Chapel Hill – Patrick Mullin, interim associate university librarian for collections and services at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will retire July 30, after a professional career spanning 37 years.

Mullin joined the library staff in 1987 as systems librarian. He subsequently headed the Systems Department before becoming an associate university librarian with responsibility for systems, access services and systems, and then technical services and systems. Since March, he has served on an interim basis as associate university librarian for collections and services. During his tenure, he oversaw several comprehensive system migrations, as well as a complete reorganization of the library’s technical service operations in 2008.

Mullin has been especially active with association and consortial activities. He was president in 2005-06 of the Library & Information Technology Association (LITA) of the American Library Association, and was a member of the LITA Board of Directors and its Executive Committee from 2003 to 2007. He chaired the LITA 2001 and 2002 National Forum Program planning committees and has held leadership positions with the Association of College & Research Libraries and the Data Research Users’ Group.

From 1988 to 1991, concurrent with his responsibilities at UNC, he was interim director of the Triangle Research Libraries Network (TRLN), a collaborative organization of the libraries at UNC, Duke University, North Carolina Central University, and North Carolina State University. For this service and numerous other contributions, he was recognized by TRLN in 2000 for his “extraordinary service and leadership and for outstanding contributions promoting cooperation among libraries.”

Mullin received a B.A. in history from the University of Notre Dame and an M.A. in history from Purdue University. His M.L.S. is from the University of Kentucky. Mullin began his professional career as the special collections librarian at Marietta College, in Marietta, Ohio. He subsequently spent ten years in various positions with OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc., in Dublin, Ohio, before coming to UNC.

http://www.lib.unc.edu/blogs/news/index.php/2010/07/pat-mullin-retirement/

Judith Panitch
Director of Library Communications
University Library
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Cuddy has served as a member of the LITA Board of Directors and the LITA Executive Committee. She has experience in programming, having served on the LITA National Forum Program Planning Committee, and in governance, having served as the Bylaws Committee chair and Board parliamentarian. “LITA members are innovators and leaders, and I feel very privileged to lead such a diverse group of librarians and library professionals. I look forward to developing methods to communicate the value of technology innovation for LITA members and for librarians at large. I will also work to cultivate LITA membership and create new opportunities for members’ professional growth,” said Cuddy.

This year LITA elected Adriene Lim, associate university librarian, Portland State University, Portland, Oregon, as LITA Councilor for a three year term. Newly elected Board Directors, who also will serve for three years, are Cindi Trainor, coordinator, Research and Instructional Services, Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond, Kentucky, and Jason Griffey, head of Library Information, University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, Lupton Library, Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Here is how the LITA Board would like to proceed.

1. The LITA Strategic Plan has been posted to ALA Connect http://connect.ala.org/node/105818. Members are encouraged to review the new LITA Strategic Plan and post your feedback to ALA Connect by Friday, June 25th.

2. The last 45-60 minutes of the Saturday LITA Board Meeting will be devoted to the LITA Strategic Plan. The Strategic Planning session of the LITA Board Meeting will be held in the Convention Center room 204A, Saturday, June 26 at approximately 11:30-12:15.  The LITA Board welcomes LITA members to the meeting if they wish to provide feedback in person (if you can’t make the meeting please provide feedback in ALA Connect http://connect.ala.org/node/105818). During the Strategic Planning session at the LITA Board meeting we will also identify which strategies we want to tackle in the next 18 months and assign those strategies to the appropriate committees, interest groups and task forces. The LITA Board will then work with the committees, interest groups and task forces to create action plans on how those groups plan to accomplish the strategy.

3. The LITA Board has asked the committees and interest groups to fill out and submit their completed Action Plans and submit them to the LITA Board two weeks prior to the Midwinter Meeting in January 2011. Board members will be available to assist the committees, interest groups and task forces in the completion of the Action Plans.

4. During the LITA Board session at the ALA Midwinter Meeting 2011, the LITA Board will review the submitted Action Plans to make sure all strategies that were identified as priorities in next 18 months are accounted for and if not how to proceed.

Please contact me if you have any questions.

