Note: Ann Vanden Born was president from June 1, 1999 through Dec 31, 1999. Linda Slater took over the Presidency effective January 1, 2000.

Operating Year: June 1, 1999-Sept 31, 2000
At our meeting of April 5, 2000 the membership voted to accept a motion to change our operating year from June 1-May 31 to Oct 1-Sept 31.

Year's Activities:

Christmas Lunch: December 14th, 1999
For the second year in a row, we convened at the Manor Cafi for our annual Christmas luncheon. We had the mixed pleasure of saying "goodbye", but wishing all the best of luck , to Ann Vanden Born and Peter Schoenberg who both left NAHLA to undertake new positions outside the realm of health librarianship. Ann left her position at the Capital Health Authority Community Care and Public Health Library to accept her first professional position after recently receiving her MLIS from the University of Alberta School of Library and Information Studies. Ann will be working in the Library at Grande Prairie Regional College. Peter left the Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital to take up a position at Edmonton Public Library managing public access to electronic resources.

Partners' Day Reception: January 28th, 2000
As a member organization of Partners in Education (a group of Edmonton and surrounding-area librarians who agree to host students from the University of Alberta School of Library and Information Studies for a half day of "job-shadowing"), NAHLA has always contributed financially to the annual Partners' Day Reception which caps off the yearly Partners' Day events. This year it was our turn to participate in the organization of the Reception. The Executive partnered with Executive from the Special Libraries Association/Western Canada Chapter to plan the event, which was held in the Timms' Centre for the Fine Arts of the University of Alberta Campus. The event was well-attended and by all accounts a success.

General Meeting and True Colors. Session: April 5, 2000
We had a brief business meeting followed by a session conducted by Indira Haripersad from the University of Alberta Libraries Office of Staff Development and Training on the True Colors personality inventory. The inventory is based on the work of other theorists in the area of personality typing such as Jung, Myers & Briggs and Keirsey, but it puts it into a more entertaining context by using colours to categorize people. We each completed the inventory to determine our individual "colour", and then Indira led us through some group work in which we discussed, firstly, the difficulties involved in dealing with people of different "colours", but more importantly, how we could learn to understand and respect individual differences. In terms of work relationships, we also discussed how we could capitalize on individual differences to build stronger, more effective "teams". It is interesting to note that most of those in attendance were "Golds". "Gold", according to True Colors theory, "represents a need to be responsible, to fulfill duties and obligations, to organize and structure our life and that of others." Indira was not surprised and said that any time she has conducted this workshop with library staff, most people end up being "Golds". (For more information on True Colors, see their website at http://www.truecolors.org.

Special Meeting with Diane Lorenzetti from the Western Region, Canadian Health Network: April 19, 2000
Diane Lorenzetti met with NAHLA members and others interested in health information so that she could provide us with information about the activities of the Canadian Health Network as well as to obtain feedback from us about their present activities and future directions.

Consumer Health Interest Group:
The Group which consists of Tracy Kitagawa, Linda Harris, Marlene Dorgan, Gisele Hoskinson and Linda Slater identified the need to update our publication Consumer Health Information: A Directory of Resources in Edmonton and Area and hope to complete these some time during the summer. We will no longer produce a print update, but we will continue to maintain the electronic version. We are investigating converting the document to .pdf format so that those who wish to have a print version can do so at their own expense.

NAHLA Website:
We recently unveiled a web-site for our organization that provides basic information about us as well as links to CHLA and other relevant organizations. A logo designed for us two years ago by art student Cheryl Toornstra was incorporated into the site. The website is available at: http://www.freenet.edmonton.ab.ca/~nahla/nahla.htm