ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


404 /C&RL News ■  June 19 9 8

I n  t h e

Partnering with other organizations and as­
sociations of higher education is an important 
goal in ACRL’s strategic plan. In this issue, Althea 
Jenkins, Laverne Simoneaux, and Bill Miller 
share information about ACRL’s work toward 
this goal with their respective reports on the 
meetings of the Coalition for Networked Infor­
mation (CNI) and the American Association of 
Higher Education (AAHE) (page 420).

At CNI, Miller reports that the keynote 
speaker em phasized how  vast an array of 
information w e are creating (Dialog’s data­
bases contain 9.2 terabytes and the Library 
of Congress contains 20 terabytes worth of 
books— 3,000 w hen graphics are included), 
and how  it is more important than ever to 
attempt to organize it since the average h u ­
man has a memory of about 200 m egabytes 
and can take in about two gigabytes of in­
formation during a lifetime. Librarians have 
an important role to play in helping people 
organize and use this vast and ever-growing 
array of information.

Partnering is also important on our ow n 
cam puses. David Nutty relates the story of 
how  George Washington University’s library 
and com puter center team ed up to quickly 
turn an u n d e ru s e d  re ad in g  room  in the 
library's basem ent into an inviting com puter 
lab with 24-hour access to respond to an 
important cam pus need (page 414).

Mark McManus also urges librarians to 
becom e partners in developing distance e d u ­
ca tio n  c o u rse s in “N eith er P a n d o ra  n o r 
Cassandra" (page 432). He fears if we d o n ’t 
becom e involved, large conglom erates could 
easily dom inate the distance education field, 
with students paying $20 per course to the 
university and $400 to a com pany like Time- 
Warner.

Finally, have fun planning your next va­
cation with the help of the myriad Web sites 
related to travel that are listed in this m onth’s 
“Internet Resources” column (page 427).

— Mary Ellen K. Davis 
Editor-in-chief, medavis@ala.org

mailto:medavis@ala.org