ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


Ju n e 19 9 6 /3 4 3

manic Collections, contact Olson at 
W idener 197, Harvard University, 
C am brid g e, MA 0 2 1 3 8 ; e -m a il:  
olson@fas.harvard.edu; 
(6 1 7 ) 4 9 5 -2 4 2 6 ; fax: 
(617) 495-0403.

“ Choosing O u r 
Futures” open for 
discussion at W eb site
“Nearly all academic librarians 
agree that academic libraries have 
to change in order to respond suc­
cessfully to the new realities of the 
higher education environm ent,

rapidly developing information and 
telecommunications tech-nologies, 

and the crisis in scholarly communi­
cations. But there is little 
agreement on what must 
change, how the changes 
will take place, how fast the 
changes must occur, and 

 how much change is neces- 
sary.”

Now you have an opportunity 
to voice your opinion on how 
libraries will change in the fu­
ture. The above abstract is from 

“Choosing Our Futures,” an article

C&RL e x ch a n g e s a rtic le s w ith G erm an  
co unterp art

Seeking to give American librarians a sense 
of the intellectual vitality of librarianship be­
yond our borders, C ollege & R esearch L ib rar­
ies has undertaken an article exchange project 
with its German counterpart, ZEITSCHRIFT 
FÜR B IBLIO TH EK SW ESEN  UND B IB L IO ­
GRAPHIE (ZfBB). Twice now the officers of 
the Germanist Discussion Group o f ACRL’s 
Western European Specialist Section (WF‚SS), 
together with a representative from the C&RL 
Board, have selected an article from Z fBB for 
publication by C&RL.

The first, “Secret Dissertations in the Ger­
man Democratic Republic,” by Wilhelm Bleek 
and Lothar Mertens ( C&RL‚ September 1995) 
combined 1992 and 1994 ZfBB pieces on the 
recent discovery that the government of the 
GDR had deemed thousands of dissertations 
too sensitive to list in indices, and, with the 
compliance of universities and libraries, had 
removed them physically and expunged them 
bibliographically. The article was translated 
by WESS member John Cullars (University of 
Illinois-Chicago) on a volunteer basis.

This year Nancy Boerner (Indiana Univer­
sity), also a member of WESS, translated Ingo 
Kolasa’s article on the looting of German books 
by Soviet forces at the end of World War II. 
This study o f the thorny issues that are now 
the focus of extremely difficult negotiations 
between German and Russian librarians and 
government officials will appear in the Sep­
tember 1996 C&RL.

The ZfBB, in turn, published in its Janu­
ary/February 1996 issue a translation of Bar­
bara M. Wildemuth and Ann L. O ’Neill’s “The 
‘Known’ in Known-Item Searches: Empirical 
Support for User-Centered Design” ( C&RL‚ 
May 1995). An editorial note expresses the 
hope that the article exchange will “promote 
mutual dialogue and share reflections and ex­
periences.” It may not be a coincidence that 
C&RL chose articles on libraries as they relate 
to Germany’s difficult history, whereas the 
Germans selected an article that was techni­
cal in its focus, each drawn to and drawing 
on the perceived strength of the other’s pro­
fessional and intellectual traditions.

It would clearly be desirable for this project 
to be adapted to publications from other coun­
tries. And since Europeans are more likely 
to read English than the other European lan­
guages, it is fair to claim that with this 
exchange C&RL is making the work of Euro­
pean librarians more available not only to 
their American colleagues but to one another. 
The bureaucratic hurdles in such an enter­
prise may seem formidable, but if the desire 
to make the project work is there, they are 
definitely surmountable. Finding volunteer 
translators with the necessary skill and gen­
erosity is another matter, and on this score 
one can only say that C&RL has been, so far, 
very fortunate indeed.— Stephen H. Lehm ann, 
University o f  P en n sylvan ia, le h m a n n @p o b o x . 
u pen n .edu .

mailto:olson@fas.harvard.edu