Washington, D.C.
October 16-18, 1996

Redefining Higher Education

Appendix I:

ARL Business Meeting: Part I and Part II

PART I

President's Report

MS. CLINE (Harvard University): I would like to call us to order, please. Thank you.

We have a bountiful agenda, as is typical of our business meetings, so let me begin first with a report from the Board on our meeting earlier this week. A major item for discussion was the electronic scholarly communication proposals that have been coming through ARL for some time now. We promised that we would spend time discussing that issue with the membership this morning, and that will be discussed at length a bit later in our agenda.

We addressed the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), reaffirming ARL sponsorship of that body and reviewing our agenda with CNI's Executive Director, Paul Peters. In our meeting we also discussed a whole host of copyright and intellectual property issues. You will most likely be hearing more about some of the committee activity, but, as far as your Board is concerned, we entrusted to the ARL Working Group on Copyright further deliberation of the issues relating to CONFU and its proposed guidelines. We have called for a summary report to make it easier for us to understand the status of those activities.

The Board also reaffirmed our need for continued discussion of these issues among the scholarly and higher education constituencies, and we expressed support that it be an ongoing priority to advance the discussion with other bodies. Recognizing what we felt was a good level of success in the summer meeting the Board held with other representatives of higher education on copyright, we recommended that we follow up with a similar meeting at a later point. We believe it is extremely important not to lose our focus on copyright; we need to be readily positioned for the next legislative session.

The Board also heard from Duane Webster on staffing at ARL, including recent recruitments, and on our budget.

Finally, the one really exciting, dynamic, and unpredictable thing that your Board does each year is that we have the privilege of electing the next President-elect for the Association. I am very pleased to tell you that the outcome of that election this year is Jim Neal. Congratulations.

(Applause)

Election of Board Members

That brings me to the point in our agenda when we elect new Board Board members, and for that I would like to call on the Chairman of the Nominating Committee, Gloria Werner.

MS. WERNER (University of California-Los Angeles): I must say that the Nominating Committee probably has the easiest task of any committee among the Association, because we get marvelous recommendations from all of you. It was a very short and sweet process for us.

Serving with me on the nominating committee were Martin Runkle, from the University of Chicago, and Pam Andr�, from the National Agricultural Library. I am happy to nominate as the slate for incoming Board members, Shirley Baker from Washington University, Ken Frazier from the University of Wisconsin, and Bill Potter from the University of Georgia.

Madame President, that is your slate.

MS. CLINE: By virtue of the fact that these are presented through a committee process, we don't require a motion, but I do want to seek any additional nominations that may come from the membership.

(No response.)

Seeing none, I then ask that these candidates be moved into office by acclamation.

(Applause)

Thank you. Congratulations to the three of you. The work of the Board is guaranteed to fill your calendar, should there be any voids.

Establishment of 1997 Dues

MS. CLINE: We are now at the point when we address our dues. This is an important business item that comes to us annually, and you will probably recall that we received a major mailing from Duane Webster mid-September on the dues. This mailing reported on the areas in which membership dues are expended, reiterating the Association's priorities. The Board, in advancing this recommendation to you, has given a very rigorous review of the Association's expenditures. We have not always advanced all the recommendations that have come out of the organization. We have been selective in focusing on strategic priorities for the Association and our intent has been to respond to what we have often heard from the membership, the concern that we keep the dues increases as low as possible. But balanced against that is always the expression coming from the membership of what our priorities need to be as an association.

With that in mind, Duane prepared the packet of information that accompanied the recommended dues increase. The recommended increase for 1997 is $600. It brings the total dues to $14,450. It represents a 4.3 percent increase over last year. Since this is brought to you as a Board recommendation, I don't need a formal motion. So at this point I would entertain discussion. If there is no discussion, I will move the question. All those who are in favor of passing the recommendation, please signify by saying "aye."

AUDIENCE: Aye.

MS. CLINE: Any opposed?

(No response.)

Thank you. That is, for any president, the hardest item of business.

Tributes to Directors

At this point, several of our members deserve a salute from the Association. I believe we have only one who is with us today, and we have asked Jim Neal if he would make a few remarks.

MR. NEAL (Johns Hopkins University): I rise to recognize and applaud Bob Miller, Director of Libraries at the University of Notre Dame, who is retiring and attending his final ARL meeting. Bob was a very influential and powerful force in my early professional life, providing me with extraordinary opportunities to grow and learn, and eventually with the inspiration to leave Notre Dame. Bob received his B.S. from Marquette, where he was a Woodrow Wilson fellow. His master's degree in history was from Wisconsin, and his library degree from Chicago.

He started at the Library of Congress and progressed through positions at Marquette; Parsons College, now gone; the University of Chicago; the University of Missouri-St. Louis, where he was Director; and he has been at Notre Dame since 1978. He was a Senior Fellow, and, in 1992, a visiting professor at the University of Warsaw. Few of us will have the honor and distinction to serve a university as Library Director for nearly 20 years.

Bob can cite many important accomplishments from his tenure at Notre Dame. Allow me to mention just a few. The development of outstanding collections of rare and specialized materials, clearly one of his passions; the promotion of rich, cooperative relationships with libraries across Indiana; the significant expansion of funding and staffing for the libraries, such as the recent negotiation for $3.9 million in new dollars to be received over a three-year period, and a growth in the libraries endowment from the $1 million that was available when he got there to over $33 million today.

My oldest memory of Bob is at an ALA mid-winter meeting in Dallas, where I received an urgent call in my hotel room telling me to find Bob, and so I raced all over the city for two hours, wearing new shoes and with bleeding feet. Another memory is at a mid-winter meeting in San Antonio when, after sharing several pitchers of beer, which we did often, I followed him, without his knowledge, along the River Walk back to his room, just in case he fell into the river, which he almost did several times.

Bob describes his greatest achievement as surviving this long. I describe it as taking a sleepy, regional academic library and developing it into a lively and distinguished research library.

Bob and his wife will be retiring to Arizona after he completes another visiting faculty appointment in Warsaw. Bob, we wish you well.

(Applause)

MS. CLINE: I would like to take a few minutes and call your attention to the fact that we have several other colleagues who are not here today who are also leaving the Association. The first of these is Jim Meyers. He retired as Dean of Temple University, Japan, the special assignment he had undertaken for Temple, and he has chosen to accompany his wife as she moves to a new position, Associate Provost for Libraries and Information Services at Wright State University. Jim served ARL on the Committee on Government Policies for several years, as well as on the Information Policies Committee, and brought to bear on the efforts of those groups his long-standing interest in law. I think many of you who have been a part of the Association during the time that Jim was here will recall how enthusiastically he pursued his law degree. I am confident that no matter what position he is or will be in he will be bringing his sense of social justice and his respect for the law to bear on his efforts.

