My name is Barbara Holder. I have been Librarian at Forintek Canada Corp.'s Western Laboratory since 1990. Forintek's mission is to be a leading force in the technological advancement of the Canadian wood industry. I have had various other posts including Deputy Librarian and Cataloguer for the National Coal Board in England and Librarian of the Leeward Islands Teachers' Training College in Antigua. Prior to becoming President-Elect, I was Vancouver Director responsible for Programming. I am also a member of the British Columbia Library Association Continuing Education Committee.

As President-Elect it is my task to shadow the President and learn and much as I can so that I can assume the leadership role with a background on all the personalities, projects, issues and administrative details involved.

It is also my task to develop contacts so that the Chapter can benefit as much as possible from being part of the international SLA organization. To that end, the Chapter sends the President-Elect to the Winter Meeting to attend Division and Chapter Officers Leadership Training (DACOLT). That conference took place this year in San Francisco from 21-23 January and provided an exciting (and fun!) time and lots of ideas and contacts (A full trip report will be presented in the near future).

I am providing input to the Nominations Chair to fill vacant officer positions for 1999/2000. We plan to "virtualize" the chapter even more by moving the centre of power away from Vancouver and having at least one chair in each major city working with our director in that city. We also plan to break down the tasks into smaller chunks. For example, the mammoth task of Communications Chair, done so ably by Patricia Cia for the last two years, will be divided between the Webmaster, the Wired West Editor and the Listserv Administrator. We may also have a Manager of [web based] Audio/Visual Presentations.

A special assignment this year has been to co-chair the upcoming Regional Meeting with Terry Chadwick of the SLA Oregon Chapter.

If you have any questions, suggestions or comments about my role or the Chapter, I can be reached by phone at 604 222 5668, or email at holder@van.forintek.ca.