ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


C&RL News ■ June 2 001/ 581

N e w s  f r o m  t h e  F i e l d Mary Ellen Davis

Jenkins to step down from ACRL
Althea H. Jenkins will be stepping down as 
executive director of ACRL at the end of July 

2001. Originally se­
lected for the position 
by the ACRL Board of 
D ire c to rs  a n d  a p ­
pointed by the ALA 
executive director in 
1991, Jenkins led the 
association through its 
transition to be a fi­
nancially stable, pro­
active advocate for 
academ ic librarians, 

Althea H. Jenkins as well as an efficient
delivery operation for services, products, and 
programs to members.

Helen Spalding, currently ACRL’s coun­
cilor and the newly elected ACRL viœ-presi- 
dent/president-elect, said, “Althea Jenkins has 
been an impressive, articulate, and credible 
advocate and has extended partnerships of 
mutual benefit to the higher education and 
academic library communities.”

During her ten-year tenure with ACRL, 
Jenkins compiled a list of impressive accom­
plishments, including increasing the finan­
cial resources of the association; expanding 
its publication program, including electronic 
resources; strengthening the continuing edu­
cation offerings; developing collaborations 
and partnerships with higher education and 
other information-related organizations; and 
promoting information literacy as a concept 
for student learning.

Jenkins said, “As executive director of 
ACRL, I have had an unparalleled opportu­
nity to view the work of academic libraries 
within their institutions nationwide and ob­
serve the contributions they make. Our li­
braries, as the cornerstones of a democratic 
society, have the capacity for changing lives. 
Their achievement of this mission is very 
evident on college and university campuses 
across the country.

“It has been a great privilege to serve the 
academic library community in this reward-

ìng way. Helping academic librarians gain 
the knowledge and skills needed to serve 
their constituents is one of the highest priori­
ties of the ACRL Board of Directors. I am • 
pleased to have contributed to ACRL’s suc­
cess in this area.”

Jenkins will join the Florida State Univer­
sity (FSU) staff as director of University Li­
braries. In addition to providing leadership 
and managing two main libraries (Strozier and 
Dirac) on the FSU campus, Jenkins will be 
responsible for the information resources and 
services of nine other departmental, regional, 
and international university libraries.

FSU is a research university serving nearly 
26,000 students enrolled in undergraduate and 
graduate programs. The libraries have hold­
ings of more than 2.3 million volumes and 
an annual budget of $12.5 million.

Jenkins previously served as library direc­
tor at the University of South Florida at Sarasota/ 
New College and Miami-Dade Community 
College. She is currently a member of the 
American Association for Higher Education; 
the Teaching, Learning, and Technology 
Group; the Eckerd College Board of Trustees; 
the University of Pittsburgh Library Visiting 
Committee; and the North Central Accrediting 
Association Institutional Action Council.

In 2000, she received the FSU School of 
Information Studies Distinguished Alumni 
award. Jenkins holds a B.S. from Florida Ag­
ricultural and Mechanical University, an MLS 
from Florida State University, and an Ed.D 
from Nova Southeastern University.

The ACRL Board will work with ALA to 
initiate a search process to immediately hire 
a new  executive director.

Harvard Library theft
French historical materials dating from the 
late 18th century have been reported stolen 
from Harvard’s Widener Library. Harvard Col­
lege Library officials suspected theft w hen a 
num ber of empty book covers were discov­
ered in the Widener stacks on April 19. A 
subsequent inventory conducted by library 
staff confirmed that a total of 46 items—in­



582 / C&RL News ■ June 2001

eluding pamphlets, journals, and books from 
the French Revolution and Napoleonic peri­
ods, valued at approximately $10,000—were 
missing.

The Harvard University Police Department 
is investigating the case and is working with 
library officials to gather information for the 
involvement of other law enforcement agen­
cies. Book dealers, research libraries, and deal­
ers specializing in French antiquities are being 
notified. Anyone with information pertaining 
to the whereabouts of these materials is asked 
to contact Detective Sgt. Richard Mederos, 
Criminal Investigation Division, Harvard Uni­
versity Police Department, (617) 495-1796, e- 
mail: LHCL@fas.harvard.edu.

ACRL selects 23 libraries for info 
literacy assessment project
Twenty-three libraries have been selected to 
participate in the ACRL project “Assessing Stu­
dent Learning Outcomes in Information Lit­
eracy Programs: Training Academic Librarians.” 
The purpose of this project, funded by a grant 
from the Institute of Museum and Library Ser­
vices (IMLS), is to train academic librarians who 
will work with faculty to design, implement, 
and evaluate tools for assessing student learn­
ing resulting from information literacy instruc­
tion taught by librarians and faculty. Close cam­
pus partnerships will help define student 
learning outcomes based on the new  “Infor­
mation Literacy C om petency Standards for 
Higher Education.”

Participants include representatives from 
throughout the United States and include four- 
year public and private colleges as well as

comprehensive universities, community col­
leges, and research universities. The institu­
tions are Western State College, Dakota State 
University, Indiana Purdue University-Colum- 
bus, Lewis and Clark College, Oberlin College, 
Illinois Wesleyan University, St. Olaf College, 
Lexington Community College, Diablo Valley 
College, Tompkins Courtland Community Col­
lege, S pokane Falls C om m unity College, 
Highline Community College, Midlands Tech­
nical College, University of the Pacific, Califor­
nia State University-Northridge, Millersville Uni­
versity, Appalachian State University, Austin 
Peay State University, Hunter College, Univer­
sity of Cincinnati, Regent University, Univer­
sity of Northern Colorado, and Montana State 
University-Bozeman.

