NCSLA President's Message
February 2005

Dear NCSLA Members:

I have just returned from the SLA Leadership Summit, held January 26-28, in Tampa, Florida.  It was an inspiring meeting and I have lots of information to share with you.

Here are the major announcements:

• SLA Online University - This is a new online learning portal that will be ready later this Spring.  This tool will allow you to participate in over 300 diverse online courses.  SLA v-seminars and CE Courses presented at national SLA conference will also be available; all from your desktop on your time frame.  Sounds exciting!  We will be hearing much more about the Online University soon!
• Change in SLA Governance Year - The SLA Board announced a change in the governance year.  Currently terms of office run from June to June.  Beginning in January 2007, terms of office will run from January - December.  This will correspond with SLA's budget year, which also runs from January - December.  This change makes a lot of sense and should simply operations.  The transitional period will be affecting our next election.  We will be asking candidates to serve an extra 6 months so we can bridge to the January 2007 start date.  Several members of the current NCSLA Board, including yours truly, will have their terms extended until December 2006.  The good news is that our Chapter is full of wonderful folks who say "It's just six months!"  I will keep you posted on how things are progressing.
• Elections - The Leadership Summit attendees got to hear speeches from the candidates for the SLA Board.  Our Chapter's own Rebecca Vargha is running for President-Elect.  Rebecca gave a wonderful speech that I hope she will repeat for our Chapter soon.  Rebecca would be absolutely terrific as SLA President.  Other than encouraging you to support your fellow chapter member with your vote, I am not comfortable doing any real campaigning for any of the candidates.  However, I did get to hear all the speeches and know several of the candidates running for office.  If you want my opinions on these matters, contact me and I will gladly share them.  Information on the candidates is available at www.sla.org/2005election.  Please make sure and vote!