Michelle Frisque
President, Library & Information Technology Association

Starr has served as a member of the LITA Board of Directors. She has experience in international relations having served on the LITA International Relations Committee and in various roles with the ALA International Relations Round Table. In addition to the IRC, Karen has served LITA on the Program Planning Committee and the Nominating Committee, “Creative change comes with long term investment, commitment, and patience. Every 10 years of the last 30, the library field has passed a milestone in its use of technology including online searching (1970s), CDROMs (1980s), and the Internet (1990s). Now we are involved with the digital world. Everyone is struggling with the sustainability of the structure we have and trying to take the next step into the future. We are not quite sure where that step will take us. The innovators and leaders of tomorrow are the LITA members of today. It is refreshing to work with a dynamic group on the national level who care, who want to define that future and who come together to work on what the big picture should look like. I look forward to the opportunity to work with LITA’s members to collaboratively implement the vision that sustains our country’s 21st century information infrastructure,” said Starr.

Newly elected board members, who will serve for three years, are Aaron W. Dobbs, Systems & Electronic Resources Librarian, Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania; and Maurice York, Head, Information Technology, NCSU Libraries, North Carolina State University.

• Identify the types of programs that are presented and which are most appropriate for online posting
• Identify other organizations such as ACRL, PLA, WebJunction, etc, who are currently providing this service to learn about their experiences
• How should the content be delivered online i.e. live webcast, produced in a studio, screencast, etc.
• Identify, evaluate, and analyze available systems
• Identify which systems are best for delivering each type of program
• Determine who should have access to what types of programs and how. This should include:
  • Identifying the appropriate delivery method
  • Who should have access. Should it be available to all LITA members, available to everyone, etc.?,
  • Should access be different for different user communities?
  • Should their be a registration fee for certain types of programming

• LITA Program Planning Committee
• LITA National Forum Committee 2009
• LITA National Forum Committee 2010
• LITA Web Coordinating Committee
• LITA Education Committee
• LITA BIGWIG

Thanks to the following people for agreeing to serve on this task force:

• Aaron Dobbs, chair
• Melissa Shepard
• Anne Graham
• Cody Hanson
• Michael Witt
• Jenny Emanuel
• Kristine Feery
• David Ward

Here are the questions we asked during the breakout session:

1. What makes LITA unique inside ALA and in the greater community?
2. Who else is filling the same role as LITA right now?
3. What areas of IT are not be addressed in the community?
4. How do other organizations see LITA?
5. How can LITA work with other organizations?
6. What can LITA learn from peer organizations?

We had 12 tables in the room so 2 tables discussed each question. I posted pictures of the notes from each table and they can be found on Flickr.

I want to thank the following guests for coming to this event and participating in the discussion:

• ACRL (Association of College and Research Libraries): Susan Kroll
• ALCTS (Association for Library Collections and Technical Services): Dina Giambi and Mary Case
• ASIS&T: Nancy Roderer (Past-President)
• BCR (Bibliographical Center for Research): Regan Harper
• Digital Library Federation (DLF): Barrie Howard
• RUSA (Reference and User Services Association): Neal Wyatt
• Taigi: Tom Wilson (Board Member)
• OCLC/WebJunction: Beth Gutsche

I would also like to thank the Twitter table for getting a feed going on the spot! I really enjoyed reading it after the fact and I know those who could not attend enjoyed participating from wherever they were.

Finally, I would like to thank Matt Barnes from R2 Consulting for volunteering his time and facilitating the discussion.

Big huge thanks to Michelle Boule for compiling the large stack of papers and cards into something that resembled an organized mass.

LITA Town Meeting

What does success look like for LITA and it’s members? Mark Beatty, LITA Vice President, gave a quick environmental scan. Then the LITA members at the Town Meeting engaged in small group brain storming and clustered their ideas into categories. Attending members were asked to generate their ideas as a reaction to Mark’s introductory scan, their own current thoughts on the state of libraries and LITA, the LITA strategic plan and a small set of questions about LITA. Details on the group activity are below along with the results.

One of the easiest and interestingly the most significant remarks that could be made about the town meeting is that people had fun. The quite full 80 plus member meeting consisted of the full range of LITA members in length of membership. All ideas were equal. All attendees jumped in and participated equally. All worked to contribute to LITA while exchanging ideas, information, knowledge, opinions and friendship in an open and welcoming social setting. As the results below show the Town Meeting, and it’s fun, in many ways embodied what the attendees said they want LITA to be.

A 25 minute podcast of an interview with Mark Beatty and Michelle Boule after the Town Meeting can be heard at:
http://litablog.org/2007/02/02/town-hall-commentary-from-mark-beatty-and-michelle-boule/

Setting the Environment

The initial theme was ‘Delivering Value to the Membership”

We wanted to gather ideas about LITA including:
What are the indicators of success
What defines value to the membership
What environments do we need to pay attention to
To define it another way. Let’s assume that we are mostly in the business of education of one sort or another and we want to deliver true value to our members. Then what does success look like for LITA and it’s members?
What value would members be getting?
What would motivate members to volunteer?
What would keep volunteers?
What would our menu of services look like?

We want to consider any new ideas in the light of the LITA Strategic Plan:
http://www.ala.org/ala/lita/aboutlita/org/plan.htm

The LITA Vision is:
As the center of expertise about information technology, the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA) leads in exploring and enabling new technologies to empower libraries. LITA members use the promise of technology to deliver dynamic library collections and services.

The LITA Mission Statement is:
LITA educates, serves and reaches out to its members, other ALA members and divisions, and the entire library and information community through its publications, programs and other activities designed to promote, develop, and aid in the implementation of library and information technology.

Here are some of the current environment variables that are being talked about for communities and libraries.

Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, October 9, 2006
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/participation_inequality.html
Most communities and volunteer organizations experience user participation at the rate of what is called the 90-9-1 rule. That is:
90% lurkers
9% occasional contributors and
1% frequent contributors who account for most of the total contributions.

The point of the Nielsen article is that the primary way to shift those percentages to fewer lurkers and more active participants is to ask and implement how can we make it easy to participate? We need to make it easier to contribute. The lower the overhead, the more people will jump through the hoop. In Nielsen’s example, Netflix lets users rate movies by clicking a star rating, which is much easier than writing a natural-language review.

If we look at the current internet usage environment not just lita or only ala, but whole world, then we can glean valuable information from resources like the OCLC environment scan and Pew Internet and American Life studies. These are specifically aimed at youth studies and how can libraries appeal to youngsters as patrons. We can look at these for what librarians and LITA members and volunteers might expect. If we can’t deliver value to this group, as well as everyone else, we’re toast as libraries and as an association.

The OCLC reports identify 4 generations. Both librarians and patrons are fully represented in this wide range.
Traditionalists, pre 1945
Baby Boomers, 1946-1964
Gen X, 1965-1980
Millennials, 1981-1999
Are our previous plans and efforts aimed at older generations and what is known about younger patrons, younger librarians and younger LITA members?

For example according to a study done at Ohio State in the early 1940’s less than 1% of patrons start with the library when looking for information. The vast majority went to friends and family first. In 2003 OCLC found that the vast majority of patrons still start research by asking friends and family members first. Only 1% start with a librarian. In 60 years we’ve made almost no progress.

Note the importance even in the 1940’s of friends, colleagues, community in information seeking. This aligns well with findings from Pew Internet and American Life 2006 Studies specifically about teens. Among the key findings:
• 55% of online teens have created a personal profile online, and
• 55% have used social networking sites like MySpace or Facebook.
• 66% of teens who have created a profile limit access to their profiles.
• 48% of teens visit social networking websites daily or more often;
• 26% visit once a day
• 22% visit several times a day.
• Older girls ages 15-17 are more likely to have used social networking sites and created online profiles
• 70% of older girls have used an online social network compared with
• 54% of older boys, and
• 70% of older girls have created an online profile, while only
• 57% of older boys have done so.
MySpace dominates the social networking world
• 85% of teens who have created an online profile say the profile they use or update most often is on MySpace, while
• 7% update a profile on Facebook.
Teens and Friends on Social Networking Sites
• 91% Stay in touch with friends they see a lot
• 82% Stay in touch with friends they rarely see
• 72% Make plans with their friends

Adult librarians can follow the same patterns, just in older methods. If we are to believe anecdotal evidence and initial reports from ALA, then New Orleans Annual in 2006 was one of the most successful and satisfying conferences ever. Looking at some of the basic circumstances:
• 17,000 attendees in New Orleans v. 27,000 in Chicago the year previous
• Using the convention center for a greater number of meetings compacted the meetings sites
• How does size v. significance measure up
With lower numbers and less geographic spread the ALA population was able to form a closer and more communicative organization. They could accomplish more social networking in less time.

All these indicators start to point at the idea of 3rd Place. In his book “The Great, Good Place,” Ray Oldenburg states that third places are important for community, and establishing feelings of a sense of place. He suggested that we have 3 places to live. Home, work or school and a third place where we go to socialize. In modern North American society did we lose that 3rd space and are internet social software sites an effort to re-introduce social spaces? If parents are worried about the dangers of the world and won’t let kids out on the street on their own how do they maintain social contact with their friends. If library institutions won’t fund conference travel how do librarians establish and maintain colleague and friend relationships?

