Hosted by NATIVECULTURE.COMInto a new year, from the time of bare trees to green trees we are going now. Hoping that this issue of the AILA Newsletter finds you well and happy and successfully moving ahead with your projects wherever this may find you.
I would like to take this opportunity to give a very large thank you to all of you who were in attendnce at the AILA Mid-winter meeting. Thanking you for your participation, your ideas and your voices. Personally found our meeting to be hurried, too much business in too short a time. Most un-Indian in many ways and my apologies to any of you who were there for the hurry. As you know our meetings are held in conjunction with the ALA Mid-winter meetings. This year we were in San Antonio, Texas. It is a great city and a pretty good one as large cities go! We had a good meeting and completed a pretty full slate of business items.
REFORMA - the Latino/Latina Hispanics caucus - will be hosting their 2nd annual conference in Tucson, Arizona in the summer this year. AILA has been invited to participate, so, I look forward to seeing some of our members there. If you can attend or need more information please inquire and be there.
There was a pre-meeting Ethnic Congress held this year in San Antonio, with the officers of the various ethnic caucuses, and some ALA officers in attendance. This day-long meeting was primarily a planning and brainstorming meeting to see in what areas the ethnic caucuses share common cause. It appears that this event will become a regular session and will occur again in Chicago at the meetings coming up.
Planning and action is happening on our AILA session coming up in Chicago as well. Our Past President, Bonnie Biggs, is organizing that session and will give us more details. It should be an interesting and exciting program. If you can attend the Chicago sessions please keep our AILA program [Saturday, 2:00-4:00 PM] and meetings in mind. In Chicago this year I believe we have made arrangements to have our OLOS/AILA meeting a bit earlier in the evening on Sunday night [6:00-8:00 PM]. Please check your ALA schedules when they come out and we will see you at the meeting. Reminders on this later.
We continue to receive books for review, not many, but some, so if anyone would like to write book reviews please let myself or Dr. Taylor know and we will make arrangements to mail the copies to you. After the review is written you are welcome to retain the book for your tribal library or make arrangements to donate them to a library of your choice. I would hope that you will request a bookplate be placed inside of the donated volume signifying that it is a gift from "your name" and "American Indian Library Association".
A gentle reminder to please ensure that your dues are current, and if you are paid up and wish to join the AILA listserv, please contact me at my email address: BerryJ@okstate.edu and I will make arrangements to add your name and e-address into the AILA listserv. Which reminds me, I'd better write a check myself.
I believe our official non-profit status paperwork is in process, so if you happen to meet people out there who would be interesetd in donating to the AILA scholarship fund, please talk us up.
I have had the pleasure of nominating one of the University of Oklahoma, School of Library Science MLS students for the Gates Scholarship this month. There are only 200 graduate level scholarships available, this year only, form the Gates Scholarship people. I have been told that so far over 200 of our Indian students across the country, in many areas of study, have already applied. We should all wish them success on their applications.
The annual Association of American Indian/Alaska Native Professors meeting will be held at Haskell Indian Nations University, Lawrence, Kansas, on April 21st & 22nd, 2000. I hope to see you there.
Thanking all of you, our membership, for all your hard work out there on behalf of the people. Yakokee!
Be well,
John D. Berry
AILA President, 1999-2000
Hosted by NATIVECULTURE.COM