Another colleague who has announced his retirement is Richard Talbot, from the University of Massachusetts. His resignation as Director of Libraries is effective the end of this calendar year. He has a lengthy history of service to ARL's committee activities and governing, having served in the early 1980s on our Committee on Statistics. For those of you who are new, the statistics issue is not new to ARL; it has been a long-standing area of focus for us. Richard also was a member of an ARL and Center for Research Libraries (CRL) joint committee on expanded access to journal collections, again from the early 1980s. He moved on to the Board of Directors and served on the Executive Committee for ARL, was a part of our Task Force on Membership Criteria in 1986 and 1987, and was on the Task Force for a National Strategy for Managing Scientific and Technological Information in 1991.

Another colleague who is stepping down from his position as Library Director at the end of the calendar year is Don Riggs, from the University of Michigan. He will be moving to the School of Information, where he will be a full time senior professor on the faculty. Don has worked on numerous ARL initiatives, of which I will just mention a few. He was a part of the Membership Committee to look at issues relating to non-university libraries in the mid-1980s, was involved in the Committee on the Management of Research Library Resources in 1990 to 1992, and then with the Research Collections Committee from 1992 to 1995.

There is one other colleague who we had every reason to believe would be with us today, until an accident occurred last Thursday in Boston, and that is John Laucus. [(Editor's note: see "Trolley Hits Librarian, Injuring Him Critically," Boston Globe 11 Oct. 1996: B13.])

In early September John wrote Duane the following note, which I read to you because it tells of him so well.

Dear Duane,

Here is one more for your transitions section. At the end of January '‘97 I will embark on a year's leave of absence and follow it through by retiring at the end of January '‘98, so this October session in Washington will be my last. I have enjoyed working in libraries since 1947 and at Boston University since 1960, and a great deal of that enjoyment in later years has come through associations with you and your people at ARL. I look forward to seeing you in D.C. next month. Happy autumn.

John Laucus had an exceptionally long career and great influence, particularly with the academic libraries in ARL, but those of you who know of his relationships with people at Boston Public know that he wasn't shy about helping them change their perspective, if need be. John graduated from Harvard College, majored in English Literature, and went to library school at Rutgers. He began his library career in Harvard's Baker library, the business administration library, worked there for about four years and then moved over to Boston University. He has used his influence there ever since. John held several positions there. I believe he started there in the business library, for a period of time worked with the undergraduate library, and he moved into the director's position in 1968.

John was the type of person who has influenced a lot of things in a quiet, behind-the-scenes way. When I arrived in Cambridge, he took me out to lunch and proceeded to give me, on the backs of whatever pieces of paper we could find in the restaurant, all sorts of clues as to how to walk about Boston and how to make the best use of the "T." They are wonderfully charming little scraps of paper that, depending on where I am going, I can slip in my purse and be perfectly prepared for whatever part of Boston I am aimed for. That was the kind of person he was.

Another thing that mattered a great deal to me, and I believe to many of the other librarians who worked in the Boston area, was the reception he hosted welcoming me to Harvard. It was held at BU, and what made it so special was that he invited a whole range of head librarians from the Boston area. How else would I have had the opportunity to meet someone who was from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute? That could have taken years to occur, but he had the gracious way of bringing a variety of people together in one room, and making sure that we all understood that we were committed to libraries and that, even though we might not always be in the same organizations or associations, we had lots of reasons to work together.

I am personally deeply sorry for this loss because he is the type of gentle influence that works to make so many of ARL's programs a success. So, in his absence, as in the absence of the other three, I would like to bring recognition to his career. Let's give them all a round of applause.

(Applause)

Now we have some committee reports; I will first call on Dale Canelas to talk about the Global Resources Program.

Report on the Global Resources Program

MS. CANELAS (University of Florida): I will give a brief overview of the Global Resources Program, a six year effort that has been funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The Committee on Research Collections has overseen a very complex series of consultations involving scholars, scholarly societies, ARL library directors, and those who serve as collection managers, to define the issues and identify productive courses of action. The publication that you all received in the spring of last year, Scholarship, Research Libraries, and Global Publishing [Jutta Reed Scott (Washington, DC: ARL, March 1996)] actually documents what had happened, what we found, and provides a framework for us to move on.

The impact of reduced holdings and increased reliance on sharing programs is impacting faculty, and how it will affect scholarly working habits is something for which we need to develop solutions. To do so, ARL sought the support of the Association of American Universities (AAU), and we are now making plans to work with a group of chief academic officers. Two years ago we started with three demonstration projects, dealing with Latin America, Germany and Japan. The most advanced project continues to be the Latin American Project, partly because it has Mellon Foundation funding. The other two have had to scrape by, largely with volunteer efforts. There are two more projects currently being developed, and the Center for Research Libraries is being involved in areas where they have strong programs, specifically in Southeast Asia and Japan.

The Global Resources Program really is not a single effort. It is a series of interconnected and federated efforts that do require coordination. Luckily, the good news I have to report is that ARL and AAU have reached a preliminary agreement with the Mellon Foundation to submit a proposal that would provide support for us for three years in order to accomplish four things: to create an ongoing global resources program; to provide a full-time coordinator for the three year term; to launch an educational effort to both inform faculty about the program and to build consensus on strategies for addressing these needs; and to establish an advisory council that would include chief academic officers and library directors from AAU and ARL institutions.

There is a handout available that describes this program (see Appendix III). I welcome and invite your questions, comments, and input. Thank you.

Report of the Working Group on Copyright

MR. NEAL: I will be reporting for the Information Policies Committee and for the Working Group on Copyright. It is important to review the status of recent legislative proposals in this arena, which address Copyright Term, the NII and Intellectual Property, Database Anti-piracy, Copyright Clarification, and Patent and Trademark Office Reform. None have passed. Remember our primary strategy as an association: To implement tactics to slow down the legislative process on copyright so that the key issues can be identified and debated and so that appropriate improvements supporting the interest of the higher education and research communities can be introduced.

We have been remarkably successful. One piece of legislation we need to be particularly attentive to in the forthcoming congressional session is the Database Investment and Intellectual Property Anti-Piracy Act of 1996. This is a response from the information industry to the 1991 Supreme Court decision Feist v. Rural Telephone that held that comprehensive collections of facts arranged in conventional formats were not protected under copyright.

