Here’s the data:

Contributed Papers

Number of submissions – 238
Number that can be accepted – 66
Acceptance rate 28%

Panel Sessions

Number of submissions – 202
Number that can be accepted – 44
Acceptance rate 22%

Preconferences

Number of submissions – 11
Number that can be accepted – 6
Acceptance rate 55%

Workshops

Number of submissions – 50
Number that can be accepted – 12
Acceptance rate 24%

Comparative Numbers for ACRL 2009

Contributed Papers – 230 submissions; 44 accepted; 19% acceptance rate

Panel Sessions – 169 submissions; 35 accepted; 21% acceptance rate

Preconferences – 15 submissions; 6 accepted; 40% acceptance rate

Workshops – 47 submissions; 11 accepted; 23% acceptance rate

ACRL has responded to a major request from the membership – provide more academic librarians with an opportunity to present at national conference. ACRL is making this possible by increasing the number of papers from 44 to 66 so that will increase the acceptance rate nearly 10 points (thanks to a stable number of submissions) over 2009. The trade-off is that each paper presentation is just 20 minutes, so there are now three papers, not two, at every session. Even with 9 additional panel sessions, owing to a substantial increase in the number of submissions, the acceptance rate is pretty much the same. Looks like those who submitted a preconference proposal will have the best shot at acceptance. But overall more of you will be presenting at ACRL!

Good luck to all those who submitted a proposal. I hope you came up with a snappy title (see more on that here).

And in the event your proposal is rejected, keep in mind that the submission deadline for poster sessions, cyber zed shed, roundtables and virtual conference sessions is November 1, 2010. So there will still be plenty of time to submit a proposal. There are a bunch of other innovations being planned for the conference – and you’ve probably now found out who the keynoters are – so I hope you’ll be planning to come to Philadelphia in 2011.

You have likely heard about the ALA Emerging Leaders Program, which began in 2007 as part of past ALA president Leslie Burger’s six initiatives to expand opportunities for involvement and leadership in ALA to newer librarians. What you might not know is that ACRL sponsors a team of Emerging Leaders to support the ACRL 101 program, which is designed to enhance the ALA Annual Conference experience for first-time attendees.

This year, our Emerging Leaders team comes from universities ranging from Alaska to Georgia. We are all enthusiastic about our work in academic libraries and our involvement with ACRL. Through our project with ACRL 101 we will share our conference experiences and help new conference attendees make the most of their first ALA Annual experience. We will offer insight into the structure of ACRL and help extend the network of support that ACRL 101 currently offers to new members.

The ACRLog-ALA Emerging Leaders Team

From left to right, our team of ACRL 101 Emerging Leaders include: Amanda Dinscore, Public Services Librarian at California State University, Fresno; Wendy Girven, Public Services Librarian at University of Alaska Southeast; Kimberley Bugg, Assistant Head, Information & Research Services, Atlanta University Center; Hui-Fen Chang, Social Sciences Librarian, Oklahoma State University; Rachel Slough, MLS Candidate, Indiana University; and Miriam Rigby, Social Sciences Librarian at the University of Oregon. Not pictured, Mary Jane Petrowski, Associate Director of ACRL, serves as the ACRL Staff Liaison. Susanna Boyston, Head of Library Instruction and Collection Development at the Davidson College Library, is the project mentor.

After an initial meeting at ALA Midwinter in Boston, our group is now working with representatives from ACRL to plan and implement a series of ACRLog and ACRL Insider blog posts. These posts will focus on areas of interest to new librarians such as conference tips, ACRL resources, highlights of selected ACRL sections, and advice on how to get involved. We will also be hosting OnPoint chats for first time conference attendees, to provide insight into conference structure and guidance to help you make the most of your time at ALA Annual in Washington, DC. Finally, we will be planning several ACRL mini-sessions at ALA Annual which will build upon the content covered in the ACRL 101 program.
Keep an eye out for future blog posts from members of our active group on ACRLog and ACRL Insider in the coming weeks, and please support the ACRL 101 Emerging Leaders – whatever your career stage – by giving us your feedback and comments. Last but not least, come visit us at the ALA Pavilion at the Annual Conference in Washington D.C.

ACRLog also congratulates the winners of the 2010 ACRL Excellence in Academic Libraries Award Winners: The Bucks County Community College Library, Newtown, Pa.; the A.C. Buehler Library at Elmhurst College, Elmhurst, Ill.; and the Indiana University Bloomington Libraries.

