The "Alert Collector" is one of RUSQ's most popular columns, offering selectors in both academic and public libraries starting points for developing collections focused on specific topics, subject areas, or genres. With a long-running column, it can be useful to occasionally step back, examine the premise of the column, and offer suggestions to readers who might be interested in contributing to the "Alert Collector" in the future. Here, current editor Kelly Myer Polacek and past editor Neal Wyatt collaborate to examine the art of writing about collection development and to give some guidance to potential authors.-Editor C ollection development is not a simple task. In 2001, Deborah Barreau conducted an extensive investigation into the responsibilities, strategies, and tools associated with the task of collection development in public libraries.1 She reported that collection development librarians not only "choose books," but they also contribute to policy design, analyze collections, evaluate offerings, and weed materials. In addition to this extensive list of responsibilities, librarians are faced not only with the confines of time, space, and money, but must also overcome the challenges of evaluating the need for e-materials, developing subject matter expertise, and predicting patron usage (for which there remains no exact science).Collection development librarians utilize a variety of resources to aid in these pursuits including recommendations by patrons, vendors, publishers, and media sources, among others. Attempting to simplify collection development by relying solely on statistical models derived from usage data or citation analyses can leave a library without the breadth and depth of materials ultimately desired by patrons. Editors of the "Alert Collector" advocate for collection development strategies that allow librarians to use the multiple approaches that will result in the carefully assembled collections that best meet their specific users' needs. We seek to help this endeavor by publishing curation devices that not only describe essential materials on specific subjects but also provide models for thinking about how to develop collections on innumerous subjects.It is our hope that the "Alert Collector" pieces we publish identify key resources and include annotations that illuminate how and why these items are essential to collections.

No abstract

As RA service has moved from its second-wave renaissance during the late twentieth century/early twenty-first century (with a steady stream of reference tools, conference programming, and think pieces) into an often underpromoted but bedrock mainstay of the public library, what do advisors continue to discuss among themselves and see as areas of need? If you could gather a handful of advisors together, over a cup of coffee one rainy morning before book group began, what would they talk about? What would they ask each other? What do they know to be foundational about the service? As important, what might they suggest we all re-think? This column invites you to eavesdrop on such a conversation. It was conducted over email between six advisors: two at the start of their careers, two helping to define the field, and two who have lead the way for librarians, for a combined eight decades. These advisors share research, hard-won and lived-in lessons, showcase the luminous nature of RA work as well as its difficulties, propose a change for RA education, and, of course, each suggests a book to read.

Collections that explore the wealth of a culture are vital to the essence of every library, as they provide opportunities to build connections between students, faculty, librarians, and the community. As witness to the possibilities stands the amazing Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. New York Public Library provides a service to the world with this rich collection and beautifully arranged, accessible Web site.Yet as with the Jazz collections the Schomburg Center includes, the interwoven strands of cultural studies are long, tangled, and complexly interrelated. Shana Higgins' s gathering of resources will help librarians build a collection that provides students, researchers, and lifelong learners a way to contextualize and study the unique cross-cultural aspects of African American and Latino culture.Higgins is uniquely suited to author this guide. As an instructional services librarian at the University of Redlands Armacost Library, she is responsible for collection development in Latin American studies and race and ethnic studies. In addition to holding an MLS from Indiana University, Bloomington, she also holds a masters degree from their Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies.-Editor A rthur, or Arturo, Schomburg is best known as the bibliophile whose collection of books, prints, and manuscripts on African American art and culture served as the foundation for what is now the New York Public Library Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Less known is that Arturo Schomburg was Puerto Rican. The fact that we rarely encounter Schomburg represented as both African American and Latino (Afro-Latino) is emblematic of the experience of most Afro-Latinos in the United States and underscores this bibliography' s purpose. These resources are intended to illuminate some recent voices seeking to make visible the lived experience of Afro-Latinos across the Americas.Piri Thomas' s enduring classic memoir of growing up in Spanish Harlem, Down These Mean Streets (New York: Knopf, 1967), provided one of the first descriptions of the experience of being identified as both African American and Latino in United States popular culture. One might consider Bodega Dreams (New York: Vintage Contemporary, 2000) by Ernesto Quiñonez to be an update on Thomas' s classic, insofar as it tells a more current tale of growing up Puerto Rican in East Harlem. Each novel subtly deals with the experience of being both African American and Puerto Rican. It is a part of the mise-en-scene, noticeable if one is attuned. Likewise, the Dominican-born Julia Alvarez characterizes Afro-Latina experience in her book In the

This is my first column as the new The Alert Collector editor. I have huge shoes to fill and am deeply aware of the quality and integrity that Diane Zabel established for this column during the past seven years. I am honored that she would entrust me with her column as she becomes the editor of this journal.Fair use affects us all, be we public, academic, special, or school librarians. As part of my plans for this column are to include articles that appeal to a wide range of librarians and readers, I am delighted that Melanie Schlosser has taken on the task of collecting the resources we need when facing a copyright and fair-use question. Ms. Schlosser, an MLS candidate at