From the President's Desk

APLA has been moving along on several fronts since my last report. The major advance, of course, is that we have moved our website to its new home at the University of Prince Edward Island. Many thanks to UPEI for hosting our website and special thanks to incoming President Donald Moses for making that transition happen.

Our old home was the library at Mt. Saint Vincent University and I would like to thank Stan Orlov and Donna Bourne Tyson for taking care of APLA's site for so long.

I know you will all enjoy the new site found at the same address, which is http://www.apla.ca. With its modern look, it is full of the information you need from the APLA site - news items, RSS feeds and other resources for the informed Atlantic Provinces Library Association member! Be sure to check it out.

At the end of January, I represented APLA at the Partnership meetings held in Toronto. Hosted by OLA, this was a meeting of Canadian provincial, regional and territorial library associations. I served as Chair for this meeting and I feel it was a very productive session. As you may know, the Partnership is responsible for many of the newer Canadian library initiatives including the Education Institute, the Partnership Journal, and Job Board. One of the new initiatives on the horizon will be a certification program, headed by Sandy Campbell of the University of Alberta. This program will allow librarians and library staff to be recognized for their ongoing professional development. More on this will be forthcoming as the Committee responsible works through a pilot being hosted by the Library Association of Alberta.

Kelly Moore from the Canadian Library Association was invited to the afternoon portion of the meeting and brought an update on the happenings of CLA. She is relatively new in her position but showed a commitment to working with the Partnership on future endeavours. She also recognizes the important role that CLA plays nationally in terms of advocacy and lobbying.

The meetings of the Partnership are tremendous events that show how many committed librarians there are in this country. At the beginning of the meeting, each association did a "rapid fire" session where they discussed which issues were affecting their membership. Some general themes have emerged including membership recruitment, rejuvenation and new initiatives.

We are in the "home stretch" now heading into the APLA conference in June. I know you are all anxiously awaiting the program and the registration. This year's conference is going to be awesome and I hope as many of you as possible can attend. It is one of the biggest events in the Atlantic region, where librarians and library staff can come together to talk about issues that affect all of us. It is a time to reflect, to consider and to act. To adapt a quotation from one of our airlines: "At APLA we know you have a choice for your professional development. Thanks for including the APLA conference in your plans."

Susan E. Cleyle, APLA President and Associate University Librarian
QE II Library, Memorial University, St. John's, NL