At the end of the day loads of ACRL members will be involved in making the conference a success, from the many members of the planning committees to everyone who presents and participates. But the backbone of the conference is really three people. The chair of the conference committee and two ACRL staff members who somehow help us clueless members to pull this whole thing off. Here is your conference team for 2011:

Your ACRL 2011 Conference Team

On the far left is Margot Conahan, ACRL’s manager of professional development, to the far right you have Tory Ondrla, ACRL conference supervisor, and in the center is Pam Snelson, Library Director at Franklin & Marshall College – and the Chair of the Conference Planning Committee for 2011. Together these three will lead the conference planning committee in organizing another memorable ACRL conference.

I read with interest that ACRL has issued a new set of strategic priorities for 2009-2013. Having worked on strategic plans (and doing so currently) I can appreciate the work that goes into creating one, and I even take time to read the plans of other academic libraries to get a sense of what direction academic libraries are taking. In what new directions do these priorities take ACRL? Take a look:

The ACRL strategic priorities for 2009-13 are:

Strengthening ACRL’s relationships with higher education organizations that are important to faculty and administrators in order to develop institutional understanding of librarians’ roles in enhancing teaching and learning.

Enhancing ACRL members’ understanding of how scholars work and the systems, tools and technology to support the evolving work of the creation, personal organization, aggregation, discovery, preservation, access and exchange of information in all formats.

Increasing ACRL’s influence in public policy affecting higher education.

Increasing recognition of the value of libraries and librarians by leaders in higher education, information technology, funding agencies and campus decision making.

Supporting members in their exploration, research on and implementation of new and emerging information technologies and their application for library services in educational environments.

Increasing ACRL’s membership from professionally underrepresented ethnic and racial groups.

I’m one hundred percent behind that first priority. Too often in the past I’ve seen situations where higher education organizations are developing programs, plans and publications that can impact on or discuss higher education issues that directly effect the academic library and there is absolutely no representation from our community. The annual Horizon Report comes to mind, but there are other examples where a representative from our profession is not invited to the table. I hope ACRL can do more than just create understanding. We need to be involved and well represented.

While there no dearth of activity geared toward scholarly communications issues I believe that ACRL can be doing more to ensure its members are well prepared to both be advocates for the issues on their campuses and to engage the faculty to help them become advocates in the effort to create new models of scholarly communication. I would encourage ACRL to devise tools and techniques to enable frontline librarians at every type of higher education institution to be more aware of the issues and strategies for creating change. And developing more clout in the public policy area would help ACRL and its members to make themselves heard when scholarly communication and other information policy issues are topics of discussion and action in our legislative bodies.

The goal to increase the visibility of academic libraries and librarians within the higher education enterprise seems to me a long running priority for ACRL. But it is hard to recall, in the last year or two, a specific and direct initiative to make this happen. What I can remember is the campaign that placed highly visible advertisements about academic libraries in the Chronicle of Higher Education. That effort had a good return though I’m sure it was costly to the organization. Perhaps if more progress can be made with the first priority there will be more opportunities to promote the academic library and its value to higher education in other venues. But a eye-catching, well-designed, creative ad campaign that communicates sticky messages about our value might be just the thing we need to raise our visibility level. Got academic libraries?

As an ACRL member always looking for ways to implement new technologies that can improve our outreach to the community and the quality of our resources and services, I would welcome any assistance from ACRL to support the efforts of academic librarians to leverage and possibly create their own educational technologies. I advocate that many of our resources are instructional technologies, and we need to do a better job of creating awareness about them and making sure they are well designed so as to improve their ease of use. As an advocacy organization I’d like to see ACRL partnering with vendors of library technology, technology firms such as Google, Amazon and Blackboard, and others such as Microsoft, to promote the needs of academic librarians for better information technologies that help us remove the barriers and enhance the accessibility to our great information resources.

Increasing the diversity of our profession is another ongoing priority for ACRL. Advocating for more scholarships and support to both encourage minorities to enter our profession and to become active in ACRL will only serve to make our profession stronger. Academic librarianship needs to demographically reflect the changing face of American society. While each of us needs to accept some personal responsibility in this effort, I look to ACRL for leadership and support.

Day-to-day ACRL’s strategic priorities are far from the minds of most ACRL members and academic librarians. That’s totally understandable. It’s not as if we don’t have priorities of our own these days – like making sure you do your job well so you can actually keep it. But it’s worthwhile to take time to think about and reflect on these priorities to consider how they might impact on your work, your library and your institution. While I was encouraged by the many new and younger faces of the profession I saw at the ACRL conference, I think ACRL must continue to prioritize any effort to increase membership among the newest members of academic librarianship. Without a strong member base, none of these other priorities will matter much. If these newer academic librarians fail to find relevancy in our association or they cannot afford to join, we will be weaker and less able to move strategically forward in new directions.

