ACRL Roundtable Annual Report
2002-2003

The ACRL Roundtable Chair and Vice-Chair had five goals for this year. They were:

• Increase active participation in roundtable activities
• Have a national ACRL officer speak at the annual conference
• Co-sponsor programs with the Academic Section
• Revamp the website
• Visit roundtable members in the northern and southern parts of the state to see how roundtable can serve their needs and interests

Increasing active participation in roundtable activities is hard to measure, not having any previous data for comparison purposes. Budget cuts at the state institutions drastically reduced travel budgets and limited travel to "essential" functions. However, some members were able to participate in the Fall Workshop and the Great Issues Forum as well as attending the Annual Conference.

The second goal was met by having Helen Spalding, the National President of ACRL, speak at the Annual Conference. Helen gave an inspiring and informational presentation focusing on outreach to faculty by understanding needs, creating partnerships and promoting services. This session was well attended by Roundtable members.

To accomplish the third goal, the roundtable took the lead in sponsoring a program with the Academic Section at the Fall Workshop. Dr. Edwin R. Stafford, a business professor from Utah State University's College of Business, gave a timely presentation entitled "Understanding the Marketing Process: Auditing and Designing Programs for Library Services". This program provided a primer on marketing to help library service providers understand the marketing process. This well-attended program provided those in attendance with specific ideas about planning for marketing in their library. A second opportunity to collaborate with the Academic Section was the Great Issues Forum. This was sponsored by the Academic Section and addressed the topic, "Do Filters in Libraries Constitute Censorship?" The roundtable assisted with publicity and refreshments at the Reception preceding the Forum. The Annual Conference provided additional opportunities to plan programs of interest to the Roundtable membership. Helen Spalding and Kenneth Marks (UNLV) presented an introduction to the Academic and Research Libraries @your library campaign. Kevin Miller presented an enormously successful program on time management. Wayne Peay (Uof U Eccles) and the faculty of the Eccles Health Sciences Library offered an informative session on visioning the next generation library. Julie Williamsen (BYU) held a timely and informative session on locating government and scientific information post 9/11. The Roundtable also co-sponsored two programs with the Academic section-a distance learning program presented by Carol Hansen (Weber), Eve Tallman (Moab Public Library) and Sally Patrick (Emporia SLIM) and a repeat of the marketing program presented by Dr. Edwin Stafford (Utah State) at the Fall workshops. The marketing program was sponsored by the Public Relations Committee and co-sponsored by the Academic Section and the ACRL Roundtable.

Shaun Spiegel, the vice-chair of the roundtable, did a superb job with the website. The goal was to revamp it and make it more usable for Roundtable members. She kept it current with items of interest to the roundtable, including general and program announcements, and links to the ACRL and Chapter Topics and other relevant websites. We did a small survey regarding our Business meeting at the Annual Conference which also drew members to the website.

Our final goal, to visit roundtable members in the northern and southern parts of the state to see how roundtable could better serve their needs and interests was not accomplished this year. Libraries in the southern part of the state are widely scattered necessitating two to three hour drives to meet at a central location. Due to state budget cuts that severely curtailed travel, members in the southern areas of the state indicated that they would not be able to attend. Since the Fall Workshops were in the northern end of the state this year, we did not plan a visit to those areas.