College and Research Libraries


Pushing Forty 

COLLEGE 
& RESEARCH 

LIBRARIES 

In 1978 the Association of College and Research Libraries observes its fortieth 
anniversary, and although shch an occasion may serve as a time for a retrospective 
view, we begin this anniversary year by looking ahead. 

Three articles featured in this issue give us a view of our future: Stephen K. 
Bailey, in an article based on his 1977 address to ACRL, discusses several aspects 
of the future of higher education, pointing out their implications for academic li-
braries. Beverly P. Lynch, writing of -the changing environment of academic li-
braries, calls on libraries to shape that environment instead of only adapting or 
responding to it. Looking to the increasing importance of networks, Richard M. 
Dougherty discusses their impact upon library management and the resultant 
need to plan now to deal with problems that will occur. 

We shall conclude our anniversary year with the first ACRL national confer-
ence. Scheduled for Boston, Massachusetts, November 8-11, this meeting also 
looks to the future with its theme, "New Horizons for Academic Libraries." A se-
ries of major addresses at the conference will focus on elements in the future of 
our libraries, and a variety of contributed papers and programs will address sub-
jects of continuing interest and concern to academic librarians. 

Although we shall not minimize our past achievements, in this anniversary year 
possibly we can say as did a popular book of some years ago that "life begins at 
forty." 

* * * 
An ofttold anecdote concerns the jokester who, on a daily basis, cut a little bit 

from the tip of an elderly friend's cane, leading that friend to imagine he was 
growing taller. Readers of this issue are informed they are not growing larger. The 
journal has become smaller. With other ALA divisional journals, College & Re-
search Libraries has assumed a standard page size. This change, we anticipate, 
will offset some of the major increases in paper costs of the past few years. Thus 
in our fortieth year we introduce the new compact model of C&RL. 

R.D.J. 

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