C&RL News April 2015 222 C & R L S p o t l i g h tScott Walter Scott Walter is C&RL editor and university librarian at DePaul University, email: swalte11@depaul.edu As I write this column, we are making the final preparation for the ACRL 2015 conference in Portland, including sending the special C&RL 75th anniversary issue to press. But, as you read this, we have just returned from Port- land and have completed a great week of programming, including the Research Forum that included presentations from anniversary issue authors Jim Neal and Megan Oakleaf. With no time to rest on our laurels, though, C&RL turns its eyes to what’s next. Our May issue will include articles on patron-driven acquisition, e-journal licens- ing, information literacy instruction, profes- sional development programs, and more. One article of particular interest to me, as we recently completed a search for a new provost at DePaul University, is Mark Robertson’s study of the “Perceptions of Canadian Provosts on the Institutional Role of Academic Libraries.” Robertson (York University) conducted interviews with Ca- nadian chief academic officers to explore “how they perceive academic libraries in terms of alignment with institutional mis- sion, how they envision the future of their libraries, and what they interpret as indica- tors of success.” Provosts appreciate library contributions to student learning, he finds, as well as challenges and opportunities re- lated to changing approaches to the design and use of library space. But, he also finds that there were important areas of potential library contribution about which provosts were less aware, e.g., scholarly commu- nication services. Robertson’s observation that the provosts interviewed “struggle with identifying indicators of success related to their libraries” is relevant to ACRL’s Value Altmetrics report from C&RL website for Jim Elmborg and Scott Walter’s January 2015 editorial, “Critical Thinking About ‘Getting Research Published’ in College & Research Libraries. April 2015 223 C&RL News of Academic Libraries initiative. The ques- tion of how aware our users are of new library service programs and models is also an important one, and one that comes up again in a study that we have just accepted on the perception of library contributions to undergraduate research programs by Merinda Hensley (University of Illinois), Sarah Shreeves (University of Miami), and Stephanie Davis-Kahl (Illinois Wesleyan Uni- versity). That preprint should be available on our website by the time this issue of the News has reached you, and I encourage you to take an early look at http://crl.acrl.org /content/early/recent. Also new with our May issue are altmet- rics. Altmetrics, according to an ACRL primer on the subject, “is an emerging category of impact measurement premised upon the value of ‘alternative metrics,’ or metrics based distinctly on the opportunities offered by the 21st century digital environment.”1 Following suggestions made by C&RL readers during focus groups, ACRL staff members have been working with our publishing platform at Highwire Press to add altmetrics to the “article usage statistics” available for review on the pages for indi- vidual articles. The image reproduced on the previous page comes from the altmetrics report showing reader engagement with the editorial from our January 2015 issue across a number of platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, and Mendeley. If you follow C&RL on Facebook (https:// www.facebook.com/collegeandresearchli- braries) or Twitter (@CRL_ACRL), you might have already seen the announcement of the addition to altmetrics to our site, and you may already know that the next C&RL On- line Forum is scheduled for late April. The date and time for the forum have not been finalized as this goes to press, but please go to the C&RL Online Fora homepage (http:// crl.acrl.org/site/misc/fora.xhtml) for infor- mation about how to join us for our next online event. Past C&RL Online Fora have included discussions of instructional collaboration with faculty, library contributions to inter- national programs, the culture of assess- ment, and mentoring programs in academic libraries. If you see a recent C&RL preprint that you think would make a great topic for an upcoming online forum, please contact C&RL Social Media Editor Sarah Steiner at (sksteiner@email.wcu.edu). Notes 1. Robin Chin Roemer and Rachel Borchardt, “Keeping Up with . . . Altmet- rics,” accessed March 4, 2015, www.ala.org / a c r l / p u b l i c a t i o n s / k e e p i n g _ u p _ w i t h /altmetrics. about work/personality styles; attending classes on organizational behavior/culture; reading evidence-based books on supervi- sion, team building, etc. The information gained via these activities benefits you both at work and in your personal life as they provide insight into human behavior—yours and others. Conclusion Our goal in writing this article is to unveil some of the mystery surrounding the appli- cation process in order to help new, as well as experienced, librarians better advocate for themselves. No doubt about it, the job search process is an exercise in perseverance —from submitting applications through the onboarding process. This may seem like an overwhelming list of items to keep in mind when applying for jobs and negotiating one’s first (or next) professional librarian job. Our hope is that you find, at least, one or two additional items to add to your to-do list as you navigate your career path. “HR confidential,” (cont. from page 221)