 Salutes to departing member representatives convened by Wendy Pratt-Louget at the 161st ARL membership meeting. Before we acknowledge the representatives for whom this is the last meeting, we do want to circle back and welcome a new member, Ann Colleen Cook. Where are you? You're going to do our introduction? Go ahead, Colleen. It's truly my pleasure to introduce a new colleague for us. Loubne Gauti is the new librarian at the University of Le Bal, and I want to say bienvenue à mon art ARL. That's about as far as my French goes. She had an interesting path to North America and to research librarianship. She landed in 1999 from Morocco in Quebec City. I was expecting at the University of Le Bal to enroll in an MBA program. Unfortunately, she found out that the course was offered one online and most of the courses were related to programming, so she said, I think I'll go to the library and talk to the librarians. So she did. She dropped by and someone took her in hand and explained what the library program was at the University of Le Bal and she enrolled and her life changed forever. So we make a difference in a lot of ways. At Le Bal, she rolled in the library school program and she thought, you know, my dream job, Carol Dietrichs once talked about Ohio State being her dream job. Loubne's dream job was being director at the University of Le Bal and that is what she is now doing. Eleven years later, after having been director of the Science Library, director of the Humanities and Social Sciences Library at that institution, Le Bal, the library is the largest French speaking library in the world, in America, okay, in North America, and her life has changed obviously very much. She has a bachelor's degree in information science and obviously a master's degree in library science from the Université de Montréal and she also completed a second cycle micro program in human resources. As I said, she comes to us from Morocco and is so typical of my colleagues in Quebec. One of the things I love most about living there is that English is her third language. So she also obviously is fluent in Arabic and French. So I just have to say once more bienvenue encore et félicitation. So we have several tributes to member representatives for whom this is the last meeting and so I call upon Brinley Franklin, Brian Shotlander and Dana Rooks to bring your colleagues to the microphones. Well, it's an honor for me to salute Dr. Joan Giesicki today, a friend and colleague for a long time. Since joining the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1987, Joan went on to serve as dean of libraries from 1996 until earlier this year and now serves as special assistant to the chancellor and dean emeritus at the university. So I asked Joan recently to reflect on her 25 years in Lincoln, Nebraska and she fondly recounted five significant differences she noticed after relocating from Washington DC. The first is that everyone stops and says hello in Lincoln, Nebraska. Second is that six cars at a traffic light is heavy traffic. Third is it's hard to find good seafood in Lincoln but easy to find good beef. Fourth, when you live in Lincoln, unless you want a wardrobe that consists of Husker ware, you learn how to shop in airports and while traveling. And speaking of traveling, when she's at the Lincoln airport, she's on a first name basis with the TSA staff. But Joan accomplished a lot while serving as dean of libraries at Nebraska. She oversaw the renovation of a library that had been built in 1945. She completed the construction of a high density storage facility. She helped to establish the center for digital research in the communities. She increased the diversity of the library faculty from 2% to 12%. She served as interim director of the University of Nebraska Press and has interim assistant vice chancellor for online education. Joan's a consummate professional and a hard worker. She's taught library school courses. She was the editor of library administration management and served as the president of LAMA. She served on the ALA budget advisory and review committee. And in 2011, she received the American Library Association Equality Award for her work in promoting diversity in the library professions. She's been active in ARL's diversity programs including teaching research methods for ARL's leadership and career development program. And she served on the ARL statistics committee and most recently the ARL board of directors. On a more personal side, the last quality I like to mention about Joan is her courage. The cowardly line could have learned a lot from Joan. I'm not just talking about the courage to face the challenges that life brings on, although many of us admire her for that. I'm also talking about the courage to battle the government printing office for nine years. To try and provide a cooperative shared depository program with Kansas. Is there any greater measure of courage than to take on title 44 of the cuddle pair relations? Joan's currently a member of the ALA committee on accreditation where I'm sure she'll be able to make a great contribution as she's now coordinating campus-wide accreditation issues at Nebraska. And it's process in her new role as special assistant to chancellor. Please join me in wishing all the best to our friend and colleague Joan Giseke. Brian? Good morning. I'm doing double duty this morning. So I'd like to ask Gary Strong to join me and Ruth Jackson at the microphone as well. Give him an opportunity to make his way here. So this morning it's my pleasure, my privilege and my challenge to pay a farewell