The Origins of The Weekly Agenda Newsletter

During one of my visits to Smith Library, Mina Ghajar mentioned that she knows two people who used to write this very same internal newsletter when it was in the print form of The Weekly Agenda. Jan Leavitt (retired and presently a part-time Librarian at Franklin Township Public Library) and Ann Smith (Head of Adult Services, Franklin Township Public Library) offered to write a short recollection about the origins and content of the earlier version of The Weekly Agenda upon which our new web-based publication is based.


From Jan Leavitt and Ann Smith:

The Weekly Agenda was first printed in April of 1979. Instituted by the university librarian as a form of communication to faculty and staff in the libraries on the various Rutgers campuses, it became the newsletter announcing the many happenings in the Libraries.

The faculty and staff news items included professional development announcements of various conferences, along with grant and publication opportunities and reports to the library community from those attending meetings outside of Rutgers. The Agenda also included fundraising updates from the University Foundation regarding the Parents and Friends donations to the Library budget, which supported the Libraries. Library employment vacancies were listed in The Agenda, and the library calendar of events for the month was printed on the back page. Also included on the back of The Agenda were the various exhibits on the three library campuses.

Occasionally we would put out an April Fool’s type of publication which everyone seemed to get a laugh out of and enjoyed. One that comes to mind was the April 1, 1990 issue.


Happily, thanks to Janie Fultz’s archival tendencies, we have bound copies of earlier issues of The Agenda. Enjoy this PDF of the April 1, 1990 issue of “The Weakly Agenda” which features a tongue-in-cheek obituary for Ken Kuehl (death by axe – one heck of a way to go); the introduction of a new policy to install “grease trucks” outside of the libraries (which as we now know was remarkably prescient); and the formation of the Acronymiacs Anonymous to combat our tendency to speak in acronyms.

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Jessica Pellien