ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


356 / C&RL News

In th e News
In his article on developing a bibliographic util­

ity in Brazil, Richard Phillips explains that the 
Brazilian phrase “jeito” loosely translates as “find­
ing a way to get a difficult task done.” Librarians 
everywhere have substantial experience with 
“jeito.” Despite shrinking budgets, librarians have 
continued to provide quality services and collec­
tions to their library users. Networking, resource 
sharing, and cooperative collection development 
are just some of the creative ways librarians have 
found to provide access to materials their patrons 
need. In this issue we look at a variety of networks 
and resource sharing arrangements, both formal 
and informal.

Susan Oberlander describes the formation of 
the New Mexico Consortium o f Academic Librar­
ies and its success in developing a funding formula 
for academic libraries. Kathleen Dunn and Myra 
White talk about how an informal multitype net­
work can bring benefits to both staff and library 
patrons. Marion Ritter describes four current re­
source sharing projects where collection develop­
ment is effectively being coordinated among a 
number o f institutions in the Pacific Northwest and 
the San Francisco Bay area.

Recognizing that not all libraries can collect 
everything that researchers need, the Library of

Congress’ experiment with the American Memory 
Project is an impressive attempt to provide both 
traditional and nontraditional research materials in 
one easy place— a CD-ROM  workstation. A report 
on this project is found in this issue. The Coalition 
for Networked Information is also exploring the 
distribution o f information. At its Spring meeting, 
members looked at electronic library systems, 
N REN, and changing needs o f library users.

International cooperative activities and net­
working are also important to librarians in the U.S. 
After a trip to Mexico, Dale Cluff offers suggestions 
for cooperative projects to benefit libraries in 
Mexico and the United States.

I am pleased to introduce Gail Junion-Metz and 
Ray E. Metz as co-editors for a new quarterly 
column, “Chapter Topics.” Beginning with this 
issue the column will report on “some of the inter­
esting things being said and done in ACRL chap­
ters which have an impact on the profession.” As 
co-editors o f the quarterly A CRL newsletter, 
C h a p ter T opics‚ Gail and Ray are uniquely quali­
fied to report on current chapter activities.

— Mary Ellen K. Davis 
E d ito r a n d  P ublisher

Letters

Is correlation between reputation and 
graduates significant?

In the March 1991 issue of C &R L  News Keith 
Swigger states in his article “Money, sex, and popu­
lation in doctoral programs in library science” that 
“Wang and Layne investigated the relationship 
between reputation and number of graduates…but 
found no highly significant correlation.”

In the study cited by Swigger, the statement was 
that the relationship between reputation and 
number o f graduates was “varied depending upon 
consideration of the different pairs of variables....” 
It did find “statistically significant positive correla­
tions between the perception ranking of the doc­
toral programs” and the number of graduates. 
(Journal o f  E ducation f o r  L ib rary  an d Inform ation 
Science, Fall 1987, p. 120.)

Swigger’s statement was not consistent with the 
conclusion o f the cited work.— Chih W ang‚ dean ‚ 
learning resou rces‚ XJniυersity o f  Guam

The a u th o r responds:
Wang and Layne studied the relations between 

rankings and numbers o f graduates who might have 
been in the sample that did the ranking. They 
present data relating 12 pairings o f ranking vari­
ables with variables related to numbers o f these 
graduates. Correlations are significant for 7 of the 
12 pairs. One of the pairs showing significance is 
the correlation between ranking and total number 
of graduates who might have been in the sample 
that did the ranking, master’s and doctoral com­
bined. As they say, however, the relationship varied 
depending upon consideration o f different pairs of 
variables. I suggest readers see Table 2 and read 
page 120 o f their article to come to their own 
conclusions. Their study did not address the num­
ber o f all graduates, only the number o f educators 
and directors who might have been in the ranking 
group. In my article, I should have described the 
limitations o f the Wang and Layne study in suffi­
cient detail to make the point that their study does