tribute to two wonderful University of California and ARL colleagues and friends. Colleagues and friends who between them have more than, and I'm not saying this to make them feel old, more than 90 years of professional library experience. And more than 60 years of experience as library directors. I speak of course of Dr. Ruth Jackson and honorary doctor Gary Strong. How to sum up careers of such magnitude and distinction in the four, yes, four minutes allowed me. Well, in thinking about how to condense their resumes, I considered using the fine print on the car lease approach. You know, something like, from 1984 to 1988, Dr. Ruth Jackson served as assistant director of libraries and head of public services at the University of North Florida. From 1988 to 1999, she served as dean of university libraries at West Virginia University from 1999 to 2002. She served as dean of university libraries and professor at Wichita State University since 2002. She has served as university librarian at the University of California Riverside. From 1976 to 1988, Gary Strong served first as associate director for services and then deputy state librarian for the state of Washington. From 1980 to 1994, he served as state librarian of California. From 1994 to 2003, he served as director of Queensborough Public Library in New York and since 2003 he has served as the university librarian at UCLA. For additional resume information, please call 1-800-ASK-ARL. This approach, however, simply skims the surface of where they've worked while telling you nothing of what they've actually done. So let me take a minute, and I do mean a minute, to describe to you some of their accomplishments at only their current institutions. In her 10 years as UL at UC Riverside, Ruth secured more than a million dollars in funding to carry out the technological upgrades needed to deploy state-of-the-art staff at public workstations, including activating nearly 2,000 ports in support of both wired and wireless access and printing capabilities. She led the development of UCR's first-ever information learning commons. She collaborated with the faculty of the College of Humanities, Social Sciences, and Arts in planning a state-of-the-art media library facility. She established the western region Tuskegee Airmen Archive at UCR as a component of a national effort to collect and preserve the history of the distinguished group of African-American men and women. She led the initiative to have UCR designated as a patent and trademark depository library by the U.S. Department of Commerce. The first such designation awarded a University of California campus and only the third such facility in the state of California. And finally this year, she successfully lobbied for the UCR libraries to share in the university's new student technology fee, the result of which the libraries expect to receive approximately $650,000 annually for three to six years beginning this academic year. Those of you who have been following the California economic situation can appreciate the magnitude of that accomplishment. Meanwhile, in his almost 10 years at UCLA, Gary established the digital library program, established the Center for Primary Research and Training, established the Center for Oral History Research, established the scholarly communication program, established the Conservation and Preservation Center, and created the research commons to support digital scholarship and instruction. He co-chaired the campus' committee on information technology infrastructure, chaired the campus' data management strategy group, and represented the UC libraries on the University of California Press Board. Both Ruth and Gary have of course contributed substantially to the profession as well. Ruth served as a delegate to the White House conference on libraries information service in the late 1970s and on the ad hoc committee on implementation of the White House conference resolutions. She chaired the West Virginia Academic Library Directors Group and served as a member of the Kansas State Library Commission. She serves currently as a member of ARL's Diversity Committee and has, for a decade, served as a member of ARL's Statistics and Measurements Committee. The woman is a saint. Gary, meanwhile, co-chaired the National Academies panel on the future of libraries and museums and served as a member of the advisory committee to the Institute for Museum and Library Services, studied on the future of the library workforce. He served as a member of the National Research Council's Committee on Intellectual Property Rights and the Emerging Information Infrastructure and is a member of the advisory board of the Public Knowledge Project. He sat on the governing board of IFLA, served as IFLA's NGO rep to the United Nations, and chaired the National Organizing Committee for the IFLA Boston Conference. Not surprisingly given this impressive list of achievements, Ruth and Gary have enjoyed their share of accolades. Ruth, who was the first African American to serve as Dean of Libraries at both West Virginia University and Wichita State University and the first African American to serve as University Librarian at both UC and within the entire UC system, is a member of PI Lambda Theta, the National Honor Society for Outstanding Women in Higher Education. She is a recipient of the Outstanding Alumni Award from the Hampton Institute of Virginia. She received the Distinguished West Virginia Award, and amusingly, and I haven't had an opportunity to ask her about this award, the Non-Italian Woman of the Year Award. I mean, I knew she wasn't