This proposed legislation, which I encourage you to read, would extend protection to any databases that are "the result of qualitatively or quantitatively substantial investments of human, technical, financial or other resources in the collection, assembly, verification, organization or presentation of database contents." ARL must oppose this legislation, but with sensitivity to the interests of scholarly societies who have substantial investments in database publications. Significant commercial risks are now on the table with this legislation. We must be wary of moving important intellectual property issues outside of the constitutional area, and that is what this legislation proposes to do. We must protect the public domain status of government information. Watch this one. It is important.

Copyright issues are advancing to the international arena. The NII and the database protection legislation are being introduced at the World Intellectual Property Organization meetings to be held in Geneva this December. The American library community is very well represented through our work with the Digital Future Coalition. We are being represented at the world regional caucuses, and we will be at the meetings in December. We must stay the course. We must pursue both domestic and international advocacy and mobilization, we must cause as much mischief as possible in international meetings, and we must influence the national delegations in Geneva.

The CONFU draft guidelines have been a very important part of our intellectual property discussions over the last several years. We reviewed the status of these draft guidelines and how they affect the areas of electronic reserves, distance learning, digital images, interlibrary loan, and multimedia, and we concluded that ARL should oppose the draft guidelines, as they do not serve the needs or interests of higher education communities. ARL has been at the CONFU table. We have been trying to make the process work. We have been unable to achieve agreements in our efforts to define safe harbors and not to set limits, which take on the character of law.

We must now turn our attention to creating statements of best practices to assist our staffs working in these areas, and we propose to submit an ARL document for the CONFU's final report that will strongly define the position of the research library community and advocate the values of learning and knowledge discovery, things that are important and need to be protected.

The copyright briefing package that you all received has turned out to be an excellent tool for working within our university communities. We need to have meetings with our university counsels and faculty, particularly those who serve as journal editors, but we also need to more effectively articulate our values and our position to the public at large. We are recommending the development of a template with clear and simple explanations and anecdotes of practical implications of intellectual property legislation that could be part of a nationally coordinated effort organized through ARL.

Report of the Information Policies Committee

Moving to Information Policies, you have received a copy of the ARL Strategic Plan on Government Information in Electronic Formats, which was endorsed by the Board at its summer meeting (see Appendix IV). This plan proposed activities such as educating, data gathering, political advocacy, and the creation of pilot project development activities. Moving from that strategic plan, we are now organizing meetings with government statistical agency representatives to develop partnerships between ARL institutions and government agencies in this arena. We are organizing a meeting with government agency CIOs. We are setting up a meeting among project leaders from ARL libraries who are working in this area, and we are looking to develop a forum for assistant directors, government documents librarians, and faculty researchers to talk about the developments.

As we learned at lunch yesterday, campus information policies are a very, very important issue down the road. The issues of academic rights, responsibilities, and conduct in such areas as privacy, harassment, pornography, copyright violations, hate speech, and inappropriate uses all are going to be on our plates in our universities and our libraries, and the Information Policies Committee is planning to put together a set of principles for campus information policies that can serve us all in our work at our universities.

Finally, the Information Policies Committee spent a great deal of time at this meeting talking about Internet2. As we know, there are two major developments. The work of university presidents and CIOs focus on network capacity and dependability, and AAU will be meeting on Sunday to discuss this. The second development is the Clinton Administration's announcement last week in Knoxville of their plan to enhance the Internet for the research community. We need to be sure that the issues of digital library content are a priority in these initiatives, and we need to make sure that the future of federal and university funding is responsive to the needs of our libraries.

MS. CLINE: Thank you, Jim, and your various groups. If I may editorialize, I would like to underline the point that we need to educate people about and engage them in these important issues. We have a lot of hard work ahead.

Salute to Board Members

At this point I would like ask Jerry Campbell and Jim Williams to come forward, please. I would like to thank you two Board members. Their Your last service for the Board was the meeting earlier this week, but, as you leave, you never really leave behind your Board responsibilities; we count on them you and will often lean on them you to help make sure that the Association's work is truly successful.

Jim has kept us pointed forward in so many important areas, but the one that stands out for me, the one which I feel gratitude for personally as an ARL director, is in the area of our diversity accomplishments. There were so many times when the going was rough, it was hard to come up with funding, and we weren't quite certain how much of a presence we could make for ARL in this area, but in terms of thinking of the management of our organizations, Jim was always able to articulate its importance, especially if we are going to succeed in the new millennium only a few years ahead.

As for Jerry, what can I say about a man who has stood in front of this microphone so many times, who was our presiding officer, who took us through some very tough issues, and who has also made quite a name for ARL in our relationship with AAU?. He has worked both behind the scenes and in the context of many meetings, and he has kept us focused on the big issues, such as reminding us of our purpose in the educational arena for the many constituencies that we serve.

Both of these men have kept us focused on our vision and have made certain that the Association keeps its credibility high in both the education and research fields. We are confident that, while we may eventually have libraries without walls, there will always be walls on which these mementos will hang. Board service is a demanding task, and it is nice to be able to recognize two people who have contributed in so many ways to our Association. I thank you.

(Applause)

Now, at this point, Duane will give us the Executive Director's report.

Report of the Executive Director

MR. WEBSTER: As a bridge to my own report, I would like you to focus on the report on Association activities over the last six months (see Appendix VI). This document, which was distributed to you in advance of the meeting, is our effort to be as transparent as possible. It describes what we are doing on your behalf, and includes working with committees, working with the community, focusing on the agenda the Board has set for us, and attempting to do as much to advance the interest of research libraries as we can. I am very eager that you look at this; to facilitate that, there is a set of highlights on the front page to help you pursue those parts of the report that are of particular interest to you.

I would now like to salute the staff who have worked so hard on your behalf over the last six months or longer. They deserve special acknowledgment for their hard work and good efforts. Part of those efforts is directed at making more and more of our publications and communications electronically available. On page 62 of the activity report there is a description of our expanded website and a list of the addresses involved. I draw your attention to it because both the report and the ARL newsletter are available at our site on the Web. We are expecting to make more and more available there, bringing it to you more quickly and more efficiently. I particularly want to acknowledge Dru Mogge's special efforts in this area.

The other item in the activity report I want to draw to your attention to in the activity report is a new service coming from the Office of Management Services, described on page 44. It is an information service aimed at inventorying and describing key projects in select areas, serving as examples of libraries that are transforming themselves in the new electronic age. The service is therefore called Transforming Libraries: Issues and Innovations. It will have four issues a year, and the first topic is Electronic Reserves. We have designed a package that is part print and part electronic. The printed form will be issued quarterly, but each issue will be accompanied with a web site address for an updating and moderated site, allowing for questions and exchanges about the innovations and issues.

