You know what would be nice? To get an e-mail with a TOC and links. Something to whip up in your spare time, Kathryn )

This would be more than a “new model” for something that has been part of the traditional focus for ACRL publishing – if I read Kathryn’s post correctly – but a new venture aimed at finding the sweet spot where academic libraries and broader issues in higher education meet, and mapping that landscape in ways that are compelling to classroom faculty, IT professionals, campus administrators, and, potentially, legislators, donors, and members of our local communities (and doing it with articles and essays that come from those non-librarian constituents of the academic library).

And, the print version (if there is one) has to be snazzy enough and compact enough to fit in a President’s briefcase as he or she walks out the door to catch a plane, and the content has to be available freely to encourage sharing among people who do not routinely visit the library literature (and may not have access to member or institutionally-licensed resources).

Lorcan’s point about EDUCAUSE is an important one, not only because it touches that oft-discussed question of the need for ALA/ACRL publications to pursue the open access alternatives that we promote among campus faculty for use by their scholarly societies, but also because of the question of focus. EDUCAUSE has done a fantastic job creating a publication that is aimed as much at academic administrators (and others on campus with an interest in technology), as it is among IT/Library professionals. Look at the title: EDUCAUSE Review: Why IT Matters in Higher Education. Not, “scholarly inquiry into information technology,” but “why IT matters in higher education.” I’ve said this before, but, “dreary” though our literature may be (as well as fragmented), I think there is a niche waiting to be filled for a more broadly focused publication (preferably, as Lorcan notes, open access and non-member-based) on “why libraries matter in higher education.”