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Are Technical Services Topics Underrepresented In The Contributed Papers At The Acrl National Conferences?, Robert P. Holley

School of Information Sciences Faculty Research Publications

This study tests the hypothesis that the contributed papers at the 12 ACRL national conferences do not cover topics of interest to technical services librarians in proportion to their membership in ACRL. The analysis showed that 14.66% of contributed papers dealt with subjects that were part of the charge of ALCTS, the technical services division in ALA, and its five sections. This percentage dropped to 7.52% with the removal of collection development papers that are also of high interest to many public services librarians. Current overlap statistics indicate that 18.83% of ACRL members also belong to ALCTS—an indication of potential …