This will be part of the Systems and Procedures Exchange Center (SPEC) series, and it is an attempt to move SPEC into a new arena. Rather than simply describing current practices, Transforming Libraries is an effort to assess projects that are helping to transform research libraries and prepare them for a new period. The service is also different in other respects. Instead of burdening you with another survey, we are asking an expert, based on his knowledge and investigation, to collect the information and provide it to you. We are also seeking to use this service as an attempt to describe innovation wherever it might occur, in both ARL members and in nonmember libraries. There will be a real technological focus in the service.

This is a service that has come about in part because of our close discussions with the Management Committee, chaired by Paul Kobulnicky. The Committee has been looking at the future of the Office of Management Services (OMS) and has urged us to reconceptualize that office's vision and mission. Historically, the OMS has been focused on helping to improve the management and operations of libraries. It is going to continue in that capacity, but, with the encouragement of the Management Committee, we are also going to extend that capability in order to provide support for those of you who are determined to transform your institutions to allow them to succeed in the new environment. It is a very exciting direction for the OMS.

I would like to also note some of the changes taking place in our team here at ARL. We have had a couple of very important losses, but, as a result, we have had the great opportunity to recruit new talent to the Association. First, as you know, Mary Case joined us as Director of the Office of Scholarly Communication last June and she has already begun to put her skillful talents to work on this important part of ARL's agenda. We have also been able to attract Deborah Jakubs to work with us on the Global Resources Program and with other collection issues. She is working as a part-time Visiting Program Officer while remaining at Duke University, and will be assisting the Program between now and the end of the year; we hope it will turn out to be even longer.

Joining us mid-December is a delightful addition to our team, DeEtta Jones, the new Program Officer for Diversity. She is currently the Director of the Office of Human Rights for Ft. Collins, Colorado, and prior to that she was in charge of minority recruitment and diversity leadership training at Colorado State University. She comes with an M.S. in Student Affairs in Higher Education and an undergraduate degree from Colorado State. While she is new to libraries as organizations, she has great experience in recruitment issues and in leadership training. We are looking forward to her bringing a strong and fresh contribution to our diversity Diversity Program.

Another staff change is that one of our key people, Patricia Brennan, has decided to return to her homeland of Ireland for a six-month leave of absence. She will be sorely missed, but we are doing our best to encourage her to come back soon.

I invite all of our members to come and spend a day in Washington with the ARL staff; we are very eager to get to know you more directly. We think if you would come and spend time with us not only would you get to know us a bit better, but, more importantly, we could learn more about your interests and concerns. We would very much like you to come and get to know the resources and capabilities that are serving your interest.

I end by saying how much I have appreciated working with Nancy Cline over the course of this last year. Nancy has been a real trooper, taking on the ARL presidency while changing jobs. It is a real tribute to her energy, determination, talent, and leadership zeal that she has been able to balance it all so well.

MS. CLINE: Well, I have certainly been able to count on a lot of really competent people here.

Discussion on Electronic Scholarly Communication

MS. CLINE: Now, we have assured all of you that we would spend some time discussing electronic scholarly communication, and, if you will permit me, I will give you just a bit of background in order to aim us all in the same direction.

First of all, the Board reviewed ARL's long-standing commitment to scholarly communication and concluded that the electronic dimension is a natural evolution for us. The real questions are: Are we doing all that we can be doing? Are there some areas in which we should be moving differently?

The willingness of the AAU presidents to collaborate on this agenda provided a real opportunity for ARL, and has certainly brought us visibility in the education community. At the same time, with that visibility comes continually growing responsibilities to keep our leadership edge. We have really taken a lead on this initiative, including moving into different constituencies, and people continually turn to us for guidance, raising expectations beyond what we ourselves might raise. So how we follow through on those relationships is very important. Our AAU/ARL Steering Committee moved us to thinking of a consortium-based effort, and in the spring we put together a Board Working Group, populated by Nancy Eaton, Jim Neal, Barbara von Wahlde, Jerry Campbell, and Paul Peters from CNI, on whom we relied for some key staff assistance.

Previously we had been moving in the direction of supporting various projects. However, it soon became clear that, in many arenas, projects were already moving forward. As a result, the Board concluded that advancing a new series of competitive projects was probably not the best way to be in sync with what was happening with the Internet and the Web. Instead we concluded decided we should seek to support a framework so that the ongoing projects would, in a cumulative way, add up to positive results for the scholarly community.

After our May Membership Meeting in Vancouver, we began discussing a framework for electronic publishing, asking for your input, as well as asking ARL and CNI staff to pursue discussions with people who might be labeled pioneers in electronic publishing. We also asked staff to look at some profiles of organizations that might provide a model for a collaborative enterprise in this arena. Some of you who have been involved in electronic publishing activities in your respective institutions know about those conversations. As each conversation opened, it led to an awareness of yet other activities that were out there, confirming that what was needed was to look at a larger context for enabling electronic scholarly communication.

During this fall, refinements continued on the concept of a framework for electronic publishing. In our Board meeting earlier this week we boiled things down even more in terms of what might be feasible directions for ARL, and we explored some of the alternative strategies considering both the up-sides and the risks of involvement. We concluded with the general sense that there certainly were some main areas for the Association to explore, and this morning provides a time for us to hear from our members what they think we should be doing. I understand that the Scholarly Communications Committee had a lively review of the issues when they met two days ago, and I am sure that that committee interaction will help us evolve some constructive guidance here this morning.

Paul Peters and Mary Case have now passed out a document called "An Enabling Infrastructure for Non-Profit Network Scholarly Communication" (see Appendix VI). Someone has labeled the document a "straw proposal" making it a bit more tentative than most proposals. What we really want now is to use this document as a device to focus, but not limit, the discussion here at our business meeting.

Suggested in the document are some of the characteristics for this enabling infrastructure, and on the third page are posed some discussion questions. Let me stress that this is a conceptual proposal, intentionally so, whose purpose is to help us get a sense of the general direction that ARL might pursue.

We propose that each person take the liberty of considering this yourself, but to then use it to formulate group discussion. We are looking for multiple input streams, both that which is given to us as a group at this meeting and the personal input provided to us in writing after the meeting. So, if you don't like the tone of discussion at your table, you have all the latitude in the world to exercise your own opinion. The discussion at the table, we hope, will bring different perspectives together so that what might seem like a dull or impractical idea for one institution will maybe excite one of your colleagues, and together you can work through its importance to our total membership and the constituencies that we serve.

