Sci-Tech Division Column - Wei Wei

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season!

The year of the Dragon marks the beginning of the 21st century and leads us into a new phase in the information revolution. The new millennium will be full of challenges and excitement. As we are preparing for the Philadelphia conference and working together from "Independence to Interdependence", there are plenty of reasons to toast our accomplishments in the past.

This is Bonnie Osif ‘s very first issue as Editor of Sci-Tech News. You may have already noticed that some changes have taken places in Sci-Tech News. First of all, parts of the magazine go on to the electronic version of Sci-Tech News. Except for book reviews and articles, the division pages and editorial are now included on the Sci-Tech News web site. Secondly, Sci-Tech News is changing printers and moving to PageMaker. Finally, in order to reduce the budget, polybag sleeves were eliminated. Meanwhile, some new columns such as a students’ column, web column and international column are being considered for addition to the News. I challenge you to continue to support Sci-Tech News and send your creative ideas and articles to Bonnie.

The Executive Board has approved the Division’s strategic plan drafted by John Cruickshank and his Strategic Planning Committee. There will be a Division strategic planning update at the 2000 annual conference in Philadelphia. Nathalie Thirlwall and her Membership Committee have sent a membership survey to former Sci-Tech Division members and are planning to send another survey to the current membership as well. Janet Hughes, Treasurer, Ann Koopman, 2000 Conference Planner, Marsha Saylor, Chair-Elect, and I just returned from the SLA Winter Meeting in St. Louis, MO. Nancy Anderson and her Y2K Nomination Committee has come up with a list of outstanding candidates running for the Division’s office this year. I encourage you all to vote for the future of the Division!

It is hard to imagine that the Philadelphia Conference seems so far away and yet, comes only a few months away. Ann Koopman is working on the details and planning an all sciences reception in which the Sci-Tech Division will take the lead. The reception will be held at the Philadelphia Independence Seaport Museum on Tuesday evening at the June conference. We hope to see you all there mingling with your old friends, meeting the new members and networking with other science divisions. In addition to Ann, our "Distributed Paper Session Readers" consisted of Nancy Anderson, Joe Kraus and James Manasco; they all worked very hard and successfully selected three speakers with a variety of perspectives for the session which it is shaping up to be a really nice Division event. Congratulations to Ann Koopman and to our Paper Session Readers for a job well done.

As we are preparing to cope with some unexpected Y2K challenges, let’s, at the same time, embrace the new century and ride high along with the new year of Dragon. I continue to look forward working with all of you. Thank you all for your support in the past, and for this Dragon year.