may12a.indd


May 2012 237 C&RL News

In the
Welcome to the May 2012 issue of C&RL News. 
In the face of reduced budgets and continu-
ing economic uncertainty, many academic and 
research libraries are examining new ways to 
extend their resources while providing essen-
tial services and access to information. Working 
together on projects across institutions is one 
way for all partners to extend their resources. 
Catherine Palmer, Char Booth, and Lia Fried-
man outline the “Creative customization” of a 
local adaptable library tutorial across a variety 
of institutions in California as one way to share 
ideas and stretch resources.

Budget cutbacks and other economic factors 
can hit smaller academic libraries especially hard. 
In her article “Individual title requests in PDA 
collections,” Debbi Dinkins shares the Stetson 
University Library’s success in saving collections 
funds while providing just-in-time access to 
e-books relevant to faculty and student needs. 

Librarians at smaller institutions are also look-
ing to creative solutions to keep up with trends 
in the profession and the ways in which user 
access information. Christopher Chan of Hong 
Kong Baptist University discusses his institution’s 

experiences in providing an affordable solution 
to the increasing use of library resources via 
smartphone in his ACRL TechConnect article 
“Mobile sites made simple.”

We continue our look at art and exhibits in 
libraries with a discussion of mainstream and 
underground comic book collections and exhib-
its at Northwestern University. Jason Nargis and 
Benn Joseph outline the importance of comics 
to their library in their article “From the Heroic 
to the Depraved.”

This issue’s The Way I See It essay, features 
Michele Santamaría and Denise Petrik discuss-
ing the concept of metacognitive awareness as 
it relates to libraries in “Cornering the informa-
tion market.” 

Make sure to check out the other features and 
columns this month, including Internet Resources 
on “Muslim Americans” by Allison A. Cowgill, 
new ACRL “Information literacy competency 
standards for journalism students and profession-
als,” and brief information about ACRL activities 
at the 2012 ALA Annual Conference in Anaheim.

Thanks as always for reading the News.
—David Free, editor-in-chief, dfree@ala.org

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