We will now have a break, and when you return we will have an open question time. Then we will have small group discussion, followed by a plenary discussion so that we can benefit from the exchanges that take place at the individual tables.

[At this point there was a 30-minute break in the meeting.]

PART II

MS. CLINE: In the course of the break, I found that there were still questions regarding the history of this proposal. So I have asked Paul Peters to briefly fill in those gaps before we continue.

MR. PETERS (CNI): Thank you. Last winter and spring, we began discussing ways to support collaboration among new projects using the Internet in general and the Web. As this conversation began unfolding, the resulting IScAN document, put together and given to you in May, had become really a stitched-together version of a variety of member inputs. A lot of people who saw the IScAN document concluded that we were talking about IScAN as a publisher, even though the conversations we were channeling never were in the main about creating a new publisher that would be owned and operated by ARL or a group with whom ARL was associated. Nevertheless, this was the perception that we heard from your comments on the IScAN document.

The second thing that I would like to mention is that this new, current proposal addresses purely non-profit publishing. I want to take this opportunity, however, to say that this is not anti-commercial publishing; rather, it is pro non-commercial publishing. In addition, this proposal is not about establishing a centralized production capacity and all that that implies. Therefore, one interesting thread of the conversation you are to have today asks if ARL should be doing more to promote not-for-profit publishing.

The last thing that I would like to say is that there are many avenues down which the idea in the proposal before you today could proceed. We could continue onto more studies, take some organization already in the field and ask it to incorporate this agenda into its program, form a new organization or project, or we just might not proceed at all. So, this is intended to be a public conversation about strategy.

MR. BILLINGS (University of Texas): Because I really believe in promoting for-profit, good, reasonably priced professional publishing, I would like good, strong, professional not-for-profit publishers to publish well and deliver. So, in effect, it seems to me that ARL's position needs to take those aspects into account.

MR. NEAL: We want that sort of feedback. What other advice can you give, from the strategic point of view? The Board will meet after this meeting, where it will take into account the discussions here and any additional feedback you provide. This is an opportunity for the membership to engage the same sort of topics that have been engaged by the Scholarly Communication Committee, by the Board Working Group, and by the entire Board that has been working on this intently for at least nine months. You also now have the opportunity to make a comment that will be channeled into the discussion process in a very deliberate fashion.

MS. CLINE: Harold Billings' point is an important one. Earlier, someone approached me and asked why ARL was so anti-publishers. Depending upon what you read of our work or where you encounter us, we could be seen in that light. So, we need to be careful of that misconception.

MS. von WAHLDE (State University of New York-Buffalo): Because of my extreme interest in this topic, I asked to be involved with this particular Board working group. This is just a personal perspective, but I am concerned that it takes us so long, as an organization, to massage an interesting and good idea. How much input do we need from the membership? How much time should be given to the Board and the staff to work these ideas and bring them back to us, because I believe that sometimes we have a good idea, but then in a moment it is gone and we have lost the opportunity. I would hate to see that happen here.

MS. SLOAN (Columbia University): I would be happy to respond. I, too, have been involved in this effort, as a member of the AAU/ARL Steering Committee. It has evolved. Many documents have been sent to you over the course of the past year. As Chair of ARL's Scholarly Communication Committee, I met with the Board this week, and I would reiterate what the Board members have said to us this morning. We had an idea. We had a limited period of time, and it caused us to really begin strategizing in a very open forum. The conversations with the Board and the committee have helped to shape and clarify issues. What I would like to stress is that we are dealing with an idea or a concept about what direction to take next.

What we want to hear from you is whether you want the Association to move forward in this direction, or, as Harold suggests, with some elements added to or taken out of the proposal. Surely there is a great deal of clarification and defining to do, and that work will be fed back to you in what I hope is a very timely fashion; we will not wait for the next committee meeting. If it is agreed that we should move forward, the Board will convene a small group to begin working on the details.

(From the Audience): I am confused. I have carefully read through all of the documentation quite a bit, and I remain utterly unclear as to what you want my opinion or my input to be. There are apparent contradictions in the documents that I have that leave me uncertain as to what is intended. While I certainly feel that we all agree with the idea that something would be desirable in the way of effort, it would help if somebody could tell me in simple words what the proposal is. If, indeed, it is an idea and a concept, and what you want to know is if we want to do something, then it seems that we are back to the point where we once again say that we do want to do something. But, if what we have before us is a specific proposal, we need it to be more specific and quite a bit clearer as to what is needed.

For example, I am so unclear because the documentation itself is very unclear as to whether we are about discussing a collaborative program or a consortium. It says on the first page of document one that we are considering the creation of a consortium. Another document I saw said that, clearly, we are not talking about a consortium; we are talking about a collective program. Just now it was said that we are talking about an idea or a concept. I would appreciate a clarification.

MS. CLINE: Well, let me see if I can pull this together from the Board. In the spring we felt we had a window of opportunity. We had the attention of the AAU presidents and of some other players. In response to what Barbara said, I think the Board felt that the time was right to move forward. However, as we began to scale some of the issues and to try to identify how some of the specifics would work out — we were talking about seeking a business plan on some business models, for instance, we began to get questions and comments that indicated that some of our members didn't feel this was a direction in which ARL should move. One member view was that this direction could introduce a competitive force that could negatively affect their institution; another view was that ARL might cloud the issues we were trying to address, rather than bring clarity. That was why, in July, the Board felt that we had better get a response from the membership before proceeding further. Hence, this discussion is meant to do that.

So it is conceptual. It is loose, and what we need is to get clarification for some of these issues. Does one type of organization accomplish more than another? Certainly from the Board's point of view, if ARL is to do anything we have to make certain that we don't jeopardize our current standing as a 501 C 3 organization or in any other way. We just weren't certain that all the membership was behind us, but, if the sense of the meeting here today is that we want to keep this moving, subsequent steps will be quickly taken.

MR. CAMPBELL: It is easy to be confused in this matter. Let me say where I think it has come down. This has all been conceptual. It has happened in stages partly through our relationship to the AAU, and that continues to modify. At the moment, though, I believe it is best not to speak in terms of any specifics or about any particular organization.

Let me just boil it down to what I think the kernel of this idea is. Part of the difficulty we have suffered in the past generation, relative to the networked environment where we have either shared information or not, is that the environment basically has no clear management element.

As conversations go forth about the Internet environment in which we work, whether it is an the old Internet or a the new Internet2, the question that is always raised last, if it is raised at all, is how we will manage our own in this environment. Manage is the key element there. We tend to talk a lot about what the technical infrastructure of the environment would be, and that absorbs most of the interest in the activities. But the question of what the environment will be like from a management standpoint is extremely important.

