries in these finan­



October 1987 /  547

cially draining endeavors.
Pressure encourages com petition, not collabora­

tion, and Shaughnessy strongly believes th a t the li­
b rary  m ust prom ote collaboration. He encouraged 
li b r a r y  w o rk e rs to b e c o m e  in v o lv e d  in th e se  
cam pus–w ide problems and suggested th a t a d a ta ­
base search of a topic could illustrate interest to 
university adm inistrators, as w ould cooperating in 
a program  to help students learn to w rite m ore ef­
fectively.

In order for the library staff to cope w ith all of 
these dem ands, Shaughnessy feels th a t staff devel­
opm ent should begin on day one of em ploym ent. 
Since its s ta f f  is a key to  a l i b r a r y ’s success, 
Shaughnessy develops a them e each year, such as 
grant w riting, for staff development. Interestingly, 
Shaughnessy believes th a t attending conferences 
such as MALC are costly in both lost work tim e and 
h ard  dollars and benefit individual staff members 
only—not the institutions th a t bear most of the 
costs.

Jo An Segal stated th a t current library practices 
contribute to personnel specialization rath er th a n  
generalization. In order to create a holistic library, 
adm inistrators m ust urge library staff to interact 
beyond their own departm ents. She closely exam­
ined the them e of “holistic library services” and 
presented an intriguing picture of the library as a 
system interacting w ith a web of other systems.

Michael G orm an agreed th a t libraries are u n ­
dervalued by faculty and society at large, and th a t 
the lib rary ’s passivity to the outside w orld contrib­
utes to this attitude. G orm an explained th a t in the 
last decade there has been little additional money 
for services th a t are in high dem and. L ibrary m a n ­
agers are now challenged to cope w ith rising expec­
tations am ong staff members who are seeking m ore 
job responsibility and fulfillm ent.

G o rm a n  said th a t alth o u g h  a u to m a tio n  has 
m ade personnel redeploym ent possible, he ad m it­
ted th a t reorganization is h ard  to im plem ent. He 
recom m ended th a t adm inistrators redefine staff 
and library roles, then decide the most cost effec­
tive w ay to enforce reorganization. Professional 
duties will be encouraged and specific tasks will 
drift dow n to the lowest level at w hich the task can 
be perform ed. Eventually these actions will result 
in more resources for the user, G orm an said.

E van F arb er described the effect th a t au to m a­
tion and other new technologies will have on the in ­
tellectual fram ew ork of the cam pus over the next 
15 years. He reassured the audience th a t students’ 
need for inform ation and assistance in evaluating 
d ata will persist.

W illiam  N ugent related  th e L ib rary  of C o n ­
gress’s progress w ith optical disk technology. One 
optical disk can store several shelves of magazines 
and can also provide m ore public access to such 
items as rare photographs. In  addition, m echa­
nized indexing will provide better access to collec­
tions and preserve images longer th an  the printed 
page. W hen concern was expressed th a t optical

Major R. Owens answers questions after the 
M A L C  banquet as author D eLoach looks on.

disks m ay only have a lifetim e of 10-20 years, N u­
gent rep o rted  th a t a final verdict h ad  not been 
reached on disk longevity.

O ther conference speakers w ere D oug Bedient 
(Southern Illinois University) on video technology; 
Betsy Baker (Northwestern University) on training 
end-users in d a ta b a se  searching; L in d a  Piele, 
H arold Tuckett, and D onna Nicholson (University 
of Wisconsin-Parkside) on m icrocom puters; D ana 
Smith (Purdue University) on computer-assisted 
bibliographic instruction; G erald Cole (Illinois 
State University) on bibliographic instruction in 
history; Florence Lewis (Sangamon State U niver­
sity) on the instructional services librarian; Judy 
Rycombel (DePaul University) and M ary Marshall 
(OCLC) on docum ent delivery; and Tom Dorst 
(D epaul University), Beth Sandore and Bernie 
Sloan (University of Illinois, U rbana-C ham paign) 
on resource sharing using the LCS system.

Congressman M ajor R. Owens, the only lib ra r­
ian in Congress, gave a stim ulating speech at the 
T hursday night b anquet (in the same tim e slot as 
his son, who plays Elvin on “The Cosby Show” !). 
He urged librarians to continually rem ind elected 
officials of our contributions to society and the need 
for im proved library funding. He pointed out a 
n u m b e r of bills, m an y  th a t he h ad  sponsored, 
w hich are of special interest to academ ic lib ra ri­
ans.

The 1988 MALC will be at the University of 
W isconsin-M ilw aukee, w hich also sponsored a 
1974 MALC m eeting. Kansas State University, 
M anhattan, will host the 1989 program . ■ ■





October 1987 /  549