"Finding Money" will cover topics such as working with your college's Foundation and grant writing. "Building Relationships" will explore working with faculty to promote the library on campus and to integrate information literacy across the curriculum.

We are looking for presenters for both tracks. If you would like to present or know of someone who would be a good presenter, please contact me at ebianco@ctc.edu or Paula Palmer at Paula.Palmer@lwtc.ctc.edu.

Also, let us know if there are topics you want to add to the agenda for the business meeting.

Submitted by Elena Bianco.

About 120 persons attended the Spokane conference and around 175, the SeaTac venue. The keynote speaker at both events was librarian Roberta Burk, who had led the implementation of ebooks at the Algonquin Public Library, Illinois. (See Library Journal, 4/15/00, "Don't be afraid of e-books".)

Algonquin is a small regional library with a patron base of some 24,000 persons and an annual circulation of around 366,500 items (1999-2000 American Library Directory). Roberta recounted both the experience of introducing ebooks at the library and the experience of becoming a cover story for LJ. She listed both the advantages and disadvantages of ebooks:

(In this report "readers" is being used to denote the mechanical device and "patron" denotes the human reader.)

Advantages:

There was a 30-minute discussion period following Bernie's presentation where he answered a series of questions from the participants. We discovered that ILSCO maintains a union catalog among all 45 members. We also learned that ILSCO has member institutions sign an agreement with the consortium every year, and that the consortium does a lot of advance budget planning.

The second speaker was Sue Medina, Director of the Network of Alabama Academic Libraries (NAAL). The Network is an offshoot of the Alabama Commission on Higher Education. Ms. Medina gave a humorous introduction to the state of politics and education in Alabama. Once the state government determined that libraries in Alabama were grossly under-funded they decided that deficiencies needed to be addressed in a cooperative manor. The Network started with one year funding for retrospective conversion of records. In order to participate in the project libraries had to either be, or become, members of OCLC and had to offer graduate education courses. There was no distinction made between public and private institutions. Some government libraries, the State Library and Birmingham Public Library were also included. Now the Network coordinates resources to benefit all students, faculty, and researchers in the state of Alabama.

The Network sponsors a planning retreat once a year. The Executive Council has three members from the largest institutions, two members from public institutions, one member from a private institution, and one tiebreaker position. Positions are staggered and elections are held each year. The Network employs 1.75 FTE. In the beginning the Network was mostly concerned with graduate education. In the mid-1990's they broadened their scope to include Alabama's 22 community colleges and seven of the smaller private church oriented schools.

In order to be successful, the Network needed to get the support of the presidents of the various institutions. The Network reports to the presidents twice a year. One of the strongest statements that Ms. Medina made was that the presidents, and those involved in the Network, prioritize the needs of all students in the Network before the needs of any one particular institution. Ms. Medina also stressed the need to schmooze in the right places and market the libraries throughout the state. All Network members agreed to provide free ILL amongst themselves and with other Solinet members. Identifying change and helping members manage raging technological change has also been a strong advantage of the Network. The Network provides a good deal of continuing education opportunities for its members. Sue Medina also works as the primary broker for statewide database licensing. She says that she may use one of four different formula schemes in getting members to pay licensing fees. She may use the FTE model, an equal model, or a combination of the two. Her most creative model is what she calls her E-Bay method. She has the member institutions submit bids on what they are willing to pay, totals the bids, and then adjusts or negotiates as necessary.

The Network is also involved in the Alabama Virtual Library Project for statewide licensing of 52 databases, and a J-Store project. In the J-Store Project one print copy of magazine titles would be stored for faxing, and all the other copies would be recycled to make space. More information on NAAL can be found at the following Web site: http://www.ache.state.al.us/NAAL/TOC.htm

Friday consisted of a panel discussion with the following panelists:

• Mary Devlin - PORTALS Interim Director
• Leslie Riester - Director of Inst. Tech. for Portland Community College
• John Popko - Library Director for Seattle University
• Jeanne Crisp - Project Director for Washington Statewide Database Licensing
• John Helmer - Executive Director of ORBIS.

Mary Devlin was the first to speak. PORTALS, administered through Portland State University functions to meet the research needs of the metropolitan-Portland area through collaboration and cooperation. They have created a virtual reference center and also provide one continuing education event per month. They are currently working very closely with ORBIS in order to consolidate database licensing. More information regarding PORTALS can be found at the following Web site: http://www.portals.org/

Leslie Reister spoke about the sad state of the 17 community colleges in Oregon and their dream to provide better access to their students. Two of the community colleges do not even have libraries of their own. Most of the Oregon community colleges have stronger relationships with their local public libraries than with other academic institutions. The directors are working toward new cooperative ventures in collection analysis and services for distance learners.

John Popko spoke about broader, less formal consortia cooperation which is usually held together by the energies of a few dedicated individuals. He indicated he has done a lot of ground work with some of the smaller private colleges in Washington, as well as other Jesuit institutions throughout the United States. Most of his work is done independently, outside the more sluggish environment of organized consortia. There have been significant advantages to Seattle University because of his kind of grass-roots coordinating efforts, but he also pointed out there could be negatives aspects. The rest of his staff are not as engaged in pursuing cooperative ventures as he is, collection development can be opportunistic rather than well planned. He finished by stating that his grass-roots cooperation should be seen as a transition to the next higher level of cooperative agreements.

Jeanne Crisp spoke about the Washington Statewide Database Trails that run both in the spring and fall. The Washington State Library has organized these trials as a way for libraries to try different products without having to negotiate directly with the vendors. This method is especially helpful to smaller libraries. Federal funds have also been provided to support licensing of certain ProQuest databases for all state libraries. Even though the State Library will work as the coordinating agent, they do not work as the fiscal agent for any of the libraries. More information about the Statewide Database Trials can be found at the following Web site: http://www.statelib.wa.gov/sdl/fall2000/fall2000mainpage.htm

John Helmer of ORBIS was the last panelist to speak. ORBIS is a regional academic library consortium which has grown from five institutions to 18 over the last five years. Its growth may reach 25 institutions within the next five years. ORBIS members must all use Innovative Interfaces as their database vendor. Each library can maintain an individual database but also contributes records and/or holdings to a union catalog of members. The University of Oregon serves as the fiscal agent for the members. ORBIS has a budget of 2.5 million. This budget pays for three staff members, some of the remote databases that are licensed, and for a courier service. ORBIS did approximately 100,000 monographic loans within their system last year. All ORBIS members automatically become members of the Center for Research Libraries (CRL), which means they can have borrowing privileges from CRL. Their courier service will be expanded to approximately 50 drop sites within the next year. ORBIS also works as the central agent for electronic resources licensing for both ORBIS and PORTALS members. ORBIS coordinates about 60 products in some 200 libraries. ORBIS is also involved in a statewide initiative in Oregon to offer all state residents access to electronic resources (CORE). More information regarding ORBIS and Connect Oregon (CORE) can be found at the following Web sites: http://libweb.uoregon.edu/orbis/ and http://www.olaweb.org/core/

The panel discussion was followed by a question and answer period. Sue Medina reminded people to work with external partners who are the power brokers, and she encouraged everyone to aggressively market their needs as well as their accomplishments.

There were 91 attendees; 50 attended the banquet.

Registration & Banquet Fees:	$3489.50
Sponsorships (2): (Ebsco $155 and Gale $125)	$280.00
Total Income	$3769.50
Banquet	$1039.14
Speaker's Honorarium	$500.00
Speaker's Expenses	$840.00
Refreshments (incl. Happy Hour)	$995.32
Postage, Supplies	$248.38
Door Prizes	$40.00
Miscellaneous	$17.37
Total Expenses	$3680.51
Conference Profit	$88.99

eBook 2000 Conference October 19, 2000
Treasurer's Report
Submitted for November 12, 2000 Executive Board Meeting

There were 169 attendees: 15 speakers and organizers attended gratis, 1 student, and 153 paying the standard registration fee.

Actual number of lunches ordered was 168.

There are 11 outstanding registration payments for which invoices were sent on November 14, 2000.

Registration Fees [deposited to date]:	$5590.00
Registration Fees [outstanding]:	$440.00
Total Income	$6030.00
Food [approximate]	$5040.00
Coffee Service [approximate]	$650.00
Name Badges	$56.43
Projected Total Expenses	$5746.43
Projected Conference Profit	$283.57

Mary has an MA in English Literature and an MLS from the UW. Before moving back to her native state of Washington, she worked in California as a librarian at the Claremont Colleges, at McDonnell-Douglas, and the DeVry Institute of Technology. Back in the Puget Sound region, she was a part-time reference librarian at Highline Community College.

Bellingham Technical College received permanent accreditation status last Fall. The library received a commendation in the final report! This year's focus is on working with a small group of faculty to create prototypes for incorporating critical thinking and information literacy skills into the curriculum. Individual programs could use these models, with only minimal modifications.

As part of this year's marketing plan, the library sponsored a "Not-Your-Typical-Library Day" on Friday the 13th (October). Festivities included a nursing instructor's performing and teaching the hula dance and sharing Hawaiian traditions (everyone got to blow the conch shell!). Music, donuts, cider and a trivia contest rounded out the activities. Nearly 500 people were in the library that day, which represents more than half the 925 daytime student enrollment! Library use has increased since the open house.