All that we are trying to do with the "straw proposal" document is test your agreement on a few key points and strategies. Point number one: , that how we manage the environment and what that environment is like are very important. Point number two: that you would like for ARL to be a part of keeping that issue visible on the agenda with AAU. I would like for ARL to be responsible for telling the AAU that we can't let this whole conversation be absorbed with the technical speculations. We need to talk about the kind of environment we want to create, and realize that the way we manage that environment will impact the way we manage intellectual property. How do we want to impact intellectual property? We want healthy commercial publishers, but we want to get a reasonable price from our viewpoint.

These are complicated issues, but we don't want to be thrown into a role we do not want to get into. We are asking if you are interested in ARL being the organization that tries to brings this focus to a discussion about managing the network environment. If so, we go from here to try to deciding on the best way to do it.

I would like to know how, in the Next Generation Internet, our institutions might affect the policy that governs the internet environment. I don't know that now. Well, actually I do know that now. It is a very unsatisfactory answer. So we have been trying to pose a question about how to discuss a corporate approach to defining and determining the environment in which we will all be operating. So, for the sake of the discussion this morning we ought to drop out all the specifics.

MR. BENNETT (Yale University): I really support what Jerry Campbell said, and I want to remind us of some history. Maybe five years ago this association started thinking that perhaps copyright would be central to future communication in some way, and we moved, over a period of time, toward a central commitment of our energies to that issue. It seems to me that we are at the same point with regard to creating an infrastructure for scholarly communication, and what is before us is not a question of whether we will do it this way or that way, but whether we will commit our central energies, or at least a significant piece of our central energies, to addressing those questions. I don't know what the outcome of such a commitment would be any more than I know what the outcome of our ongoing involvement with copyright management will be, but I believe that is the question before us.

MS. EATON (Iowa State University): I am a member of the Board. The last two speakers captured some of what I would like to say. What the Board, along with John Vaughn from the AAU, has been struggling with for the last nine to twelve 12 months is the fact that the AAU presidents have engaged in this, but they have a certain mode of operation. They are very action oriented, and our concern right now is that they stay focused on the two tracks of their agenda. One track is the technology itself, and the other is the intellectual content; we want to be sure that both those tracks continue and remain parallel. Next week the IT people will have a very practical proposal in terms of infrastructure and Internet2, which could simply overwhelm the content portion of the agenda. At a practical level, we are trying to figure out if there are areas to recommend to the presidents that we can work on jointly and that also follow the second track, intellectual property and content. That, I believe, is the hard part with which we are struggling.

MR. ROCHELL (New York University): I would like to go back to what Harold Billings said. This is a very visionary document. I think we are will all, going to individually and collectively, need some kind of anxiety reduction, if you will, in this area, and we are going to trytrying to find a way to get that. I agree also that, to the general membership, it is pretty hard to figure out exactly what it is that we are trying to accomplish here, other than relieving anxiety.

I would also like to clear the air a little bit. I believe that the idea of a consortium is probably five years too early, and I would not like to see the Association embark on a lot of activity in that particular direction. Having said that, I do believe that there is good work going on in the organization now, and I would like to see some continued monitoring, watching, and coordinating, whatever we are doing through CNI, through the Scholarly Communication Committee, and so forth. I am speaking basically about the publishing world. I would like to see us acknowledge that we are not in a crisis to establish an organization or move in any particular direction at the moment, but that we continue down the track of making sure the membership is fully informed about what is going on in electronic publishing today and informed about those the core issues that concern us all of us.

MS. CLINE: Let me ask that you now work in small groups for about 20 minutes, and then we will come back and resume this broader conversation. Of the things that you have heard, have been thinking about, and have read before, if there are some areas that you think are highly dangerous for ARL to tread in, take this time to indicate so. If you think there are areas that would be highly productive for us, please indicate those. We heard yesterday that we should be working with cataloging, organizing, and archiving electronic information. Everyone is forming expectations for us. This part of the Membership Meeting is the time for us to talk to each other, to express your opinions, sentiments, and reactions are.

(From the Audience): I think this plenary session will be much more useful than the table discussion would be.

MS. CLINE: We are an agile organization. Let me take a vote. For? Against? Well, it looks like you have your finger on the pulse. We will remain in plenary session.

MR. MOSHER (University of Pennsylvania): My wish is still to clarify what this it is that we are trying to considering, and I would like to suggest a slight redrafting of what was said to see if it captures the intent. My understanding, then, is that

we propose that ARL adopt policies and devise selected vehicles to contribute to the effective management of and to encourage publishers in the network environment.

I would have said not-for-profit publishers, but people are not in agreement as to whether we are only dealing with those publishers. My sense is that we want to encourage publishers that have to do with academic information.

MS. CLINE: Thank you. Merrily?

MS. TAYLOR (Brown University): Well, perhaps I speak only for myself, but I think there is still quite a bit of confusion here as to exactly what we are talking about, particularly as it is reflected in the straw proposal that perhaps is visionary because it doesn't say anything. I don't mean to be harsh, but it is just so broad that it doesn't give me an idea of what ARL would do if we said yes. Is it the question of whether ARL should take a productive role in encouraging our universities to be more pro-active in putting material online, which is something that we have been talking about in this association for probably ten years? The problem we are facing is that everyone thinks it should be happening, but somehow the mechanisms to make it happen don't seem to be occurring. That is what I would like to see us try to get to: what we could do to make that happen.

I am behind us taking a more active role. I want to make that clear. I just don't understand what the focal point is in terms of action.

MS. BAKER (Washington University-, St. Louis): We have all heard about the technology until we are blue in the face, and our presidents do tend to think that is the only issue. They have also said however that they are prepared to do anything that shows that the policies and the content are important as well, and we are a group that should stand ready and able to talk about these things. I think that would be valuable, and I would look for some modification of the proposal as restated by Paul Mosher to make sure that we get the policy formation in there on equal footage with technology issues. Thank you.

MS. CLINE: There has been a request that we restate the proposal.

([The proposal as restated by Dr. Mosher was displayed on an overhead transparency.])

MS. WERNER: I would like Paul Peters to walk through this document. People say it is too non-specific for them. It seems to me that it is a lot more specific now than earlier drafts, even though it might well need to be even more so.

MS. CLINE: What we are trying to stay focused on is the three- page "straw proposal" that was handed out today, and which Paul Mosher then heightened or broadened with a recommendation.

MR. MOSHER: I was really just trying to redraft the second paragraph of the introduction so that it would be clear enough to understand discussion question number one.

MS. CLINE: Okay. Now, Paul Peters do you want to quickly step through the key elements of the straw proposal document?

MR. PETERS: Yes and no. I can honestly say yes and no because I would not want anyone to take the document as more important than the conversation. But I would be happy to go through the document. Where would be a good place to begin, the introduction or the individual purposes?

MS. CLINE: The purposes.

MR. PETERS: These five purposes are those that seem to have the most resonance with the Board and then the Scholarly Communication Committee. They are derived from the so-called "focus document," one of the documents that was mailed to you in October. So, putting all these purposes together, today's conversation is looking for ways that ARL, in combination with organizations such as AAU, ACLS, the individual libraries, the presses, and other collaborators could work together to ensure maximum access by users and maximum market for providers, to improve the flow of access to scholarly information, to influence the economics in traditional scholarly information, to contribute to a more competitive and balanced marketplace, and to exploit emerging technologies for the benefit of education and research.

Are there any questions about the purposes?

(From the Audience): The word management never appears, if that is the central issue.

MR. PETERS: If the word management does not appear in the statement, I think it is fair to say that that idea was brought up during this session. It was not as clear to us then as it is now.

The three questions that have started the most discussion in this meeting are, first, who participates? It was a working group choice that the participants would come together around a certain set of principles. So naturally, the second question that sparked discussion is, what are the principles or criteria? And, thirdly, what would be the activity's major functions?

The participants are thought to be predominantly academic libraries and presses, and scholarly and scientific societies that want to work in partnerships with the other disciplines on the principles. Other kinds of organizations might also participate if they are willing to contribute to the purposes and embrace the principles of the activity.

The principles that would define the core of the activity would begin with strong agreement as to the use and reuse of intellectual property, and with the promotion of access as a very high priority. Secondly, there would need to be a strong commitment to pricing strategies that ensure revenue levels that provide incentives to the creators of intellectual property, among others. Inter-operating platforms, products, and services need to be a priority, and, finally, a strong commitment to affecting long-term archiving of network information.

One of the key functions for this new activity, that which we have heard people talking about at this meeting, is the promotion of these purposes and principles in order to make them more visible in the marketplace, for instance, through a brand identification for this collective activity. It is also thought that another function could be to convene panels, small groups of people who could hear and offer recommendations regarding any differences and disputes that may arise between members of the activity. The word we are not using is arbitration. The idea is to offer some form of mediation, an alternative to litigation as the only option for dealing with differences and disputes.

This collective activity would also function to adopt, and in some cases develop, and certainly implement, best practices and technical standards. It is thought that the collective activity would also write grants and develop venture capital pools, and that it would disseminate, and in some cases conduct, various kinds of research.

MR. BILLINGS: Our organization, ARL, has been involved in these kinds of activities for a number of years. It seems to me that what we are looking for right now is perhaps is a new vehicle to bring these efforts into a new focus. Perhaps to find a new, more active, aggressive way of pushing some of these things forward. One of the things that I feel most fortunate about was the opportunity in 1990 to be part of the ARL Board that established the Coalition for Networked Information, which, frankly, seems to be the organization that reflects a lot of what we have been saying. I find it very puzzling if we now seek a new organization.

MS. BUTLER (State University of New York-Albany): Harold's point is exactly what I want to ask about. Perhaps everyone else in the room understands the difference between the particular purposes that yet another organization might pursue and the purposes of CNI. However, I think that is an issue to be addressed, as I am not the only one confused by it.

MR. FRAZIER (University of Wisconsin): Four quick points, and this is my attempt to try to focus on issues of concern to my institution and areas where ARL may be of help. I believe we need to redirect our acquisitions resources to publishing enterprises sympathetic with academic values, that is, change the way we spend money. We need to develop and support ventures that develop communications in electronic form. Once again, that has to do with how we spend our money. It is very important for us at Wisconsin to encourage faculty members and certain editorial boards to address the issues of reasonable price and access to information for the scholarly community.

Finally, I personally favor the formation of national licensing consortia, and I note the problems with this idea. It was the main reason I was involved in developing the CrossFire-Minerva project. The achievement here is that the development plan can enlarge the market and will improve the terms and conditions of the license. I believe that is essential to our future. We need to enlarge the market so that publishing enterprises can recover costs and keep prices reasonable so that we can provide scholarly access.

MR. BISHOP (Northwestern University): When Jerry Campbell started talking about Internet2, it seemed to me that we broadened this whole issue rather dramatically, and we run the risk, then, of having it so broad that we really cannot accomplish a great deal. I also think that when that happens, or if that happens, it does become a real issue in terms of the Coalition for Networked Information. I think one of the major benefits CNI has had is that it has brought EDUCOM, CAUSE, and ARL together, eliminating duplicative efforts and allowing us to focus our energies together.

I think the Internet2 kinds of issues are most appropriate for the CNI environment. I would agree with Paul Mosher that the initial proposal is extremely vague and very hard to understand. But, when you go through it, look at the specifics, it becomes a good deal clearer, and it focuses specifically on publishing in a networked environment. At that point, it becomes a little unclear as to whether this is an ARL or CNI issue, and it might go either way. It would seem to me that we need to stop and take a look and see what this proposal is, what it is that we are we trying to accomplish. Are we trying to solve the overall infrastructure problems of the network? Are we trying to deal with not-for-profit publishing? Are we trying to satisfy issues of archiving? What is it that we are trying to do?

MS. CLINE: Paul.

MR. KOBULNICKY (University of Connecticut): I want to pull out a point that, again, Ken raised. I think it is a very institutional point of view. I am wondering if it is not important for us here to articulate the particular leverage that we are bringing to this discussion. We talked about goals, but the goals that I read here are the same goals that we have died for as long as I have been involved in research libraries. So what is it that we are now bringing to the table for change? That is what we need to articulate in order to get this organization's commitment, both as an organization, but more importantly, as individual members. I want to see the kinds of changes that are proposed here, but I need to know what I am going to ante up. If I am not anteing anything, then I need to know what it is that I am being asked to commit to. I want to commit something, but we need to articulate what that is.

MS. CLINE: Merrily.

MS. TAYLOR: I like some of the points that Ken Frazier made because they refer to specific actions that we can encourage and commit to. For instance, Johns Hopkins created a wonderful model project that we can use to look at and reflect upon. We could then go to the presidents of universities that have presses and impress upon them that that project is something to emulate and build upon, and discovering the characteristics of that project that are of value would be a useful role that ARL could play.

