ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries 5 64 /C&RL News I n t he News We all agree on the importance of libraries and the vital role they fill on campus. How­ ever, sometimes the library is not as visible as it should be and its image is not as up-to-date as we would hope. Communicating the mis­ sion and image of the library through a planned public relations campaign can be an effective way to gain visibility for your library. In this issue, Nancy Marshall highlights the features of the John Cotton Dana Award-winning public relations campaign developed by Texas A&M University (page 576). She also offers a selec­ tion of P.R. ideas that you can try out in your library as well as information on submitting your idea to the next John Cotton Dana Award jury. Sometimes the library’s image is based on a false impression, e.g., the books I want are never on the shelf. Edward V. Van Gemert shares with us a technique developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (ITW) for pro­ jecting overall loss rate using a sampling tech­ nique (page 581). In UW’s case the department that felt its books had an unacceptable missing rate found out that its area had an unusually low loss rate and that its perception was incor­ rect. Also in this issue, Hannelore Rader gives us a brief look at the issues discussed at the 62nd IFLA Conference in China and reports that li­ brarians the world over are concerned with the same challenges (page 593). L. Stephen Perry continues our Internet Re­ sources series with a look at both international and American studies (page 570). And don’t forget, you can now read this article on the C&RL NewsNet Web site and be hotlinked to the resources discussed (http://www.ala.org/ acrl.html). Finally, be sure to review ACRL’s latest Stra­ tegic Plan (page 584) and see how you can best volunteer your skills to further ACRL’s mission by returning the committee volunteer form on page 589. — Mary Ellen K. Davis Editor & Publisher medavis@ala.org http://www.ala.org/ mailto:medavis@ala.org