What about the voting totals? Did more ACRL members make an effort to cast their vote? Well, despite the fact that it’s fairly easy to do even with ALA’s clunky voting software, the number of ACRL members voting actually dropped. Compared to the election that ended in a tie in 2007, between Erika Linke and Scott Walter, there were 265 fewer votes cast this year. If you are an ACRL member and you voted – good for you. If you didn’t vote – hopefully you’ll make more of an effort next year.

Not quite an environmental scan the authors state they were going for something a bit different:

In the wake of dramatic economic developments, government action, and a flood of higher education trends reports, we felt that a strategic thinking guide would better complement the current literature. This guide considers three important drivers in the current environment and poses questions to stimulate conversations and action in your libraries and on your campuses. Along the way, we point to the work of higher education associations, private foundations, government agencies, and individual experts for further assisted reading.

What are these three drivers? Nothing that will come as a total surprise:

Driver #1: The Economy and Higher Education – you can’t read a higher education news publication or engage in a conversation with a colleague without the economic meltdown finding its way into the discussion. According to the guide the big question for libraries is “how will we afford it?” But how can we not afford to develop new organizational structures and services that will lead to “student success and faculty productivity” as the report puts it.

Driver #2: Students – No one is quite sure what our student population will look like in the fall. Even now some public universities are expecting many more students who’d normally be going to pricier private schools. The report identifies a number of student trends, and asks how we can prepare to serve a new generation of learners who are quite different from their predecessors on campus.

Driver #3: Technology – For academic libraries, a rapidly changing technology landscape seems more like the old normal than the new normal. But our need to adapt is driven by advances such as cloud computing and smartphone communication. Not surprisingly this section has more points to make than the other two. But the bottom line for academic libraries is how are we going to leverage all of these technologies in ways that enable us to connect with students and faculty, and make it easier for them to use our technology.

The new normal is a concept that signals that everything we’ve taken for granted over the last 20 years is being melted down, re-thought and cast into a new reality. The old rules are broken and new ones must replace them. And most of all individual expections have to be set to a new and lower standard. We read extensively about the need for change in academic libraries, and perhaps ACRL’s new strategic thinking guide will serve as catalyst for discussions among colleagues about what changes will enable academic libraries to be meaningful, sustainable and viable in the new economy.

Congratulations to Gloriana St. Clair, dean of university libraries at Carnegie Mellon University. St. Clair is the 2009 ACRL Academic/Research Librarian of the Year. Anyone who has met Gloriana knows what an incredible person she is. I personally recall how willing she is to help colleagues. In the early days of portal, as editor, Gloriana would provide much encouragement to potential authors, providing mentoring and support. Here is what the official press release had to say:

“Gloriana St. Clair is deserving of this award on all counts. She epitomizes the Librarian-Leader-Scholar model through her long and notable career as an academic librarian, her contributions to ACRL and other professional organizations and in particular her record of scholarship and scholarly contributions with both national and international influence and impact,” said award committee Chair Robin Wagner, director of the Gettysburg College Library.

St. Clair has a distinguished record of service to the profession. She has contributed to the body of scholarship and scholarly communication by serving as editor of three prestigious journals – College & Research Libraries (1990-96), Journal of Academic Librarianship (1996-2000) and portal: Libraries and the Academy (2000-03). St. Clair has additionally contributed to the body of scholarship as the author or co-author of numerous articles.

In addition to her work as an author, editor, and scholar, St. Clair has served as director of the Universal Digital Library Project since 1999. A broad coalition of libraries and computer scientists in the United States, India and China, the project aims to digitize one million scholarly volumes and make them freely available online. She has contributed to the future of the profession by serving as an adjunct professor in the School of Library and Information Science at the University of Pittsburgh, teaching academic library management.

And it looks like we have another group of first-class academic libraries being added to the ranks of those recognized for their excellence. Here is the rundown on those three libraries from the official ACRL press release:

ACRL is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2009 Excellence in Academic Libraries Award – The Moraine Valley Community College Library, Palos Hills, Illinois; the Wyndham Robertson Library at Hollins University, Roanoke, Virgina; and the University of Minnesota Libraries – Twin Cities. Sponsored by ACRL and Blackwell’s Book Services, the award recognizes the staff of a college, university, and community college library for programs that deliver exemplary services and resources to further the educational mission of the institution.

The Moraine Valley Community College Library, winner of the community college category, was recognized for creating an environment that fosters numerous relationships with partners outside those traditionally associated with libraries.

