I hope that everyone had an enjoyable summer and at least some vacation somewhere!

It is now time to begin yet another busy academic year. Fall semester is upon us and students and faculty will need our assistance and guidance to accomplish their many tasks in teaching, learning and research. This will be an especially important semester for us as we implement Voyager and bring up our first client-server, web-based library system. It has been difficult to accomplish all the different tasks needed to get to this point, but you all have done it and I commend you for it. Of course, we have much more work to do to bring up the system, but at least we are on our way. We are also leading the way in the state in this area. Much appreciation goes to Cindy, who worked very hard to get us to this point. We congratulate her on her accomplishment as well as on becoming a very proud new mother.

The Virtual Library is continuing to progress. At the moment the budget is being finalized so it can be presented to the Council on Postsecondary Education for consideration. Again, many persons have continued to work very hard to bring about the statewide Virtual Library in support of the Virtual University.

I just returned from the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) conference in Amsterdam, held from August 14-21. More than 3,000 delegates from 120 countries attended. The U.S. delegation of 230 was the largest group from one country. As an official representative from the Association of College and Research Libraries and the American Library Association (ALA) to IFLA's University and Research Libraries Division, I had many responsibilities at the conference. Our Division which has more than 450 international library members had sponsored three large programs in addition to two long meetings. Our themes this year were performance measures and the changes regarding teaching and learning in higher education. We had speakers from Turkey, Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, Finland and the United States. Several hundred international librarians attended our sessions. Many of the international delegates found my paper "The U.S. Experience and Faculty-Librarian Collaboration" interesting.

I also helped ALA staff their booth during the Conference. This was a rewarding experience. Many international librarians from all the continents came to the booth to let us know how much they appreciate U.S. libraries and librarians. They were most anxious to receive information about ALA. This assignment gave me a real opportunity to understand how important our international activities are and how helpful it is if one can communicate in various languages.

Amsterdam is a very interesting and beautiful city with its many canals and picturesque houses. People are friendly and the country is diverse. I saw several interesting book exhibits as well as universities and libraries. It was especially interesting to visit the Haagse Hoogeschool, a new technical university in the Hague. There I met again with Eddie Kips, a library science faculty member who earlier this year visited U of L with another colleague. U of L has a cooperative program in business with this university and Eddie made sure all the IFLA delegates that visited there knew it. It was really great for UofL to receive recognition overseas.

--Hannelore Rader, University Librarian