This year passed quickly - filled with traveling, meeting new people, and working in our profession in new ways. Thank you for the opportunity to serve as the ACRL-WA Chapter President. Because of holding this position, I was able to represent Washington on the Chapters Council, co-chair a subcommittee for a national conference, and begin to learn the unique skills of advocating for Libraries. Your contributions as well as many of our colleagues across the nation are impressive and vital to the goals of our profession. As tough as our economic situations may be at this time, I have every confidence in our collective abilities to advance our purpose and communicate the value of library services and resources everywhere.

Many thanks to Past President, Corey Johnson who conducted this year’s election. Alyssa Deutschler from UW Bothell was elected Vice-President/President elect and Andrea Kueter from UPS was elected Member-at-Large. Congratulations! Thanks also to all the people who ran but did not win. Please try again next year! Jan Hartley, will assume the ACRL-WA presidency after our May 13th Board meeting. The Board meeting will again be held via teleconference and Board members will connect from WSU, UW Seattle, and UW Tacoma. Our primary focus will be discussing our upcoming conference.

Mark your calendars for the ACRL-WA Conference at Pack Forest on October 29 & 30. If you’d like to be involved with the conference planning and/or staging, please contact Jan Hartley at HARTLEYJ@seattleu.edu.

ALA Midwinter was held in snowy, mile-high Denver this year. Jan Hartley and I attended the Chapter’s Council meeting and enjoyed meeting representatives from Chapter’s all over the United States as well as many of the librarians who are candidates for ACRL National positions.
Draft minutes can be read at: http://www.acrl.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/about/chapters/minutes/Chapters_Council_Minutes_from_Denver_MW_09.cfm

The meeting ended with a training session on creating the annual chapter report. This report must be submitted for chapters to receive funding for members who also belong to ACRL National. Thanks to the preliminary work of the New England chapter, an ad-hoc subcommittee of the Council drafted and submitted a proposal to ACRL National to increase the funding from $1 to $3 per member. Our Chapter’s Secretary/Treasurer, Mark O’English recently reported that we have 9 new members. It pays to increase our membership so please keep recruiting new members!

The ACRL National 14th Conference in Seattle was deemed a huge success. Over 4,300 members enjoyed the first sunny days and tolerated the last rainy days. The sessions were well attended and we received many positive remarks from the volunteers and attendees when they stopped by the Volunteer Booth. The 2011 conference will be held in Philadelphia.

It has been a pleasure to serve as ACRL-WA President and I look forward to another year as Past President. Have a great summer and I hope to see you all at Pack Forest in October.

Anna Salyer, Outgoing President