I will just add one other point. A few years ago, Brian Hawkins from Brown was delivering a talk, which he gave to several organizations. He was, in fact, talking about a model for a consortium. One thing he suggested was to have all of our institutions take one percent of our acquisitions budgets, pool those resources and devote them to electronic publishing. Furthermore, he pointed out the need to lobby in Washington to encourage the government to make their back files accessible. It might be time to resurrect some of those ideas and see if there is anything preferential here. He was hoping for foundation funding to get that model off the ground, but that did not happen.

MS. CLINE: Well, you see this is one of the realities that the Board came up against. If we are looking at large numbers of zeros to manage an enterprise, whether it comes from venture capital, staff resources, ARL budget, or soft money, for all of these, even soft money, somebody in ARL has to pursue the grants, manage the expenditures, and so on. So, as we began to look at some of the practical aspects, we then realized that we needed to do some more consulting with members before committing such resources.

MS. MOBLEY (Purdue University): I think we are at the beginning of something and don't know where it is going to go or how it is going to be shaped, but, when I originally read the document, I was pleased with some of the direction there, because, like Carlton Rochelle, I have the responsibility of the university press. I was challenged by the executive vice president to move to a different model. He didn't tell me to look at the Hopkins model, but that was the one I pulled out. I think many of us will be challenged to have these types of relationships and be aggressive in the change in scholarly communication on campus. We need to keep the conversation open.

(From the Audience): Admittedly, this straw proposal document is brief and carries no specifics. I can understand why it is confusing, given the reams of very specific papers that preceded it. What we were looking for and what, I think, we have heard, is that, in fact, you do want the Board to continue to move forward. I have not heard anyone object, and, given the number of conflicting messages we were receiving in a short period of time, we really wanted a check of the membership. This is something we want to pursue; I have not heard anyone say otherwise.

MS. CLINE: I agree, and that reminds me. I need to allow private space, in case there is a vehement opinion that doesn't want to appear in the meeting proceedings. So let me take Paul's comments, and then we will go into five minutes of writing time to develop your comments.

MR. MOSHER: I agree with the comment before that we are five years away. We really are looking at some national organization but this kind of policy has to evolve for another five years. On the other hand, I think that our presidents are looking for us to be activists in moving this agenda forward. When I spoke a few minutes ago, I made it absolutely clear that the library will be a key player in moving this agenda forward. I think there are things that we can do locally now to give our presidents comfort that that is happening. What we need to do is act locally and show that we are involved, and we are going to make a change. I am not confident that it is time for some national organization or involvement to evolve.

MR. WEBSTER (ARL): We have two distinct capabilities here that are important to our future: ARL's Office of Scholarly Communication and the Coalition for Networked Information. How we task them, what we ask them to do, and how we employ them are going to be very important. It is notable to see both Mary Case (ARL's- OSC) and Paul Peters (CNI) working together to support this discussion to help us both to express what is needed and then to be available for us to pursue that need.

(From the Audience): I am concerned about having a national organization to do all this instead of entering into collaborative discussions at this point. I also have a press, and I know that the people in scholarly presses are not overly happy that we think we can have lengthy discussions like this without including them. I think we need to start a collaborative discussion. Therefore, I was very concerned about the great deal of ambiguity in the participant section regarding the involvement of individual presses and individual libraries versus national organizations. I believe that we need to build on the existing relationships or create a new cooperative environment that will allow key players of national organizations that are concerned with this issue to think together.

MS. CLINE: I believe that ARL has been reasonably successful at creating those relationships. What we heard rather clearly is that we needed an initial conversation among ourselves that respected our role as libraries in order to make certain that we were comfortable in these broader, collaborative enterprises. Some of our members are working with university presses, others with different consortia, and many of the scholarly associations. We are keeping those relationships going, but the reason we brought this up in our business meeting was so that we could have a little time for ourselves. We have heard a variety of perspectives.

MR. WEBSTER: We do have a partnership with AAUP and ACLS. There is a joint symposium that Mary Case is designing for next year, probably in June or July. We also have several joint projects before AAUP and ACLS that help us talk about these issues together. So we will continue to go down that path of seeking opportunities for collaborative discussion.

MS. CLINE: My only disappointment is that we didn't have about another 20 minutes because I think we hit some issues and were just beginning to get the feel of how important they could be. We will get some sort of a summary to members as quickly as possible, partly also for those who had to leave early.

Closing Remarks

MS. CLINE: In closing, let me say that this meeting could not have been as successful as I feel it has been without the wonderful help of Mary Jane Brooks, who makes all sorts of things come together. We really value that talent, and that of all the ARL staff, whose knowledge and commitment throughout the year has brought us to a point where we can come to these meetings, effectively engage in the most important parts of our discussion, and really keep the business of the Association moving forward. It makes it a wonderful Association to preside over.

Many of you stopped me and told me that you thought yesterday's meeting was a very productive session, but I have to say I didn't really have that much of a hand in shaping it. I need to say thank you to Paul Kobulnicky, the Management Committee, and the ARL staff who pulled an awful lot of yesterday's pieces together. That also signifies to me how well we work as a team. So, to all of you who helped make yesterday such a successful part of this meeting, I give my thanks, but also know that many of your colleagues really appreciated it.

At this point, I would like to present our new president, Gloria Werner, with the gavel. Gloria.

MS. WERNER: It is an honor and a privilege to accept this gavel, Nancy, and in return, I want to give to you a very small token of the esteem held for you by everyone in this room, and certainly the Board, for your superb service as our president this last year.

(Applause)

MS. CLINE: Thank you.

MS. WERNER: For those of you who know me well at all, you know that participating in groups that don't do much is not anything that I condone. When I agreed to be on the ARL Board it intrigued me a lot, and I asked myself if I really could say if this is an action-oriented group or not. You understand, you are all on various different councils, committees, and the like. Serving on the ARL Board has been a true educational experience. It is more stimulating than anything I have ever done professionally, and I think it is truly remarkable.

I have tried to sort out in my mind why that is. I think this morning was a good example. We are grappling with truly critical and important issues that impact not just our libraries but our institutions and the shape of things to come. I think that to the extent that we can come together and do that effectively is to everyone's benefit.

The other marvelous thing about the Board, and certainly the membership at large, is the collective brainpower. I think you see it in the hard work of the committees; you will definitely see it on the Board. Then the third thing Nancy touched on beautifully is the fact that we have a superb cadre, not a large cadre, but a small cadre of super people at ARL headquarters and at absolutely all levels.

Nancy, you have converted me, and so have your predecessors. Nancy has done a most incredibly skillful, well-organized, and gracious leadership job this last year. I would like you all to join me in thanking her for that.

(Applause)

I only have one official thing to do at this meeting, and that is to adjourn you.