Washington, D.C.
October 18-20, 1995
Jerry D. Campbell, Presiding

Building Partnerships that Shape the Future

Foreword

The 127th Meeting of the Association of Research Libraries focused on the relationships ARL has built and continues to build with other associations and agencies, including the federal government. ARL pursues such partnerships to expand a sphere of influence for research libraries and to shape the environment for scholarly communication. The AAU/ARL Research Libraries Project is one such endeavor.

The program provided an opportunity to learn about proposed directions for partnerships that are shaping the future of scholarly communication. William G. Bowen, President of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Kevin Guthrie, Executive Director of the Foundation’s Journal Storage Project (JSTOR), spoke about the economics of scholarly communication based on the JSTOR experience.

Donald Waters, Associate University Librarian, Yale University, and Peter Lyman, University Librarian at the University of California at Berkeley, led a discussion of barriers to achieving economic and other benefits from inter-institutional, coordinated collection management. They reported on findings from two recent projects: the CPA/RLG Task Force on Archiving of Digital Materials, and the AAU/ARL Latin Americanist Project.

Partnerships between research libraries, government agencies, and users of government information were the focus of a program session hosted by Governor John Carlin, Archivist of the United States, at the new National Archives facility in College Park, Maryland. Joining him in a panel discussion of new models for the dissemination of government information were the Census Bureau Director, Martha Farnsworth Riche, and the OMB Information Policy and Technology Chief, Bruce McConnell.

Program Session V focused on the changing make-up and character of the professional staff in ARL libraries. Stanley Wilder, Assistant Director for Administration at Louisiana State University Libraries, reported on his projections of significant retirements among the professional staff of ARL member libraries. Dr. Jay L. Chronister, Professor at the University of Virginia, responded to these findings and compared them to his own research on the demographics of faculty. Patricia Reichler, Project Manager, Diversity and Local Governance Project, National League of Cities (NLC), described how the NLC developed an action agenda to assist city officials in responding to demographic trends and offered examples of how cities and higher education might establish partnerships.