Italian, but she has been recognized as an honorary Tuskegee Airman, the first woman ever awarded this honorary designation. Gary, meanwhile, is the recipient of the Knowledge, Trust, Honor, and Education Award, the ALA Humphrey Award for International Librarianship, the 21st Century Librarian Award from Syracuse, the Charlie Robinson Award from the Public Library Association, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Chinese American Library Association. And, recently, he became the recipient of an honorary doctorate from the University of Idaho. On a personal note, Ruth, who is a native of North Carolina, is the proud mother of one son, a musician, producer, and performer in LA who, amongst other things, taught Tom Cruise how to play guitar for the movie Rock of Ages. She, like many a good librarian, is a collector. She collects arrowheads and, like me, comic books. We each take pride in owning mint, or at least near mint copies of Silver Surfer number one. Gary, who is a native of Idaho, is the proud parent of two children and two grandchildren, and is a true bibliophile. He is a member of the American Printing History Association, the Book Club of California, the Grolier Club, the Roxbury Club, the Sacramento Book Collectors Club, the type of files in the Zamorano Club. He likes clubs. I can attest to the fact, having been to his home, that his personal collection of fine press publications is of extremely rarefied quality. In closing, I would be remiss, given yesterday's comments about our newer colleagues, were I not meant to make reference to the athletic prowess of both Ruth and Gary. As those of you who know, who attended yesterday afternoon's wonderful program moderated by Harriet Hamasi, Ruth remains on target for nailing the Olympic gold medal in the cell phone hustle. And I must warn you, as for Gary, as was noted by some of our other speakers about our newer colleagues, you should beware, should you ever see Gary in the gym, because in his own words, hell will finally have frozen over. Please join me in acknowledging and congratulating these two fine press. When Jack asked me to do his farewell remarks. Is this not on? Oh, okay. I started thinking back to the things that I knew about Jack through the years. And many of us know many of his longstanding and very significant professional achievements through his career at Maryland, Yale, and including leading GW into our membership here in ARL. So I decided you knew all that. Or you can look it up. But I realized that while I had the unique position, was in a unique position of knowing Jack for a long time, I had a lot of dirt. I mean, excuse me, I mean information about Jack that most of you, his esteemed colleagues, would not know. So I decided to compile a list of the top 10 facts you might not know about Jack Siggins. He didn't pay me enough not to say this, so I'm going forward. The first little known fact is that I've known Jack Siggins for over 50 years. So while that may say a lot about both of us in terms of our ages, I will point out that I was in my very early teens when we first met. Jack was not. I've known Jack longer than he's known Maureen, a fact that I remind her of repeatedly. Second, number two fact. Did you know that Jack won his first Alfred E. Newman look-alike contest in 1953? Number three, we all know Jack is a leader, but you may not know that this leadership ability emerged very early as senior class president of the Tulsa Central High School. Number four, some of Jack's very early career positions, which have proved useful to him throughout the years, included Ditch Digger, Jack Hammer Operator in a construction company, and an announcer at a country and western radio station in New Mexico. Jack attended, number five, Jack attended Princeton University on a full academic scholarship, having rejected an offer from Northwestern. Sorry, Sarah. After graduation, number six, Jack married Betsy Martin, the daughter of one of our early library legends, Allie Beth Martin. The marriage didn't last, but Allie Beth talked him into library school, which seems to have held. Number seven, he joined the Army as a language specialist in the Army Security Agency, and immediately found himself stationed in Saigon. But it gets worse. He then went on to become a spy with the Defense Intelligence Agency, who are waiting on the tell-all book. You may know Jack as a very self-assured man and a great husband, but did you know that he's very proud and beaming when on more frequently occasion than he may like, he is introduced as Maureen Sullivan's husband. Number nine, Jack's had a vacation place on Martha's Vineyard for many years. I don't know about any of you, but I've never been invited to visit. And finally, number 10, his future plans include, first, he's going to work on two major library construction projects. He will be the one managing Manning the Jackhammer. Two, he's writing a book on leadership, which he's writing in partnership with Maureen. I'm told that his chapter focuses on the influence of class presidents in secondary education. And three, lastly, his plans include spending more time on Martha's Vineyard. So check your email for your eBite. Jack seems to have misplaced my address. But Jack, we want to thank you for your friendship, your contributions, many of them, as we know, to our profession and your longstanding leadership. Enjoy the next stage of your life and stay in touch. I'll send you my email again. Thank you for listening. Music was provided by Josh Woodward. For more talks from this meeting, please visit www.arl.org.