Group Activity results

With this background the Town Meeting launched into it’s Activity. Here’s what we did:
Snow card technique
• Each table had about 8-10 folks, with a wrangler
• They brain stormed as individuals, and then as a group
• 5+ ideas on above issues
• Then they grouped ideas into categories
The Snow Card technique is designed to generate a great deal of ideas and responses in a very short time. We tried to do some initial sorting into categories at the meeting but everyone was having so much fun coming up with ideas we ran out of time . Barely controlled chaos comes to mind. However Michelle and Mark applied categories and roughly looked for common ideas that were echoed in one way or another. Here’s a listing of those categories and the ideas within them. There was amazing agreement on the categories across groups.

Wifi
• Making it easy for LITA attendees to stay connected w/colleagues regardless of your or their location
Collaboration
• All part of a common theme for interaction, social working opportunities face to face and virtual
Education/Learning
• Better distribution of programs and meetings at conference
• Local regular events
• Online publications
• Timely information
• How can we build a 4 generation website
Emerging Technologies
• Leadership – for the “bleeding edge”
• Identify future trends and what to do about them
• Best practices for REALLY new technologies
Give Us Stuff Category
• t-shirts, t-shirts, t-shirts (they are proud to display LITA branding, set up Café Press and let them buy their own)
Leadership
• Provide opportunities to volunteer and contribute to the profession
• Leadership and development opportunities in LITA
LITA Member Integration
• An amazingly easy to use web interface w/LITA member contact info, committee info, etc and
• Social opportunities
Membership
• Indication of success: membership new and returning
• Never do a survey that requires a reply to the question “How long have you been a member?” — Exclusionary perhaps
• Funny story – didn’t ask length of LITA at meeting intro’s but people did it anyway, please note above 4 generations of members
• Non-intrusive tracking, easy rating stuff (Netflix) better response rate than full surveys
Networking – any venue, virtual or not
• Social networking
• Greet new members more personally
• Encourage the quiet participation
• Social opportunities at conferences
• Expand members numbers
• Social events for networking, loosely organized
Outreach
• LITA partners with state associations for programs
• LITA coordinates all other Division Tech committees
• Support divisions in technology related initiatives
• Better ways to communicate
Quality programming, online, offline, regional and national
• Regional events and online community
• Quality stimulating programming. What’s new? What’s great? What didn’t work?
Publications
• A nifty journal that shows up in my mailbox regularly, with all the latest newest ideas, electronic or print or both
Software development
• Develop open source software for libraries
• Awards for software development, like open source software
• Sponsor grants for development
• Poster sessions on what open source development they’ve done
Technology
• Technology in rooms – easy by default for everyone – full basic load of networking and display etc.
• Wikis on various themes, more collaborative opportunities, set edit levels at Committee and Interest Group members
• Virtual reality – Second Life (create IG?) can have our own LITA floor

As Michelle and Mark noted in the Podcast and general conclusions:

Here’s a story from the meeting. At one point the older hands started talking about a key moment in the history of LITA when members ran the first versions of the ALA conference internet room. From arranging with vendors to share high speed connections, to bringing in PC’s from local libraries, running schedules, creating training sessions for librarians who had never been on the internet before to showing up the day before the conference and running Cat5 cable and hubs to computers. The excitement generated by this story told and shared by many at the Town Meeting came from the shared experience. All LITA members of all sorts pitching in and working together for a common goal doing something they loved. Sharing stories, catching up with friends only seen a couple of times each year. Creating a LITA 3rd Space at conference. Capturing the imagination of new members to create their own stories.

LITA members are involved and ready to jump in and participate. They want community and as such the Happy Hour was mentioned over and over, as well as the Town Meeting breakfast. So if our associations like LITA are 3rd spaces can we deliver a LITA 365 days/year? Can we and should we extend social networking, for example creatie LITA IM chat rooms.

We had all 4 generations in the room as well as a huge range of length of participation in LITA. Fresh newbies to very old hands, all ideas were equal with instant participation, the barriers to participation were low, a flat hierarchy, we tried to make easy and fun to be involved. Modeling what the participants seemed to say they want their organization to be.

Submitted by Mark Beatty, VP/Prez Elect LITA, June 11, 2007.

