W e are looking forward to the ARL (Association of Research Libraries) team visit October 3-5, 2001. Thanks to everyone who worked so hard to prepare for this important event. Our facilities have been spruced up, our technologies were upgraded, and our many accomplishments have been sufficiently summarized. If you are interested in seeing summaries go the web page http://library.louisville.edu/ARL.

The Libraries’ 2000-2001 Progress Report has been completed and is being disseminated to administrators on campus, faculty representatives, library staff and faculty, and selected library administrators in Kentucky and around the nation. Everyone should be proud of the fact that the use of libraries has continued to grow substantially and our users generally express great satisfaction regarding the libraries and library services.

The IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations) meeting this year took place in Boston, August 17-25, 2001. It has been 15 years since the IFLA conference was held in the United States, in Chicago. More than 5,000 persons attended the meeting, the highest attendance record ever. The theme of the 67th IFLA conference, “Libraries and Librarians: Making a Difference in the Knowledge Age,” addressed a multitude of topics. These included advancing the leadership role of the librarian in the knowledge age, lifelong learning across space and time, managing information and technology, information policies, and collaborative partnerships.

The University Libraries and General Research Libraries Section (with the largest membership of more than 430 members) sponsored a pre-conference on “Leadership” in cooperation with Harvard Institutes for Higher Education and the Association of College and Research Libraries. In the Section’s open meeting partnerships were addressed. Four speakers from Denmark, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and the United States (myself) gave presentations regarding university libraries and partnerships. The Section also sponsored meetings on marketing, on user education, and on performance measurements. In addition, the Section held a workshop at Northeastern University on “Managing academic and research libraries partnerships.” Three presenters addressed various types of partnerships. I served as both the organizer and a presenter. The Section also finalized its strategic plan for 2002-2003, which features topics related to quality and evaluation in academic and research libraries, changing roles of librarians in academia, the crisis in scholarly communication and publishing, and global higher education development and trends.

In summary, the 67th IFLA Conference was most successful and the interaction with colleagues from around the world demonstrated repeatedly that librarians share similar concerns, issues and challenges at the beginning of the 21st century.

--Hannelore Rader, University Librarian