Right off the top I want to encourage everyone to attend the OBS/TS-SIS' Open Research Roundtable meeting at this summer's AALL annual meeting in Indianapolis. It is scheduled for Sunday afternoon, 21 July 1996 from 3-4:30 pm. This is a better time slot than the early morning or late evening Tuesday slots we have had in the past, I think, though we have had some very faithful attendees each year (and we thank you!). We are hoping everyone will be a bit fresher on Sunday afternoon and that there will be fewer conflicts with other technical services meetings.

As always, the agenda will be pretty wide open at the Research Roundtable meeting. Brian Striman (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) and I, as co-coordinators, will have a few ideas to get the ball rolling. We hope that you will attend if you have ever wanted to do research, if you have ever done research, if you have ever thought about research, or if you just want some pleasant company. There was a good turnout last year and we hope that those people will return, plus some newcomers. Please contact Brian or me if you have any questions, comments, agenda items, etc. for this upcoming Research Roundtable meeting. See the end of this column for the information on how to contact us. We hope to see you there!

Some items I have seen on the Internet over the past few months have been related to research. There has been a good deal of discussion on AUTOCAT about outsourcing cataloging. This is not surprising since that seems to have become a hot topic almost everywhere. I cannot remember all the messages and their authors, but one in particular caught my eye. The fact was mentioned that outsourcing will cut into the number of catalogers with faculty status at various academic institutions. This in turn will cut into the amount of cataloging research and writing that is done.

The truth is that a fair amount of the research documented in the library literature is contributed by those of us with faculty status, where "publish or perish" is very much a fact of life. Perhaps not the ideal scenario, but how many of us have time to perform those activities that we would consider extra, when they are not part of our documented position requirements? Actually the practicalities of processing a lot of material quickly had already eaten into the number of technical services librarians with faculty status at many academic libraries, in my opinion. Outsourcing may just speed up the process. Just some food for thought ...

Speaking of faculty status, which implies tenure, there was an interesting abstract included in a recent issue of the electronic publication Current Cites, v. 6, no. 10 (October 1995). The title of the abstract's article referred to is "E-Journals and Tenure" from the Journal of the American Society for Information Science, v. 46, no. 9 (October 1995), pp. 700-703. I confess I have not had a chance to locate and read this article yet. To quote the abstract by David Rez: "Though it is not yet clear whether the academic reward system is embracing e-journals as criteria for advancement, it is clear that a growing number of individual scholars and administrators believe e-journals to be worthy of inclusion in the review process." This news is encouraging, since electronic publishing may provide a forum for research that may be better suited to some librarians.

The avenue of book reviews as an outlet for writing and publishing also presented itself to me recently when I was asked to read a book and write a review for publication. I hesitated at the request because I had lots of other things to get done (don't we all?) and the time frame was rather tight. But I did agree to do the book review and I am very glad I did. The particular book I was asked to review is entitled Technical Services Management, 1965-1990: A Quarter Century of Change and a Look to the Future: Festschrift for Kathryn Luther Henderson, published by Haworth Press, 1995. It made for excellent reading and even offered some suggestions for further technical services research, some of which I may include in future columns.

My general point though is that the request for me to do this book review forced me to take time out, read a work that I otherwise probably would not have, think it over in a critical way, and put my thoughts down on paper. So I was able to accomplish a number of different things. I added to my list of writings on my vita, learned a lot more about technical services in the past quarter century, practiced my research and writing skills, and even discovered some ideas that I could potentially research and write about at a later date. Book reviews can provide an excellent opportunity, so get out there and volunteer your services!

As I was perusing the ALCTS Newsletter, v. 7, no. 1 (1996), I came upon the "Educational Policy Statement of the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services," which made for some interesting reading. It was approved by the ALCTS Board of Directors on 27 June 1995. Basically it sets down in a four page document "ALCTS' offering to assist librarians, schools of library and information science, and libraries--as well as other organizations related to or interested in libraries--in preparing librarians to work in areas on which ALCTS focuses its efforts." You may ask, what does this have to do with research? In the appendix of this statement, which lists specific knowledge and skills, the last section is entitled "Skills in Research Analysis and Interpretation." In other words, ALCTS sees research as a skill that technical services librarians must possess and lists it right along with cataloging, acquisition, preservation, and management skills. Obviously I agree or I would not spend the time on this column, but it is nice to see it presented as an official statement.

Here are some publishing opportunities I noticed recently, the first two of which concern book reviews: