Philip Bantin, InULA President

Greetings! I am pleased to introduce our first InULA Notes for 1997. As many of you know, InULA's theme for the last two years has been "Advancing the Profession Through Support of the Individual." We believe that to meet this goal InULA must be involved in supporting programs and other initiatives designed to assist IU librarians and staff in meeting continuing education and development needs. How are we planning to do this? Let me tell you about some of our initiatives.

One of InULA's primary initiatives is the creation of a new strategy for designing and implementing InULA-funded continuing education and development programs. Details of this initiative are still being worked out, but I can announce at this time that InULA will make available a pool of funds-this year set at $2500-to support development of workshops, conferences, lectures, and other continuing education activities by IU librarians and staff. For those of you familiar with InULA continuing education budgets and programming, you will recognize that this approach marks a radical departure with the past. In the first place, it represents an annual increase of $1900, or over 300%, in the amount of funding InULA has traditionally committed to continuing education efforts. Second, this strategy represents a much more decentralized approach to programming, by placing responsibility for creating, planning, and implementing these programs in the hands of IU librarians and staff throughout the system, rather than under the control of a centralized InULA committee. In so doing, we hope to facilitate the development of programs which more fully address the specific needs and interests of each IU campus library community. Please look for more information on this program in the next month or so on InULA's Home Page and on the InULA and IU Libraries listservs.

Another set of continuing education activities sponsored by InULA fall into the category of providing a forum for information-sharing and discussion. Included in this group of activities is our newsletter, InULA Notes. In accordance with our emphasis on "supporting the individual," we have decided to devote the first two 1997 issues of InULA Notes to a discussion of continuing education. More specifically, the theme of the issues is "Continuing Education and Staff Development: Helping Individuals Adapt to Change." As a means of addressing this topic, contributors have been asked to focus on the following questions:

1. What is the value of continuing education and development activities to the individual library staff member, particularly as that learner tries to adapt to change?
2. What problems and barriers limit the libraries in offering and the learner in participating in continuing education and staff development programs?
3. What options for learning are available? How does a learner participate? And
4. What avenues for cooperation exist (e.g., among library units, among campuses, between InULA and the libraries) in providing continuing education and staff development programs? What is necessary to make this cooperation happen? I hope you enjoy the four articles included in this issue.

I would like to close by reminding all of you that InULA's reason for being is SERVICE to its membership and to the IU library community as a whole. InULA Board members spend a great deal of time trying to identify what this organization can do to best serve our constituencies, and how best to allocate its resources to realize the greatest benefits. We could use some help in this effort. We need to hear from you on how InULA can best serve you and the IU library community as a whole. Please take a moment to send me or any Board member your thoughts. The list of InULA Board members is available on the InULA Home Page. Thank you.