ARL News

Brandon ButlerBrandon Butler has resigned as director of public policy initiatives at ARL, effective July 15, 2013. He is taking the position of practitioner-in-residence at the Glushko-Samuelson Intellectual Property Law Clinic, Washington College of Law, American University (AU).

The video of the webcast “Using ARL Salary Data to Make the Case for Higher Salaries” presented on May 21, 2013, is now available on ARL's YouTube channel. This webcast examines how to use the ARL Annual Salary Survey beyond the published data. The speakers showcase how libraries have used ARL's custom report services, identify how to demonstrate salary issues that need to be addressed, and discuss strategies leaders have used to make the case for improved salaries. Webcast slides (PDF) are also available for download.

image © Chris TarnawskiSave the dates August 4–6, 2014, for the next Library Assessment Conference: Building Effective, Sustainable, Practical Assessment, to be hosted in Seattle, Washington, by ARL and the University of Washington Libraries. The conference goal is to build and further a vibrant library assessment community by bringing together interested practitioners and researchers who have responsibility or interest in the broad field of library assessment. The conference provides a mix of invited speakers, contributed papers and posters, and workshops that stimulate discussion and provide workable ideas for effective, practical, and sustainable library assessment.

Mark A. PuenteARL's director of diversity and leadership programs, Mark A. Puente, submitted the following comments to Library Journal (LJ) in response to the May 23 editorial by Michael Kelley, "The MLS and the Race Line": Mr. Kelley provides some interesting and provocative comments about the effectiveness of diversity recruitment programs such as the collaboration between the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the Society of American Archivists (SAA) recently funded by IMLS. But as previous commenters have pointed out to him, no one strategy is going to be effective for every recruit and a variety of approaches should be used. ARL’s approach should be seen within a larger context of attempts to ameliorate this vexing problem.

image © Ed UthmanARL is recruiting an individual to be the director of public policy initiatives. ARL is a nonprofit, member-driven institutional organization representing 125 research and academic libraries in the US and Canada. ARL’s mission is to influence the changing environment of scholarly communication and the public policies that affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve.

image © John SchniebelARL, LibQUAL+^®, and SPARC are offering several events at the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference to be held in Chicago this summer. Highlights include: 

ARL/LibQUAL+ Booth
Friday, June 28, 5:30 p.m.–Monday, July 01, 2:00 p.m.
(during exhibit hours)
McCormick Place Convention Center, Booth 528

image © Wally GobetzThis week ARL joined 109 other organizations as part of the Coalition for National Science Funding in a letter (PDF) to the US House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, as well as the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, expressing concern about recent Congressional actions that call into question the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) merit review process for awarding research grants.

"Cuppa MOOC," image © Cikgu BrianOn May 15, Brandon Butler, director of public policy initiatives at ARL, spoke about “MOOCs and the Copyright Challenge: Fair Use in the Balance” as part of the Leading Voices in Higher Education lecture series at Dartmouth College. The lecture series has featured visits from prominent writers, university presidents, and other figures in higher education.

ARL has published Research Library Issues (RLI) no. 280, which features articles on open educational resources (OERs) as an alternative to traditional textbooks, ARL's e-book licensing effort, and research library trends as shown by the ARL Statistics. A pre-publication version of the article about OERs was released earlier this year.

The complete table of contents with links to the articles follows:

image © Tom LohdanThis week, the National Research Council (NRC) is hosting four days of discussion on the recent White House memo, “Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research” (PDF). NRC is conducting these sessions to garner input from a wide variety of perspectives on behalf of many federal agencies. ARL, the Association of American Universities (AAU), and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) presented joint statements on “Expanded Public Access to Data” (PDF) and “Expanded Public Access to Publications” (PDF).