ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


62 2 /C&RL News

C o m in g  in ’ 9 6 :  IP E D S  a d d s  n e w  d a t a  ite m s

New data items will be included in the 
IPEDS Academic Libraries survey form (ALS) 
that will be mailed in July 1996. IPEDS— the 
Integrated Postsecondary Education Data Sys­
tem— is a set of nine questionnaires distrib­
uted periodically by the National Center for 
Education Statistics (NCES). Most are annual 
but the Academic Libraries survey is one of 
three sent biennially.

For many years the ALS had five parts 
(A-F): Outlets, Staff, Expenditures, Collections, 
Services Per Fiscal Year (e.g., circulation), and 
Services Per Typical Week (e.g., reference). 
A new Part G, Electronic Services, will be 
added in ’96. Unlike other parts of the form, 
Part G asks the respondent to give only a Yes/ 
No answer to whether or not the institution 
offers 13 different electronic services. The new 
Part G will probably not be in a permanent 
part of the ALS. Instead it will gather data to 
describe where libraries are now in a rapidly 
changing aspect of their services.

Additions were also made to Part E which 
includes: D ocum ent Delivery/Interlibrary 
Loan. Previous surveys asked only for the 
number of items provided to other libraries 
and received from other libraries. The new 
form asks for a breakdown of each total into 
“returnables” and “non-returnables.” The new 
items were added in recognition of the fact 
that interlibrary loan is not what it once was—  
loans between libraries. Today agencies other 
than libraries are often involved and many 
items are sold or given away, not loaned. The 
current change recognizes that and will en­
able IPEDS to document what is happening.

Several other changes were made, not to 
add items, but to update or clarify intent. The

and appointed members in chapters, sections, 
committees, and discussion groups. She will 
a lso  p lan, d ev elo p , and m anage ACRL’s 
preconferences and Annual Conference pro­
grams. In addition, Topper will provide advi­
sory services on issues of interest to academic 
librarianship and function as a member o f the 
ACRL staff managerial team.

Topper had been with the Jewish Vocational 
Service, an affiliate of the Jewish Federation in 
Chicago, since 1983, most recently as director

instructions on Expenditures and Collections 
were modified to take into account electronic 
journals and automated catalogs. The instruc­
tions for gate count and reference transac­
tions were modified to clarify that respondents 
should report figures for a “typical w eek.”

The 1992 ALS report does not include fig­
ures for those variables because NCES noticed 
several problems in the data just before pub­
lication. In order to plan for the future, the 
ALA Office for Research and Statistics worked 
with a contractor and an Advisory Committee 
of academic libraries to analyze the 1992 data 
in search of a formula that could be applied 
to 1994 data at an early point in survey pro­
cessing. That formula discovered 515 librar­
ies whose 1994 data for one or both of the 
two variables was suspect. Those libraries 
were contacted and data were either corrected 
(most cases) or confirmed (a few cases). The 
process of correcting or confirming those fig­
ures was labor-intensive and cannot be re­
peated. It is hoped that changes on the form 
will alert people to what is wanted.

Additional detail on these changes, includ­
ing a copy o f the new Part G, definition of 
returnables and nonreturnables, and names 
of Advisory Committee members, may be 
found on the ALA gopher. Point your gopher 
to University of Illinois at Chicago in the menu 
of all servers maintained on gopher at the 
University of Minnesota. Alternatively, you can 
connect your favorite gopher client directly 
to host “gopher.uic.edu:70”, select The Library, 
ALA, XV. Offices, then Office for Research and 
Statistics, then “Coming in '96: IPEDS Adds 
New Data Items.”— M ary J o  Lynch, ALA Of­
f i c e  f o r  R esearch a n d  Statistics

of information services. She managed the li­
brary and the Information Services Department 
at the nonprofit agency, counselling and pro­
viding professional development to individu­
als at all career stages. Prior to that Topper was 
director o f training and the career librarian at 
the Chicago Public Library. She received her 
MLS from Florida State University and a master’s 
of industrial relations/career development from 
Loyola University in Chicago. She is a member 
and former Career Development Chair of the