ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


412 /C&RL News

In the News
Communication is about transmitting a mes­

sage and having the receiver understand what 
the sender intended. Whether we are commu­
nicating verbally, by printed word, or digitally, 
part o f the communication is how the message 
is delivered. If the message is communicated 
verbally, the listener hears the tone o f voice 
and sees the body gestures and takes these into 
account. If the message is communicated by 
print, the reader may be influenced by the qual­
ity o f the paper, the typography (or the hand­
writing), and the overall appearance o f the 
printed page.

Now many of us are communicating our 
messages via Web site and appearance and ease 
o f use play a major role in how readers re­
spond to our message and our organization. In 
this issue, Susan Jurist gives us her top 10 rules 
for creating great Web sites that will be easy to 
use and clear to the user of the site (page 418).

Paul Heller and Stuart Kohler also choose to 
communicate electronically and share with us

how they get information on book shelving 
across to their student assistants using a com­
puter for training (page 425).

Conferences are another form of communicat­
ing information. In this issue, Gary Thompson gives 
us a report on a Canadian Workshop on Instruction 
in Library Use conference (page 437) and Janis 
Dickens reports on the Consortium of College and 
University Media Centers (page 439).

Sherry Vellucci offers her take on what the 
future holds for catalogers (page 442).

ACRL President Bill Miller exhorts members 
to integrate ACRL’s new Strategic Plan into their 
thinking (page 444).

Watch the September issue for reports of 
the ALA/ACRL election results (released too late 
to be included in this issue) and of the ACRL 
programs at the ALA Annual Conference.

—Mary Ellen K. Davis
Editor & Publisher

medavis@ala.org

mailto:medavis@ala.org