From the Vice President

By Alison Armstrong

It’s hard to believe that by the time this newsletter reaches you, it will have been nearly two months since the Midwinter Conference in San Antonio. For those of us in the colder regions of the country, the pleasant warmth of Texas is a lovely yet fast fading memory. Aside from the beautiful weather (I’d like to extend a special thank you to the local arrangements folks for making that possible) what else do you recall of your time at the conference? Perhaps you were able to enjoy one or more Bites with LIRT. Were you able to stop by or volunteer at the LIRT booth? Did you participate in the LIRT discussion forum? These are just a few of the opportunities for participation available to us at the Midwinter Conference. In addition to committee work, it’s these kinds of interactions with our colleagues that make conferences so worthwhile, so valuable and so rewarding.

If you are not already an active member of LIRT, I would encourage you to become one. Becoming active in LIRT has been one of the most rewarding aspects of my professional career as well as being personally enriching. LIRT will be expanding its committees (read Mitch’s article on page two for details) and therefore there will be new opportunities for you to become an active participant in LIRT. Every conference, I look forward to seeing my LIRT colleagues at our Saturday morning All-Committee Meeting. Within this relaxed yet productive large group setting, we are updated on the relevant organizational issues and then we move into our committees and get some work done. Our work concerns both keeping the organization on-track and healthy as well keeping ourselves and our colleagues aware of the current instructional issues facing librarians from all types of libraries. Although we have many active members at the All-Committee meeting Saturday morning, we wish there were more still more participation.

Just as one of our instructional concerns is how to reach hard-to-reach or remote library users, an on-going concern of LIRT’s is how to reach hard-to-reach or remote librarians. Our newsletter and website reach many librarians but those librarians are not necessarily reaching back and becoming active in LIRT. Many librarians attend our wonderful programs at annual conference but again those librarians are not reaching back and becoming active in LIRT. For those of you who attend conference and are not active in LIRT, I would ask you to reconsider your level of participation and look anew at the many opportunities LIRT provides for professional development.

For those of you who are unable to attend conference and have thought perhaps there was no opportunity to participate in LIRT that did not include attending conferences, LIRT welcomes you too and does offer opportunities for professional involvement as a virtual member of our community.

We have a committee volunteer form is in this issue. I hope you’ll fill it out and send it in. In the portion of the form that asks you to rank your preferences, check "prefer virtual membership" or you can contact me directly for further information. Thanks.

LIRT News, March 2000. Volume 22, number 3.
To report problems, please contact the LIRT News Production editor at ronan@mail.uflib.ufl.edu

  WELCOME  BACK ISSUES