Congratulations to the following members who have been elected to the LITA Board of Directors:

• Vice President/President-Elect: Andrew Pace
• Directors at Large (3 year terms): Mary Alice Ball and Susan Logue
• Director at Large (1 year term): Karen Starr
• LITA Councilor: Colby Riggs

Elected ALA Councilors who are LITA members:

• Allene Hayes
• Janet Swan Hill
• Bernard Margolis
• Catherine L. Murray-Rust

Welcome to the LITA Podcasts Election Series. For your listening pleasure, every few days a new group of LITA Officer hopefuls will be presented. Tune in here on LITABlog, via any RSS aggregator using our normal RSS feed, or now tune in via iTunes by clicking here or searching for LITA in the podcast area of the iTunes store.

Each individual, regardless of office, was asked to answer the following questions:

• Describe your professional experience as it related to holding LITA office.
• What do you bring to this position?
• How do you envision LITA being a technology leader in ALA?

Each candidate was interviewed by David Free who knows a few things about podcasting and who has been instrumental in making this a success.

The schedule for the release of each group of candidates is as follows:

March 15 – Vice President/President Elect
Diane Bisom and Andrew Pace

March 19 – ALA Councilors
Kay Flowers (did not respond to interview request) and Colby Riggs

March 21-22 – Director at Large 3 year term
Mary Alice Ball
Susan Logue
Dale Poulter
Barbara Spivey

Director at Large 1 year term
Both candidates declined to be interviewed.
Maribeth Manhoff and Karen Starr

For more information about the LITA Elections, see the LITA Elections 2007 page, as well as the ALA Elections page.

ALA has selected 100 participants for the 2007 program. Each participant will attend leadership workshops at both ALA conferences in 2007. In addition, they will participate in an online working group between the conferences as they continue to grow as leaders.

Each participant is expected to provide 2 years of service to ALA or one of its units. The LITA Board wishes to ensure that our Emerging Leader has a meaningful leadership experience within LITA. Michelle will work closely with the LITA President and President-elect, working most closely with the President-elect for continuity, on aspects of the LITA strategic plan implementation.

Michelle Boule is indeed a LITA emerging leader. She was instrumental in starting the LITA Blog and the LITA Wiki. She currently co-chairs the BIGWIG Interest Group which focuses on Web services applications. Michelle actively participated in the ALA Library 2.0 Bootcamp. The LITA Board values Michelle’s expertise and enthusiasm and willingness to take action. Michelle has stated that she has decided to attach her star to LITA and her enthusiasm is contagious to other librarians. Michelle is a Reference Librarian at the University of Houston where she has been a member of the Strategic Directions Steering Committee and initiated staff technology training. She also participated as a program planner for two unique online learning communities–HigherEd Blog Con 2006 and “Five Weeks to a Social Library” online learning community for librarians. She is a wonderful example of what an emerging leader for ALA and LITA should be.

–a current LITA member?
–no older than 35 OR have no more than five years of post-MLS library experience?
–able to meet the obligations that Leslie outlined on the website?
–interested in the Program?

If so, please submit the following items to LITA President Bonnie Postlethwaite (postlethwaiteb@umkc.edu) by September 15:

–A list of LITA or ALA activities (no more than five, if possible)
–Participation in state, regional or other library associations (no more than five)
–Three ways you have demonstrated leadership potential (500 words or less)

LITA sponsorship is not required for application, but it will give you preference in the selection process.

A memo from Leslie Burger clarifies the selection process as follows:

“My goal is to identify 100 Emerging Leaders who have demonstrated leadership potential, who represent the broad spectrum of diversity within our Association and profession — including ethnicity, gender, geographical location, type and size of library, professional focus area, and ALA, divisional, Chapter, or round table affiliation — and who have indicated a willingness to apply their Emerging Leaders training to a two-year term of service on a division, Chapter, round table or ALA committee, task force, working group or project team. …

Although this is a competitive application process, each division, Chapter and round table that chooses to support applicants will be guaranteed that at least one of your nominees will be accepted into the program. If your unit would like to recommend and support more than one applicant, please rank them in priority order. The selection committee will make every effort to honor your selections while still maintaining diversity and balance in the final group of Emerging Leaders.”

The individual selected for LITA support will be notified by September 22nd. Nominees must submit the full application to Leslie Burger(http://lb.princetonlibrary.org/documents/EmergingLeadersApplication_000.pdf) by the September 30th deadline.

