A Message from the Senior Executive Board Member

Welcome to the new Millennium. Regardless of whether you think the year 2000 is the new Millennium or not, it will be a significant year in the growth of ICON. We begin the year financially healthy and infused with many new, enthusiastic members to complement the “veterans” among us. A strong and dedicated Executive Board has taken office and is ready to serve you and to provide leadership as we proceed into this new era.

We have successfully applied for and received a grant of $40,000 to create a consumer health web site (soon you can point your browser to http://www.healthhq.org ) which will complement the long standing CHIRS service provided by one of our members, McGoogan Library of Medicine. This consumer health web resource is targeted to the seven-county Eastern Library System. If this model proves to be successful we will expand it to the entire state of Nebraska. Already I have received strong interest from the Nebraska Library Commission in participating in the next phase. We are planning to have an exhibit at the Nebraska Library Association’s annual meeting in October in Omaha. We may also sponsor a continuing education class in conjunction with NLA. We have had both posters and papers accepted at the Reaching Up Conference, which will be held in October in Nebraska City.

Keep looking at our web site, which can be found at http://www.iconlibrary.org. With our new “webmeister”, Erin Bauer, in place exciting things will be done with that resource. Some excellent continuing education programs are planned for the regularly scheduled ICON meetings. In March a class on the new DOCLINE will be held at UNMC. In May there will be an overview of the Medical Library Association’s annual meeting at Bellevue University. This is always an excellent opportunity for those who could not attend MLA to pick up many offerings from the exhibits and to learn first hand of the programs, classes, and social amenities that took place. In September we will have a session on consumer health at Methodist Hospital; and in December we will hold our annual holiday cheer at Creighton and have a program on health ethics.

Also, we want to encourage input from you, our individual and institutional members of ICON, to be included in these pages of our newly launched electronic newsletter. Tell us what is going on in your library or your professional life. We’ll include it in the newsletter under the "News Corner" heading.

All in all, a tremendous year awaits us so come along for the ride. It’s going to be great fun.

--Jim Bothmer, Senior Executive Board Member

Return to Spring 2000 ICONnection Table of Contents