President’s Message: Winter 2024
November/December
By Meg Miller
Hello Everyone,
I hope you have been able to take a bit of time to enjoy a bit of autumn wherever you are. Here in Winnipeg, things have been oddly mild, with the leaves having the chance to show vibrant yellows. In the five years since I’ve been here, this is my first beginning of November without snow! Last year, we had a 4:8 split of no coat/ coat months, so I’m trying to find some silver linings in the global warming we are experiencing.
It’s been a little over a month since we gathered in person at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, NM. My heartfelt thanks to Cheyenne Stradinger (local host and new WAML VP) for hosting and sharing her time, space, ideas and hopes when it came to organizing. And to Jessica Benner, Kat Strickland, sam hidde-tripp and Bruce Godfrey for their supporting roles. I also wanted to acknowledge all of you who presented, attended, sponsored and gave feedback. The WAML conference is a highlight of my year- connecting with you all and hearing what everyone is doing helps remind me of what drew me to this profession, away from private industry. All presentations will be made available through the WAML Archive at a later date. Next year’s event will be held in Moscow, ID, and I’m already looking forward to it!
This year, we tried something new and hosted a virtual symposium day over Zoom in the weeks following our in-person event. The schedule included a conference recap, reflections from our scholarship winners, presentations and a workshop. I especially enjoyed hearing about the conference experience through the eyes of the scholarship winners. We wanted to give opportunities to connect for WAML members who could not make it to the in-person conference and reach the WAML curious. Feedback surveys were sent out about this year’s event and included questions that will help us plan future meetings. I will be summarizing and sharing results at the November Exec. Meeting (November 26th, 11 am PT). Thanks to those of you who took a moment to provide your thoughts and feedback (and for those who missed the deadline, you can always pass your thoughts along over email.
This cycle, the Executive Board will be focusing on the following initiatives to serve you further:
- Establishing an Ad Hoc Committee to review IB publishing workflows (EBSCO indexing, DOIs, etc.)
- Reviving the Continuing Education Committee
- Streamlining our digital housekeeping processes (listserv, administrative emails, etc.)
- Updating our Code of Conduct
- (From the Business meeting) Beginning the process of reviewing the principal region and how it intersects with our current membership/ Bylaws
In the coming weeks and months, you will hear from me/ the executive soliciting feedback and participation.
May the rest of 2024 bring you all that you need,
Meg
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