After my post on ARCs went up last Wednesday and I saw all kinds of response on Thursday, I decided it was time to take this issue a little further. I already knew ALA had been monitoring the discussion, but because it was clear that the topic was far bigger than anything I could handle, I got in touch with Publisher’s Weekly.

Friday afternoon, I spent almost an hour on the phone with Shannon, who wrote this great piece about ARCs and conference decorum. I hope everyone takes a few minutes to read it.

I’m not going to lie. If I never see the acronym “ARC” again, it will be too soon. But this topic is important and worth discussing, so I’m glad it’s going to reach a bigger audience through the proper channels.

Something I kept quiet but feel like mentioning in addition to all of this is this: Liz Burns, Kristi Chadwick, and I proposed a session for ALA 13 in Chicago on this very topic months ago. We’re waiting for final word on approval, but if it’s accepted, you can bet we’ll be talking about the value of ARCs as tools to librarians, for collection development, for reader’s advisory, and more.

Make it happen, right?

Edited to add: I looked through this week’s edition of American Libraries Direct (which is the newsletter of the American Library Association) and didn’t see anything mentioned. But I went back later after being prompted, and if you scroll down for an eternity, you’ll see that AL Direct did bring up the ARC situation . . . and they only linked to THAT blog post.