Bonnie Postlethwaite
LITA President
postlethwaiteb@umkc.edu

Much has been written about both of these people. However, it is fitting for LITA to recognize their special contribution to our organization which was still called the Information Science and Automation Division (ISAD) in their days. Fred Kilgour served as the eighth president for two terms in 1973-1975. Henriette Avram followed as president from 1975-1976. According to Stephen R. Salmon’s article, “LITA’s First Twenty-Five Years: A Brief History”, Kilgour, then at Yale Medical Library, was part of the group that actively worked to create the division collecting signatures for the required petition and then serving on the organizing committee. He immediately was appointed as the first editor of the new division’s journal, Journal of Library Automation (JOLA). Meanwhile, in January 1968, the Board approved the creation of 10 regional institutes “to tell the Project MARC story in technical detail to processing personnel throughout the country.” Henriette Avram was part of the team of presenters from LC and other pioneers in the implementation of MARC and the institutes attracted thousands of librarians. The regional institutes were continued through 1979 with several being offered each year. At Avram’s instigation, ALA created a committee, now known as MARBI, to review changes to the MARC format. The first meeting was held in January 1968 and had representations from ISAD, RTSD, and RSD. MARBI continues today to provide proper review of MARC changes.

If some of these things sound familiar, we have people like Kilgour and Avram to thank for setting into motion lasting structures in LITA. We still publish a journal, now called Information Technology & Libraries (ITAL); we still hold Regional Institutes on timely topics; we still are part of the structure of the MARBI committee. These are just a few examples, I’m sure, of the mark both of LITA icons made on the organization.

There is no concensus on the use of the Library 2.0 name. The 2.0 nomenclature aside, I am excited by the concepts behind Library 2.0:

• Flexibility and nimbleness to enable rapid change
• Commitment to continuous improvement based on assessment
• Interactive and collaborative services driven by users needs
• Taking the library to the users AND making the library a destination
• Embracing radical trust
• Use of new technological tools to accomplish the above

Team 2 of the ALA Library 2.0 Bootcamp dealt with the topic of how associations can use Web 2.0 concepts and tools, Association 2.0. You can read their conclusions at http://alabootcamp.pbwiki.com/ . I challenge LITA members to help create a blueprint for LITA2.0 embracing the concepts above of making LITA more interactive and responsive to its members. Comment here on the blog or add your ideas to the LITA Wiki. With your input, we can take LITA to the next level.

The ALA Annual Conference in New Orleans was an awe-inspiring experience on many levels. I was so overwhelmed by the gratitude of the New Orleaneans who could not have done a better job of making the 16,000+ visitors comfortable. New Orleans has a huge struggle ahead as the recovery has only begun. ALA set the example to the world that we believe in the city and want to help as much as possible in its recovery. Librarians not only helped economically by coming to the city, but many donated time and energy through volunteer service. I am proud to have attended the conference and even prouder that ALA chose to keep the conference in New Orleans.

I began my LITA Presidency at the end of the day on Tuesday, June 27. I want to thank Pat Mullin for all he did in the past year as President. He has been a great mentor to me and accomplished a great deal to move LITA forward. The LITA Board recognized the many years of hard work that our outgoing Past-President, Colby Riggs, has contributed. I will personally miss her insight and good humor at the Board and Executive Committee meetings. I welcome Mark Beatty, our new Vice President. Mark has served 3 years on the Board and the past year as the Director-at-Large on the Executive Committee. Mark has wonderful ideas and I look forward to working with him. Mark and I are committed to opening up lines of communication with LITA members on the LITA blog. I hope we can entice you all to dialogue in this space and via other means. We want to hear from you.

One of the awe-inspiring events of the conference was a breakfast with former LITA presidents done in recognition of LITA’s 40th anniversary. Sixteen former presidents attended and shared stories and memories. In particular, the group remembered all of the contributions to the profession of Henriette Avram who recently passed away. What a pioneer!!! She alone was ample inspiration to us all, but it was truly a humbling experience as incoming president to be in the presence of so many LITA leaders.

Our Sunday Afternoon with LITA was a smashing success starting with a stimulating Top Tech Trends. The reception that followed celebrated LITA’s 40 years with cake and champagne. LITA awards and scholarships were presented to an exemplary group of contributors. Finally, the President’s Program, Internet Culture: What Do We Know about User Behavior?, engaged the huge audience regarding Internet usage. Thanks to Pat for putting together this fabulous program.

I want to extend my enormous appreciation to the LITA staff, Mary Taylor and Val Edmonds. They have managed to keep things running smoothly while they try to fill Rob Carlson’s position. I hope we can announce the filling of this important vacancy soon to assist with all of our programming.

I look forward to the next 12 months as LITA President. Watch this spot on the blog for frequent communications from me. I hope to hear from you as well. Afterall, LITA is all about networking.