A review team from the Association of Research Libraries visits Mississippi State University this week to decide whether to generate a recommendation for MSU to join the group. “If we are invited to become members, it opens up a number of doors as far as research sharing,” Stephen Cunetto, system administrator of the Mitchell Memorial Library, said. “It will give us network opportunities with high-caliber institutions such as Harvard and Yale.”
The ARL is a non-profit membership organization comprising the leading research libraries in North America. Its mission is to shape and influence scholarly communication.
The ARL is not limited to just university libraries. Several member libraries include municipal and governmental libraries.
ARL articulates the concerns of research libraries and their institution forges coalitions, influences information policy development and supports innovation and improvements in research library operations.
Before the recommendation of a university’s library, ARL must invite the candidate university to become a member. After the invitation, a series of visits by ARL will determine the university’s status.
The ARL team, made up of three members, will arrive this afternoon and leave on Thursday afternoon. William Potter of the University of Georgia, Ken Frazier of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and Graham Hill of McMaster University will evaluate MSU to decide if the university will receive a recommendation for membership to the association.
“This is the real McCoy,” Fred Heath, dean of university libraries at Texas A&M and current ARL president, said. “This visit will determine if they (the team) make(s) the recommendation or not.
“We had a board meeting not too long ago to discuss whether or not to make the visit. We decided to send an in-depth team to MSU this week.”
ARL priorities include:
*Encouraging and supporting development of and access to institution-based repositories for the work of scholars and exploring other strategies that could lead to more cost-effective models for managing scholarly communication in a global environment.
*Developing effective strategies to assist member libraries in recruiting and retaining talented staff in a changing demographic environment, including school programs to meet the challenges of the 21st century.
*Developing new approaches and models for measuring and improving library service effectiveness, diversity and leadership.
Cunetto said receiving an invitation from the ARL was one of former MSU president Malcolm Portera’s goals. Cunetto said the library has been working for at least four years to bring it up to meet ARL expectations.
Programs like the Congressional and Political Research Center, the Ragtime Experience and the Consortium for the History of Agricultural and Rural Mississippi (CHARM) are assets the university hopes to show to ARL.
Heath said that a lot has to go into getting the university library together; however, ARL looks at the whole university and their situation.
“We just don’t look at the libraries-we look at what kind of shape the university administration is in,” Heath said. “MSU has an interim leadership, and it makes it tough to decide.
“The primary thing that we evaluate is the unique contribution to scholarship in the library.
“MSU has a strong card on its side,” Heath said. “Regardless of the budget situation in the state, MSU is the research institute of Mississippi and would be the first ARL library in the state.”
The importance of research is key for any ARL candidate library.
“Budget strongholds and failures come and go, but research is always there,” Heath said.
Cunetto said the library has received additional funding in recent years to help boost its programs. “We’ve been able to do a lot of things that we wanted to do,” Cunetto said. “These things will also help us for the ARL recommendation.”
The review team will meet with the library administration and coordinators, along with student leaders and faculty from all over campus.
The team will attend a social at interim President Dr. Charles Lee’s home and a formal dinner at the M-Club. Guests of the dinner include three members of the Board of Trustees of the Mississippi’s Institutions of Higher Learning, Bryce Griffis, Amy Whitten and Scott Ross, and Lt. Gov. Amy Tuck.
“Having the board members and the lieutenant governor there will demonstrate that MSU will be here, IHL will be here and the state will be here to support the library,” Cunetto said.