Welcome to InULA Notes. I hope you will continue to find your way back to the InULA homepage regularly. As we celebrate our 25^th anniversary and look forward to the 50^th there is much that has been accomplished by IU librarians and much more to be done. InULA began as an organization to work toward a common goal of a desired professional status in the IU system. It is an organization that has gone beyond that and given financial aid to library school students and most recently to IU librarians through the Research Incentive Fund and the Professional Development grants. Many librarians who are now holding prestigious positions in the United States were formerly InULA members, officers and active participants in the organization. As we look both directions in our 25^th anniversary year and celebrate with our theme of "1998/99: the next 25 years," we must remember the words of George Eliot who wrote, "I desire no future that means a break with the past." InULA must not break with its past; yet the groves of academe have changed considerably and will change even more in the next 25 years. InULA can function as a catalyst to prepare for those changes. A popular buzzword these days is "pro-active." The meaning of the word is to act in a way that anticipates the future. While the future is definitely pure guesswork and our guesses are often wrong (I remember in the early seventies being told we would no longer buy books for libraries, but give them away on fiche cards!), there are a number of sea changes occurring that are having a profound effect on librarians.

The most significant transformation that is occurring is the relationship between academics and administrators in academe. In the past administrators were faculty who had taught, had done research, had gone through the ranks and the P&T process; in addition they were expected to some day return to the ranks and join their colleagues. Hence a collegial atmosphere was possible. Today we have moved in the direction of professional administrators, most of whom came from the ranks but have no firm plans or expectations of returning to them. One person suggested that the academic situation is analogous to that of the U.S. Congress. That is, in the "old days" congressmen were community leaders who were expected to return to their constituencies and live side-by-side with them under the laws they made. Our promotion and tenure and grievance policies and procedures are based on a collegial structure. One of the questions InULA might wish to pursue is whether or not that collegial structure exists to the extent that current promotion and tenure policies continue to be valid. InULA has always been a forum for the exchange of ideas and debate in a spirit of free and open inquiry and is the appropriate place for discussion and debate of professional issues raised by the changes that have and will continue to occur in the academic environment.

My personal goal for the coming year is to lead our organization in a way that does not break with our past but looks forward in a positive, yet honest and direct way, toward the next twenty-five years.

Larry W. Griffin
InULA President
email: griffinl@ipfw.edu