Wisconsin libraries debut new loan 
program
As a part of their Cooperative Access Program 
(CAP), the libraries of Marquette University, 
the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM), 
and the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) 
have implemented a unique cooperative loan 
program that makes temporary transfers of ar­
chival an d  m anuscript resources possible 
among the three institutions within two busi­
ness days.

Descriptions of each institution’s collections 
may be found on the Web: UWM at http://www. 
uw m .edu/L ibrary/arch/invenah.htm ; MCW 
Archives at h ttp ://w w w .lib .m cw .ed u ; and 
Marquette’s holdings at http://www.marquette. 
edu/library/collections/archives.

Due to donor restrictions, institutional poli­
cies, and preservation concerns, some collec­

tions at each repository will not be 
available for transfer, but those that 
are can generally be loaned for up 
to 20 days. For more information 
about the SHSW’s Area Research 
Center netw ork, visit the Web at 
h t t p : / / w w w . s h s w . w i s c . e d u /  
archives/arcnet.

Pitt develops e-print server
The University of Pittsburgh Library 
System, in collaboration with the 
Department of History and Philoso­
phy of Science and Center for Phi­
losophy of Science have developed 
and im plem ented a new  electronic 
archive for preprints in the philoso-

mailto:LHCL@fas.harvard.edu
http://www.lib.mcw.edu
http://www.marquette
http://www.shsw.wisc.edu/


C&RL News ■ June 2001 / 583

phy of science. The preprint service, 
c a lle d  th e  P h ilS ci A rc h iv e 
(http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/) pro­
vides a forum for authors w ho wish 
to present their ideas to the schol­
arly community quickly, and receive 
critical response in a timely fashion.

The archive uses electronic pre­
print server software from ePrint.org, 
an organization that is part of the 
O pen Citation Project, a DLI2 Inter­
national Digital Libraries Project 
funded by the Joint Information Sys­
tems Committee of the Higher Edu­
cation Funding Councils, in collabo­
ration with the National Science 
Foundation. The PhilSci Archive pre­
print server supports the O pen Ar­
chives Initiative, which develops 
and promotes interoperability stan­
dards that aim to facilitate the effi­
cient dissemination of content.

Call for popular culture
papers

Updating know ledge, netw orking and sharing ideas, and 
learning abo u t new  products are key reasons librarians 
atte n d  th e  ACRL N ational Conference. If you missed th e  
conference, you can still keep up w ith  th e  sessions by 
purchasing audiotapes (see page 588), a conference 
proceedings, or view ing a Webcast o f selected programs. 
Details on th e  Webcast w ill be posted to  th e  Web at 
http://w w w .ala.org/acrl/denver.htm l.

The Popular Culture Association is seeking 
proposals for its annual joint meeting with the 
American Culture Association in Toronto, 
Canada, on March 13-16, 2002.

The Libraries, Archives, and Popular Culture 
Research Area is soliciting papers dealing with 
any aspect of popular culture as it pertains to 
libraries, archives, museums, or research.

Prospective presenters should send a one- 
page abstract by September 15, 2001, to Allen 
Ellis, W. Frank Steely Library, Northern Ken­
tucky University, Highland Heights, KY 41099- 
6101, e-mail: ellisa@nku.edu.

ACRL's characteristics of best practices 
in information literacy available
The characteristics of best practices in infor­
mation literacy programming are now avail­
a b le  as a c h e c k lis t o n  th e  W eb at 
http://www.ala.org/acrl/infolit.html. Select “In­
formation Literacy Best Practices.”

A team of six librarians, a classroom fac­
ulty member, and an information technologist, 
working under the auspices of ACRL’s Insti­
tute for Information Literacy, developed the 
list over the last year.

The Web site includes the ability to add 
comments that will be considered during fu­
ture revisions.

This statement of best practices is in­
tended to serve as a benchmark for assess­
ing an information literacy program. These 
characteristics of best practice along with 
outcomes assessment based on the ACRL “In­
formation Literacy Competency Standards for 
Higher Education” (http://w w w .ala.org/acrl/ 
ilcomstan.html) provide a robust multidimen­
sional approach to program assessment.

The list of characteristics of best practices 
remains a w orking draft until it is tested 
against real programs. This testing will be 
done in the process of selecting eight-to-ten 
institutions for a national invitational con­
ference on best practices in information lit­
eracy programming in Atlanta in 2002. It will 
be held prior to the ALA’s Annual Confer­
ence.

During this conference, the characteris­
tics will be reviewed and revised based on 
the discussions. A revised edition is expect 
to be released sometime in late 2002 with 
documentation of the programs that were part 
of the invitational conference.

More information on the best practices 
project is available at http://www.ala.org/acrl/ 
nili/bestprac.html. Inquiries about the char­
acteristics and about the invitational confer­
ence should be directed to Tom Kirk, Earlham 
College, p hone: (765) 983-1360, e-mail: 
kirkto@earlham.edu. ■

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/
ePrint.org
http://www.ala.org/acrl/denver.html
mailto:ellisa@nku.edu
http://www.ala.org/acrl/infolit.html
http://www.ala.org/acrl/
http://www.ala.org/acrl/
mailto:kirkto@earlham.edu