Greetings! We are looking forward to an active and exciting year at both the national and state levels of ACRL. ACRL President Helen Spalding has selected a theme for this year of “New Realities, New Relationships.” The 2003 ACRL National Conference, “Learning to Make a Difference,” will be held in Charlotte, North Carolina, from April 10-13, 2003. For those of you who might be interested in participating at the annual conference, ACRL is still accepting proposals for poster sessions. Applications are available at:
<http://www.ala.org/acrl/charlotte/program/callform.html> and the deadline for submission is November 4, 2002. Charlotte is billed as a great conference location and this year’s national conference should be bigger and better than ever.

If you are planning to attend ALA Midwinter in Philadelphia, you might want to check out one of the two ACRL pre-conference workshops. “Creating a Continuous Assessment Environment in Academic Libraries,” and “Behaviors that Burden the Workplace” will be offered on Friday, January 24, 2003.

FACRL will be adapting President Spalding’s theme slightly as we present our fall workshop entitled, “New Realities, New Opportunities.” The workshop will take place on Friday, October 18, 2002 at the Holiday Inn Select Orlando International Airport. We will have a nationally recognized grant-writing consultant providing tips on grants. In addition, our speakers will take a fresh look at the advantages of joint-use libraries and will describe some exciting partnerships involving teaching faculty,
technology centers and information literacy. Join us in October for a chance to network with your colleagues and to learn how to make some of the challenging day-to-day realities of library life into interesting new opportunities. Additional details and information on how to register for the fall workshop are available at our website: <http://www.unf.edu/library/facrl/facrlbrochurefall2002.pdf>

On April 9, 2002, the Academic Section of the Florida Library Association presented the program, “Maximizing Your Hiring Strategies.” Sandra Rios Balderrama, the ALA Diversity Officer engaged the audience in a lively discussion of ways to create a diverse and well-qualified applicant pool. Participants gave Sandra rave reviews. Although it seems a long way off, Mervyn Solomon, our FACRL Vice-president is busy coordinating another interesting program for the FLA annual conference in Orlando in 2003. Stay tuned for additional details.

Finally, please join me in welcoming Susan Ryan to the FACRL board. Susan is the Associate Director of the duPont-Ball Library at Stetson University. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Kathy Cohen for all of her hard work for FACRL. Kathy served for many years on the FACRL board and is a past president of the chapter. She recently stepped down from the board to have more time for her commitments at the University of North Florida. Thanks, Kathy!

I look forward to seeing you in Orlando in October!