President’s Report

I am pleased to present to the membership my first annual report as President of the Association. Hopefully much of the information in this report will not be new as I have tried throughout the year to keep the membership informed of our activities through the Bulletin and email updates. The Board was in regular communication throughout the year, holding a conference call in September, a board meeting in mid-November and a second conference call in March.

I am looking forward to our first joint conference with our friends and colleagues in the Canadian Association of Public Data Users. As I think that the last few years have demonstrated, we have many common goals and interests and at the conference, I hope that we can explore opportunities for collaboration.

I am anticipating a very full AGM, as we consider the future of our publications program, a new proposal for mentoring and a preliminary draft of a 3 year business plan. Thanks to Betty Kidd for her publications review and Colleen Beard for preparing a proposal on mentoring.

GeoConnections

We have continued our active participation in various advisory groups of GeoConnections, the program to develop a Canadian Spatial Data Infrastructure and make geospatial information readily accessible on the Internet (see separate reports on the Management Board, Policy Advisory Node and Transportation Network). Of note, is ACMLA's lead on a study to develop best practices and policies for the Policy Advisory Node.

Depository Services Program for Maps

I can finally report that the agreement between the Depository Services Program and Natural Resources Canada to provide Canadian map libraries with paper and digital topographic and geologic maps has finally been signed. The information package and application were sent to eligible libraries at the end of April. The most exciting component of this agreement is ftp access for academic members to the entire National Topographic Data Base to support teaching and research. With the NTDB database now available in our libraries and the recent consortium purchase of six DMTI Spatial geospatial data products last fall, we can now offer our users a rich base of nation-wide Canadian data at detailed scales. It is an exciting time!

As you are all aware, Marilyn Osborne joined the staff of the National Archives last year as Director General, Government Records Branch which contains most of the old "Visual and Sound Archives Division". As a means of better understanding our concerns and issues, Marilyn attended the ACMLA Board meeting at the Montreal conference last year and part of our Board meeting held in Ottawa in November. Winston Gomes, Policy and Planning Officer, has been appointed by the National Archives to act as a coordinating link between our two organizations. We have seen two communications from the Archives in the Bulletin this past year: Marilyn's observations a new member of the Archives and the Archives formal response to the Board to the ACMLA brief submitted to the English review.

Betty Kidd retired from the National Archives after a long productive career as a manager of the various manifestations of the "National Map Collection" and a strong voice for the cartographic community within the Archives.

As you will notice in the Bulletin, we have welcomed several new members this past year. Sending out the welcome letters to new members is one of my favourite tasks as President. We also had several CAPDU members join our Association this year. And on a sadder note, we lost two friends and colleagues who helped build the Association in the 1970's and 1980's: Kate Donkin and Tom Nagy. Both Kate and Tom were extremely active on the Executive and contributed to many committees.

Unfortunately, I cannot report much progress in this area. Although there now seems to be interest on the part of both the National Library and National Archives in implementing legal deposit, progress is expected to be extremely slow because of the legislative process. The earliest estimate is three years.

I would be remiss if I didn’t use this opportunity to thank that many members who contribute of their time and energy to work on ACMLA activities and projects. Bruce Weedmark, who has toiled away for years as our Membership Officer, has finally decided he would like more free time. I don't think any of us realize how much work this position entails. It is not just sending out renewal notices; mailing lists much be maintained and updates, labels produced for various mailings, and answers supplied to the numerous enquiries throughout the year from new members and serial aggregators. Jeff Murray has stepped down as the ACMLA archivist after several years. Thanks to you both. And it goes without saying, how much we appreciate the work of our committee chairs and Bulletin editor.

I look forward to seeing you all in person at the conference!

Respectfully submitted: