Faculty and staff performance reviews are completed thanks to everyone’s cooperation and good work. The reviews document how hard everyone has worked this past year and how much we have achieved because of that. I hear regularly from many users how satisfied they are with our libraries and especially with the wonderful services and the helpful attitude from the entire staff.

Recently Information Technology completed a three-minute video for us entitled “ The University Libraries: Beyond Books.” This promotional video is a good summary of what the libraries are all about and I have been showing it to various audiences on campus, in the region, nationally and even internationally. I hope that everyone will have an opportunity to see it soon.

The Office of Technology under the guidance of Weiling Liu are in the process of updating all public computers and workstations at the service desks, thanks to some special funding received from Provost Carol Garrison in preparation for the evaluation visit from the Association of Research Libraries. We also received funding to do some minor facility improvements.

By now most of you will have noticed a new feature on our web site entitled KUDZU. This is a cooperative venture between several academic research libraries in the Southeast (Association of Southeast Research Libraries) to share their 23 million volumes among their users through special interlibrary loan arrangements. Our users are beginning to use this and are very excited about it. Other new interlibrary loan initiatives are also being implemented.

The 10th ACRL (Association of College and Research Libraries) National Conference was held in Denver, Colorado from March 15-18, 2001. The theme was “Crossing the Digital Divide” and at least half of the many programs and presentations dealt with information literacy, how to build faculty partnerships, how to assess learning outcomes, how to use the standards, and different approaches to teaching information skills.

The three keynote addresses were: The Technology Revolution, Michael Hawley, Dreyfoos Assistant Professor of Media Technology, MIT Media Lab; Western Voices, Patricia Limerick, Chair, Center of the American West, University of Colorado at Boulder; A President’s View, Claire Gaudiani, President, Connecticut College. Almost fifty poster sessions addressed practical topics and provided much useful information. Eight library faculty from UofL including myself attended this very scholarly conference and four of us were involved in successful presentations and poster sessions. To read more about it see the ACRL conference website : http://www.ala.org/acrl/denver.html.

--Hannelore Rader, University Librarian