Clark
Joan Carey is on sabbatical this year and Kitty Mackey is filling in for her. Kitty has worked previously at Mt. Hood Community College and Clackamas Community College.

Edmonds
Monica Tobin is on sabbatical this year and her replacement is Johnetta Moore, whose home state is Alaska. Director Kim Nakano left Edmonds to become Dean of Library Services for Green River Community College. Edmonds is currently in the process of putting together the position description for Kim's replacement.

Spokane Falls
George Suttle has joined the library reference staff, replacing Barb Fulsaas, who retired in 1999. Previously, George worked at Western Montana University in Dillon and also gained experience along the way handling wild tourists in Yellowstone Park. His responsibilities include reference and the never-ending job of improving the library web page.

SFCC is remodeling and will be adding an electronic classroom, which initially will be equipped with 10-12 computers.

Bellevue's CTILAC team visited in mid-November and was very well received by the college faculty.

Tacoma
Morris Skagen retired in the past year, completing a 35+ year career at TCC. Syd (previously Cindy) Sullivan has replaced him and is in her first year of the tenure process. In addition to having teaching, reference and collection development responsibilities, Syd is the lead librarian liaison with TCC's other campuses and the distance learning program. She also has taken on the position of CLAMS treasurer.

Sandra Townley, formerly with King County Library's Vashon Branch, is the new Circulaiton Superivisor.

Collection Specialties

Bellevue
As a result of Foundation money specifically devoted to the topics of nuclear weapons and issues of war & peace, Bellevue has a large but little-used collection of books on these subjects.

Because of the efforts of individual faculty members, we also are relatively strong in anthropology and architecture.

Centralia
Doing a Relevance Search in Voyager by "Pride Collection" will bring up materials specifically on gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transsexuals, all purchased with a grant from the Seattle-based Pride Foundation.

A search on the call number "808.899" will give a list of children's literature purchased with a grant awarded to the Children's Literature instructor in cooperation with the Library.

"Literacy Collection" retrieves items purchased with a Centralia College Foundation Grant, specifically for use in the ESL, ABE and GED programs.

Clark
Clark collects books on mushrooms and has a fair number of out-of-print books on the topic. A small grant recently enabled them to enlarge their holdings in horticulture and culinary arts.

Spokane, WA -- WLA 2001 Conference Coordinator Merri Hartse announced today that the Association's 2001 Conference, "Convergence," to be held April 4-7, 2001 at the WestCoast Grand Hotel at the Park in Spokane, WA, will feature an exciting lineup of great programs and speakers. To kick off the conference, the committee has planned "A Mystery Evening" featuring The Mystery Division, a Spokane performance ensemble, who will produce an interactive mystery that will be solved with the help of attendees. Refreshments will include a dessert table, coffee, tea, and champagne. This event is being underwritten by The Gale Group, a world leader in reference and research publishing.

John N. Berry III will deliver the keynote address on Thursday morning. Berry is Editor-In-Chief of Library Journal, the oldest independent national library publication, and considered the "bible" of the library world. Poet and novelist Marge Piercy has agreed to speak at the Thursday evening banquet. Ms. Piercy has won critical praise and numerous awards for her work, including the Arthur C. Clarke Award, Best Science Fiction Novel published in the United Kingdom, the Patterson Poetry Prize, and the Best Book of the Year for 1999.

The Friday banquet will feature Ray Suarez, Senior Correspondent of the Public Broadcasting System's acclaimed nightly NewsHour. Suarez has twenty years of varied experience in the news business. He came to The NewsHour from National Public Radio, where he had been host of the nationwide call-in news program "Talk of the Nation" since 1993.

The Committee invites your programming ideas. For your convenience, a special IG program form has been posted on the WLA web site. For additional information, contact Louise Saylor at: AW_VL_SAYLOR@compuserve.com

A conference Web page, with up-to-date information on programs, will be mounted in July 2000. This site, which will be accessible from the WLA Web page, will be expanded to include an IG program form, schedules, and registration and fee information as it becomes available.

WLA Conference 2001 committee members include: Merri Hartse, Conference Coordinator; Louise Saylor and Claudia Parkins, Program Co-Chairs; Mike Wirt, Local Arrangements Chair; Konny Thompson, Treasurer; Joy Neal, Preconference Chair; Lynn Red, Exhibits Chair; Bruce Ziegman, Underwriting Chair; and Dolly Richendrfer, Publicity Chair.

For more information, contact Merri Hartse, Conference Coordinator, at (509) 444-5376, or Dolly Richendrfer, Publicity Chair, at (509) 444-5312.