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ACRL Board of Directors' actions, June 2002: Highlights of the Board's Annual Conference meetings

C&RL News, September 2003
Vol. 63, No. 8

During the 2002 ALA Annual Conference in Atlanta, the ACRL Board of Directors met on June 15 and 18 and took the following actions. The actions appear here along with the strategic directions that they address.

Strategic Direction 1.0: Society recognizes the contributions that academic and research libraries and librarians make in higher education, scholarly communication, and civic development.

Awards and recognition
Confirmed the Board’s approval by e-mail that a Presidential Recognition Award be given posthumously to Sharon Hogan.

Passed a resolution by consent to acknowledge the contributions of Jill Fatzer, a member of the ACRL Government Relations Committee who retired at the end of Annual Conference, for her long and tireless government advocacy efforts on behalf of academic libraries.

Passed a resolution by consent to acknowledge Christie Vernon, a former member of the ACRL Government Relations Committee who passed away on May 19, 2002, for her strong voice on government legislation and for the mentoring of many ACRL government advocates.

Scholarly communication
Approved by consent the charge for the ACRL Scholarly Communication Committee.

Approved the Scholarly Communication Committee’s 2001–02 agenda.

Approved a motion that the Scholarly Communication Committee establish priorities for the first year of the Scholarly Communication agenda for the Board’s comment.

Endorsed the Budapest Open Access Initiative, which is an international effort to promote free and open access to peer-reviewed journal literature.

Approved funding of $5,000 to ARL for work on a white paper on scholarly communication.

Standards and guidelines
Approved the revised “Guidelines for Academic Status for College and University Librarians.”

Strategic Direction 2.0: Academic librarians advocate for public policy, legislation, and institutional change that enhance the values and contribution they make to learning, teaching, and research.

ACRL Board 2001–2002 (l to r): (back) Lois H. Cheperon, Patricia A. Kreitz,
Paul E. Dumont, Theresa S. Byrd, Robert F. Rose, Pamela Snelson,
Barbara Baxter Jenkins, Deborah B. Dancik; (front) Patricia A. Wand,
Betsy Wilson, Mary Reichel, Helen H. Spalding, Erika C. Linke,
Mary Ellen Davis.

Government relations and advocacy
Approved by consent the draft of “Privacy: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights.”

Approved by consent a resolution on protecting the interests of America’s libraries under the WTO General Agreement on Trade in Services.

Strategic Direction 3.0: ACRL is an inclusive organization serving academic
librarians and other information professionals in related professions.

Approved funding of $32,500 to the Spectrum Scholarship program from the FY 2003 budget to support Spectrum Scholars interested in pursuing academic librarianship as a career.

Approved the establishment of an ACRL Spectrum Scholar Mentor Task Force to design a process by which ACRL can match an academic or research librarian with each new ALA Spectrum Scholar, and by which these relationships can be encouraged and supported by ACRL throughout the students’ graduate school experience.

Strategic Direction 4.0: Academic and research librarians are continually engaged in learning for their professional development and growth.

Approved by consent the Annual Conference 2003 programs.

Strategic Direction 5.0: ACRL is a national and international interactive leader in creating, expanding, and transferring the body of knowledge of academic librarianship.

Approved by consent a revision to the charge of the International Relations Committee to include its role in coordinating ACRL section nominations to IFLA section standing committees and recommending the nominations to the ACRL Board.

Approved the International Relations Committee’s request to have the ACRL guidelines and publications translated into Spanish with the stipulation that translation of standards and guidelines that are currently being revised will be delayed until the revisions are complete.

Authorized the Western European Studies Section to work with the Goethe Institute in its offer of sponsorship for an educational study program for new librarians.

Approved by consent the ACRL Business Plan for Publications.

Strategic Direction 6.0: ACRL is an effective and a dynamic organization that
continually enhances its capacity to create its future and assess and improve its
performance in carrying out its mission.

ACRL Board 2002–2003 (l to r): (back) W. Bede Mitchell,
Lois H. Cheperon, Patricia A. Kreitz, Theresa S. Byrd,
Robert F. Rose, Pamela Snelson, Deborah B. Dancik, Rita Jones.
(front) Patricia A. Wand, Mary Reichel, Helen H. Spalding,
Tyrone H. Cannon, Erika C. Linke, Mary Ellen Davis.

Approved the ACRL Board meeting minutes from the 2002 Midwinter meeting.

Accepted the report “Information Literacy and ACRL” and approved the following recommendations from the report:

• Dissolution of the Information Literacy Advisory Committee as it is currently constituted, and in its place there should be created a small advisory group that would channel information literacy activities to either the Institute for Information Literacy or the Instruction Section as appropriate.

• The Institute for Information Literacy would be the umbrella under which the Immersion Program would be directed along with follow-up activities of the Community Partnerships and Best Practices projects.

• The Information Literacy Advisory Committee, in its new form, would have as members the chair of the Institute for Information Literacy Executive Committee (renamed from Advisory Committee), the chair of the Instruction Section, the ACRL Executive Director, and an ACRL Board Member. 

• The new advisory committee will review the current association-wide information literacy activities other than those under the purview of the institute and distribute the work to IS or the institute. At the same time, activities, as appropriate, will be assigned to ACRL staff.

• The charge to the Information Literacy Advisory Committee is as follows: Monitor developments in the field of information literacy and work with interested parties to develop appropriate activities within the Institute for Information Literacy or the ACRL Instruction Section. The committee is advisory to the institute, Instruction Section, and ACRL Board of Directors.

• The Information Literacy Advisory Committee will prepare an annual report to the ACRL Board of Directors independent of the Institute and the Instruction Section.

• The Institute for Information Literacy Executive Committee is responsible for: acting as an oversight council for the Immersion Program; the mechanism for reviewing Immersion workshop applications; providing oversight of the Immersion Program; developing a plan for the appropriate disposition of all the other activities currently under its responsibility, e.g., community partnerships and Best Practices.

• The institute will submit a consolidated budget for its activities on a regular basis with the ACRL annual budget cycle.

Approved the 2002–03 Performance Indicators, which include core performance indicators for ACRL.

Approved a revenue sharing policy, which allows ACRL to share revenue with ACRL sections if a revenue surplus has been generated by a section activity.

Accepted the report and approved the recommendations contained therein of the Task Force on Funding and Organizational Models for Association-wide Initiatives.

Approved the FY 2003 ACRL budget as amended to keep section funding at the current level for those sections whose membership has dropped.

Approved the establishment of the ACRL Friends Fund Committee, which is charged to review donations given to Friends of ACRL and recommend to the ACRL Board the allocation of Friends money to ACRL projects and programs that put into action the intentions of the donors.