News

ARL has released ARL Academic Health Sciences Library Statistics 2010–2011, which presents data describing collections, expenditures, personnel, and services in 63 health sciences libraries at ARL member institutions in the US and Canada.

ARL has released ARL Academic Law Library Statistics 2010–2011, which presents data describing collections, expenditures, personnel, and services in 74 law libraries at ARL member institutions in the US and Canada.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has awarded the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) $1.3 million to expand CLIR's efforts to develop leaders in the profession of data curation in higher education, and to develop new models of institutional support for data curation. CLIR president Charles Henry, Digital Library Federation program director Rachel Frick, and ARL executive director Elliott Shore, will serve as the project's principal investigators. Shore is also lead instructor for the CLIR Postdoctoral Fellowship program and a CLIR presidential fellow.

Joyce Garnett, image © Western UniversityJoyce Garnett, university librarian at Western University, has announced that she will retire after 15 years at Western. Her official retirement date is March 31, 2014, but she will step down from her role as university librarian on June 30, 2013, at which time she will begin an administrative leave. Robin Keirstead, university archivist, has been appointed acting university librarian effective July 1, 2013, for up to a one-year term.

Joel Silver, image © Indiana URuth Lilly Dean of University Libraries at Indiana University Brenda L. Johnson has announced the appointment of Joel Silver as the director of the Lilly Library, effective April 1, 2013. For the past ten years, Silver has served as the library's associate director and most recently as interim director. The Lilly Library contains more than 400,000 rare books, more than 150,000 pieces of sheet music, and more than 7.5 million manuscripts.

image © Chrystal ParsonsToday the US Supreme Court announced its much-anticipated decision in Kirtsaeng v. Wiley, a lawsuit regarding the bedrock principle of the “first sale doctrine.” The 6-3 opinion is a total victory for libraries and our users. It vindicates the foundational principle of the first sale doctrine—if you bought it, you own it. All who believe in that principle, and the certainty it provides to libraries and many other parts of our culture and economy, should join us in applauding the Court for correcting the legal ambiguity that led to this case in the first place. It is especially gratifying that Justice Breyer’s majority opinion focused on the considerable harm that the Second Circuit’s opinion would have caused libraries.

Mary Lee Kennedy, image © Harvard CollegeMary Lee Kennedy, senior associate provost for the Harvard Library, has been appointed chief library officer at New York Public Library (NYPL), effective May 15, 2013. This is a newly created position that is tasked with accelerating NYPL’s digital initiatives and strengthening the research and circulating divisions of the library through cooperation. For details, see the March 15 NYPL press release, "Mary Lee Kennedy Appointed as Chief Library Officer at NYPL."

ARL has issued a call for participation in the third Balanced Scorecard (BSC) Initiative cohort. The year-long initiative will engage a small number of research libraries in a systematic way to consider the benefits of applying a locally developed library scorecard. Libraries with a keen interest in continuous improvement and strategic assessment are invited to apply.

Dale Askey's
Bibliobrary blogARL and the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) commend Edwin Mellen Press’s decision to discontinue its lawsuit against McMaster University and academic librarian Dale Askey. Nevertheless, both associations urge Mr. Richardson, founder and editor of Edwin Mellen Press, to discontinue as well his personal lawsuit against Mr. Askey.

image © David Paul OhmerARL and the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) are pleased to announce the participants in the 2013 Service Quality Evaluation Academy, to be held March 11–15 in New Orleans, Louisiana. The academy is an intensive five-day program cosponsored by ARL and CARL that focuses on introductory qualitative and quantitative methods for collecting and analyzing library service quality data. It is designed for librarians across library types and organizational structures who have a strong commitment to service quality assessment efforts. A talented group of colleagues are in the 2013 class: