Chemistry Division Special Libraries Association

Greetings from the Chemistry Division Chair!

Marilyn Dunker, Chair

As I write this, it's supposed to be a warm day in Cincinnati but no where near as hot as San Antonio was. I hope that those of you who attended enjoyed the heat and the great sessions. If you couldn't make it, check out the conference reports in this issue or at the Chemistry Division website

You may have noticed that the Chemistry Division website has changed in the last few months. We're trying to organize it and give you more features such as an archive of past conference sessions and a Web version of newsletter. This will often have the same material as SciTech News with some additions that are more appropriate for web presentations. Potential contributors should contact Jim Oliver, our Web Newsletter editor. If you've recently published an article, perhaps you'd like to highlight it by writing a summary for the web page.

Since one of the things a message from the chair should do is fill you in on the issues and plans of the division, I'll tackle that next.

A current issue of the division is recruiting and retaining its members. In order to do that, one of the items discussed at our Sunday afternoon board meeting was the creation of an award to help students or new members attend the annual conference and become active in the division. Bartow Culp, professional Development Chair, Jennifer Kostelnik, Membership chair and Sveltlana Korolev have agreed to work on developing and administering this award. Expect to hear more about it in the coming year.

And along those same lines, we are investigating what the chemistry division can do to meet virtually. Our main activities tend to focus on the annual conference which not everyone can attend. Suzanne Fedunok, our chair-elect, and Sue Cardinal, have agreed to look into holding a virtual seminar/meeting for the chemistry division. It may be a real-time event or some type of web-bases training. We're letting these two very capable people explore all options. I'd like to note that Sue attended the board meeting as a "volunteer in waiting" and found something to do. If you'd like to become more involved, I'd invite you to do the same next year. Better yet, don't wait --- contact me now.

One of the projects I hope to finish up this year is revising our By-laws. This has been going on for a while and is never an easy process. Sandy Plisch has done most of the "heavy lifting" as she calls it but is leaving the division because her job has changed (big thanks to Sandy for all her work.) Dana Roth has agreed to step in and shepherd the bylaws through the rest of the approval process. You may have seen a draft of the bylaws on the Chemistry Division Website. We actually need to send these to the Association Bylaws committee again before we vote and approve them. If you have any comments on what you've seen already, please send them to Dana or myself.

And of course, we are working on planning the Conference for 2002 which will be held in Los Angeles June 8-13. Nancy Simons kindly agreed to act as the conference planner and has some interesting sessions in the works. These include Genome & Proteome searching, corporate, academic & vendor roundtables, and another poster session following up on the success of this year's. My favorite idea is "Chemistry/Science/Librarian's Go to the Movies" building on the proximity to Hollywood. If you've got an interest in presenting something along those lines let us know.

One part of our conference events will be holding the TriSociety Symposium. We have a tentative theme of "Electronic Chemistry Collections: Dealing with Chemistry Resources in Electronic Formats" which could use a better name. In the upcoming months, you'll hear more about the Tri-Society Symposium including a call for papers. We will need the help of all of you to make this a successful event.

Comments to:
Susanne J. Redalje
Chemistry Division
(206)543-2070(voice)
(206)543-3863(fax)
curie@u.washington.edu

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This page updated July 2001