An Important Notice On Membership Renewals

The Iowa Library Association membership year runs from January to December, and the ILA/ACRL membership year is the same. This means that everyone’s membership will expire in December, regardless of when they renewed their membership. Why is this bit of information so important? The Iowa chapter of ACRL actually receives a dollar per member from the national ACRL. We received $154.00 for 2007, but as of October 1 we had over 180 members. ACRL counts our chapter membership in the late spring before a number of people renew their membership. Please help support your local Iowa ACRL chapter by renewing your ILA/ACRL membership in January 2008. Thank you!
Betsy Gardner, Membership Committee Chair

Call for Proposals for the Iowa ACRL Spring Conference

St. Ambrose University in Davenport, IA, will host the Iowa ACRL Spring Conference on Monday (yes, Monday!) March 3, 2008. The conference theme is Activating Advocacy: the Many Roles of Academic Libraries, and the keynote speaker will be Roberto A. Ibarra, Ph.D., of the University of New Mexico. You can look forward to “a provocative speaker and leading researcher on diversity initiatives in higher education.” (ACRL web site)

Librarians, library support personnel, faculty, and collaborators from academic libraries are invited to submit presentation proposals on topics relevant to academic library advocacy, broadly interpreted. The deadline for submitting presentation proposals is November 28, 2007. Instructions for submitting proposals, the proposal form and proposal criteria are available on the ILA/ACRL web site. Registration information will be posted on the Iowa ACRL web site in January. Send questions to Jan Dellinger, Conference Planning Committee chair, jdellinger@hawkeyecollege.edu.
Jan Dellinger, Spring Conference Committee Chair

Announcing the ILA-ACRL’s Research Award!

The Iowa ACRL Awards committee announces a $500 grant to be awarded to an ILA/ACRL Chapter member for a presented or published scholarly work. Please consider submitting your own work, or nominating a colleague for this award! The following rules and qualifications apply:

• A qualifying presented paper must be text-based and have been delivered at a regional, national or international conference.
• A qualifying published paper is to have appeared in a scholarly journal.
• A qualifying book is to be scholarly in nature.
• The subject matter of the material submitted may be on any scholarly topic.
• The papers should have been delivered or published since October of 2005.
• Power point slides, video or audio submissions will not be considered.
• Entries may be self-submitted or nominated.
• Entries will be considered by the Awards Committee on the basis of a blind ranking process.
• If the committee finds that none of the entries are meritorious, it may decide not to make an award.
• The deadline for submissions is December 15. The results of this process should be announced by mid January.

Please send your submissions by mail to: Rebecca Stuhr, Awards Committee Chair, 1111 6th Ave, Burling Library, Grinnell, Iowa 50112; or as a word attachment by email: stuhrr@grinnell.edu. Committee members are : Sheryl Taylor, Joyce Meldrem, Selina Lin, and Chris Neuhaus.
Submitted by Rebecca Stuhr, Awards Committee Chair