 Message From the President
Linda Watson, MLS, AHIP, FMLA
President, Assoc of Academic Health Science Libraries
Director, Health Sciences Libraries
University of Minnesota Twin Cities
AAHSL President’s Message #1
November 29, 2007
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to be your President this year. My goals for AAHSL build on the legacy of previous presidents and the amazing work of all our committees and task forces. They include: Leadership Development, Advocacy, Partnerships and Engagement, Research and E-Science. More detail on some of the newer ideas and opportunities next month.
Annual Meeting Highlights: AAHSL held a successful annual meeting in November in conjunction with the AAMC in Washington, DC. Kudos to Linda Walton and the Program and Education Committee for the stimulating workshop on Saturday on Scenario Building facilitated by Joan Giesecke, and for Peter Morville’s very interesting Matheson Lecture on Ambient Findability. The Scholarly Communication Committee, chaired by Karen Butter, planned an informative program on Sunday entitled Transforming Scholarly Communication with panelists from PLoS, Countway Library, and ARL. A highlight of the business meeting was the presentation of AAHSL’s first Innovation Award by the Charting the Future Committee to Ohio State University for their work in developing OSU:pro. Finally, thanks to EBSCO for their sponsorship of the AAHSL/GIR reception Monday evening, an evening highlighted by the presentation of AAHSL’s Cornerstone Award to Wayne Peay.
New Board Members: Julie Sollenberger, President-Elect, Paul Schoening, Secretary/Treasurer, and Jim Bothmer, Board Member, were elected to the AAHSL Board at the annual business meeting. Please join me in congratulating and welcoming them to the Board. We thanked departing Board members for their service: Logan Ludwig, Ruth Riley and Gary Freiburger.
Your AAHSL Board was well represented on the MLA Webcast: Scholarly Publishing and Open Access this month. Pat Thibodeau, Mary Ryan, Paul Schoening and I all had a part as did AAHSL member Carol Jenkins.
Appointments: Committee Chairs for FY 07-08 include: Karen Butter, Scholarly Communications; Gary Byrd, Assessment and Statistics; M.J. Tooey, Charting the Future; Carol Jenkins and Judy Consales, Leadership Committee; Joint AAHSL/Publisher Liaison Task Force, Gail Yokote and Michael Homan; Julie Sollenberger, GEA Task Force. Michael Homan is Chair of the Joint AAHSL/MLA Legislative Task Force and Gary Byrd and Logan Ludwig are our CAS Representatives. Jim Shedlock serves as the AAHSL Information Technology Officer. The Program and Education Committee is not yet fully appointed, so more on that soon.
Advocacy: The Presidents of MLA and AAHSL signed on to a letter thanking those members of Congress who voted to override the President’s veto of the FY 2008 Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations bill (which included the language to make deposit of NIH-funded research articles mandatory). AAHSL sent a letter to the President of the Board of Directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science expressing concern about the withdrawal of Science from JSTOR.
Leadership Development: The 2007/2008 class of fellows and mentors met for the first time in Washington for their orientation and introduction to the program. NLM has agreed to support the program for another three years.
Annual Statistics: Three current AAHSL Annual Statistics surveys opened on November 27th for data entry: the 30th Edition Annual Statistics, and the Salary Survey due by December 31st, and the Descriptive Library Survey due January 15th.
Member Transitions: Several Board members and I were pleased to host a luncheon for 11 of the new or interim directors named this year to welcome them to our Association. Since the annual meeting, we’ve learned of several additional transitions. Joanne Muellenbach retired earlier this month as Director of Health Information Resources at Northern Ontario School of Medicine, Lakehead University and Laurentian University. Shelley Bader has announced her retirement at the end of December from George Washington University. And we have a new associate member, Interim Director Barry Linger, joining us from Commonwealth Medical College in Scranton, PA.
Linda Watson, MLS, AHIP, FMLA
President, Assoc of Academic Health Science Libraries
Director, Health Sciences Libraries
University of Minnesota Twin Cities
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