NCSLA President's Message, April 2004

Hope you're all enjoying this beautiful spring in North Carolina.

I'm pleased to announce the results of our chapter elections. The NCSLA executive board for the period of June 2004 to June 2005 will be:

President-elect: Eliza Robertson, National Humanities Center, RTP
President: Erin Knight, CIIT Centers for Health Research, RTP
Past-president: Sperry Krueger, North Carolina Biotechnology Center, RTP
Secretary: Lesley Lubin, Bank of America, Charlotte
Treasurer: Bonnie Sugden, Lorillard Tobacco Co., Greensboro
3rd Year Director: Connie Childers, Lorillard Tobacco Co., Greensboro
2nd Year Director: Sandra Chambers, GlaxoSmithKline, RTP
1st Year Director: Tamika Barnes, NCSU, Raleigh

A special thanks goes out to Sandi Goodwin, Larry Skladanowski and Marlys Ray for their hard work in putting together such a terrific slate of candidates. And thanks to everyone who voted!

The NC chapter of Special Libraries Association is as busy as usual. Despite numerous weather delays, more than half of our chapter members attended one of the seven 'neighborhood networking events' held around the state in February and March. Many thanks to our volunteer coordinators/hosts: Karen Weis in Chapel Hill, Melanie Buckingham in Raleigh, Jill Kutz in Charlotte, Rebecca Vargha in Durham, Ann Stringfield in Greensboro, Susan Tarbell in Asheville and Ginny Hauswald in Winston-Salem.

Please mark your calendar for NCSLA's annual business meeting and awards dinner on Thursday, April 29 at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham. SLA president Cindy Hill will be our guest speaker for the evening. Other highlights include a wine & cheese 'happy hour' in the butterfly house and getting your very own copy of our indispensable chapter membership directory. Register for the event at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=62540418913.

I was unable to attend SLA's leadership conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico in January, but president-elect Erin Knight represented us well. She brought back the news that SLA would now be doing business as SLA. Sounds funny, doesn't it? Basically, all it means is that the public face of the association will now be the acronym SLA, rather than the full name, Special Libraries Association. To find out more about the 'doing business as' move, go to: http://www.sla.org/content/SLA/pressroom/pressrelease/2004pressrelease/pr2407.cfm.

Our next-door neighbor, Tennessee, is hosting the annual conference this year. Conference planners are promoting that it's "all under one roof" this year since SLA received a number of complaints about having to trek between hotels for programs at the last conference. If you're going, be sure to register by May 1 to get the early bird registration fee and check out the online conference planner at http://www.sla.org/nashville2004/plannerintro.cfm.

By the way, please remember that all chapter and group meetings will be announced on the chapter's discussion list. If you're not already on the list, please subscribe by sending a message with subscribe SLA-CNC firstname lastname in the message body to lists@lists.sla.org.

Sperry Krueger
President, NC/SLA