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Welcome to the March 2009 issue of C&RL 
News. It is hard to believe that the ACRL 14th 
National Conference is almost here. Held 
March 12–15 in Seattle, the conference of­
fers a wide variety of sessions to help you 
keep up with the latest in issues, such as ad­
vocacy, assessment, collections, and digital 
initiatives. The virtual conference communi­
ty provides an opportunity to learn virtually 
through podcasts, live Webcasts of confer­
ence sessions, and dynamic screen captures 
of every contributed paper and panel ses­
sion. Visit www.acrl.org/seattle for complete 
details. 

Assessment is sure to be a big topic of dis­
cussion in Seattle. In this issue, Peter Hernon 
and Robert E. Dugan discuss “Assessment 
and evaluation” and provide useful work­
ing definitions of the terms as they relate to 
measuring student outcomes. 

Campus engagement is a necessary step 
along the road to assessment and evaluation. 
David Salinero and Cynthia Beardsley discuss 

the concept as it relates to both students 
and faculty in their article “Enhancing the 
academic experience.” 

Assessing workplace issues such as com­
mitment to diversity can provide insights into 
building healthy library organizations that 
can better engage their campus communi­
ties. Martha Kyrillidou and M. Sue Baughman 
highlight the “ClimateQUAL” diversity assess­
ment tool in this issue. 

This issue also includes responses from 
the candidates for ALA president to a set of 
questions from the ACRL Board of Directors. 
A list of ACRL members running for ALA 
Council is also provided. We hope these 
resources will help you make an informed 
decision as you vote in the ALA election 
starting March 17. 

As always, make sure to take a look at 
all of the other articles and columns in this 
month’s issue. Thanks for reading the News! 

—David Free, editor-in-chief 
dfree@ala.org 

March 2009 141 C&RL News

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mailto:dfree@ala.org
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