The staff of the Wyndham Robertson Library at Hollins University, winner of the college category, impressed the selection committee with their “can do” attitude that has resulted in many innovative and creative programs.

The University of Minnesota Libraries, winner of the university category, was praised for developing excellent strategies to successfully transform and rebrand the libraries to secure a highly valued position on campus.

Again, congratulations to Gloriana St. Clair, and the staffs at all three Excellence in Academic Libraries award winners.

Attend the ACRL Presidential Candidates Forum and luncheon at the ALA Midwinter Meeting on Sunday, January 25, 2009, from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the Sheraton Denver Grand Ballroom I. Candidates Kelly Janousek, Librarian at the California State University, Long Beach, and Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe, Coordinator for Information Literacy Services at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, will share their views on academic and research libraries and ACRL. You will also have an opportunity to meet candidates for Director-at-Large of the ACRL Board.

And if you are just plain hungry do note that you get a free lunch at this program – sponsored by EBSCO no less. I’ll be there too. Yeah, I can’t resist the free lunch offer. Please stop by and say hello and share any thoughts about ACRLog. It’s always great to meet and chat with readers. I hope to see you there.

Before I get to my response let me say that it’s a great question. ACRL maintains 17 sections (you knew that, right) and some are broad with large numbers of members, like CLS while others are quite narrow with many fewer members, like the Western European Studies Section. We should be asking ourselves if all of these sections are needed. Couldn’t we just combine a few of them since their members probably share similar concerns and issues? We’re no doubt always going to have overlap between the sections. Many CLS members are involved in information literacy activities, but so are members who belong to the Instruction Section. Likewise many CLS members are actually at “university” libraries, and there are absolutely shared concerns between college and university libraries. Sure, the academic libraries at Stanford University and Wofford College are extremely different, but who’s to say the librarians at these two institutions don’t share similar concerns – and more importantly couldn’t learn something new from each other.

For me that’s the bottom line – learning from your colleagues. Regardless of your library, if you find that your section membership enables you to learn new things to improve yourself and your library then that’s the most important thing when it comes to ACRL Section membership. And even though – to get back to Lisa’s question – college and university librarians share similar responsibilities, by virtue of membership in these two organizations you can actually learn and develop experience in rather different areas. But there are other specifics that lead me to believe that it continues to be important for ACRL to maintain both CLS and ULS, and I address some of them in my response to Lisa’s question:

Good question Lisa. I, as others do, maintain a membership in both CLS and ULS, so that I can keep up with both groups and their discussion lists. You are right on target when you note that the collib-l is a much more active discussion list. I’m not sure why that is. CLS is a larger section and perhaps that accounts for it, but it may also be that the ULS members go elsewhere for their conversations. To my knowledge the topic of merging the two sections has not come up, at least not in the six years that I’ve been actively involved in CLS administration.

It may seem like an odd separation, as we do have some common goals such as information literacy or faculty collaboration, but where we’re likely to see more of a division is in the research vs. teaching area. I suspect that some of the issues for ULS members are going to focus more on topics like institutional repositories, scholarly communication, and other topics that may be of less interest to CLS members who may be working in libraries with rather small collections and small FTE student populations.

I don’t know if others would agree but I think there is just a different vibe in these two groups and a lot of folks do like the CLS vibe, but like to keep an eye on what ULS is doing. That’s why I continue to participate in CLS even though I’ve moved on to a research university setting. Both groups have good programs at ALA Annual – and offer rather different discussion groups. I suspect that if we did merge them the single Section entity would retain most of what both now offer. It would probably be more a marriage of convenience than one that capitalizes on some synergy we’re not currently capturing.

CLS has been actively seeking out partnerships with other ACRL sections on programs and initiatives. I think that continues to present a good way for different sections to collaborate to deliver better services and programs to their members. I’d like to see us continue in that direction – separate but collaborative as needed.

One obvious advantage to a single CLS/ULS Section is that ACRL members could take advantage of all the offerings at a single price. Each section membership adds to one’s overall ALA registration bill. One obvious disadvantage is that with many academic librarians seeking to volunteer for service in ACRL sections and committees, reducing the number of sections would eliminate a large number of committee slots. As I weigh the multiple pros and cons of a CLS/ULS merger I lean towards maintaining two separate sections. I think each offers more than enough unique opportunties geared to the librarians at these different academic institutions to warrant their ongoing separate existence, despite what will always be some shared issues at both levels. But let’s continue to work at collaborating when it makes sense while we maintain our independence in support of those things that make us unique.