January 1973 to Summer 1976

On a typically cold January day in 1973 on the western end of Lake Erie, the Medical College of Ohio's Mulford Library became the first health sciences library to participate in OCLC. Some would want the story to begin in 1967 when the Ohio College Library Center started, because without OCLC, there never would have been a Health Sciences OCLC Users Group (HSOCLCUG). Our story starts in 1973, however, with the entry of health sciences libraries. They would change OCLC in ways that Fred Kilgour and others at OCLC could not have anticipated. At the time, OCLC had its operations in a large World War II-era Quonset hut on Kinnear Road on the west campus of Ohio State University and additional offices on Henderson Road in north Columbus.

Just days after the Medical College of Ohio started using OCLC, the Cleveland Health Sciences Library joined OCLC on February 1, followed by others that year. By early 1974, almost ten health sciences libraries were members. By summer 1975, the membership was approximately twenty. Riverside Methodist Hospital Medical Library, a few miles north of OCLC along Olentangy River Road, was the first hospital library to join OCLC in late October 1974. Meanwhile, OCLC membership was rising fast, fueled mostly by public and academic libraries.

Before 1973 had even ended, the few early health sciences libraries began to discover that they had unique problems in using OCLC. Conflicts existed between Library of Congress (LC) and National Library of Medicine (NLM) cataloging, often in choice or form of entry, for example. Whereas OCLC's input standards were oriented strictly toward LC practice, health sciences libraries looked instead to NLM as their cataloging authority. At the time, OCLC did not regard NLM as a national cataloging authority. Questions arose about the 090 and 096 fields. At the time, 090 was defined rather stringently for LC-type call numbers and 096 for NLM-type call numbers. Health sciences libraries began puzzling over what to do, because they used LC-type call numbers as well as NLM-type call numbers, yet OCLC profiles forced a choice of one or the other, and health sciences libraries often constructed their LC-type numbers differently from non-health sciences libraries. These questions flourished whenever health sciences catalogers got together informally to share ideas and solutions.

Ann Ekstrom, Chief, Library Systems Division, OCLC, finally organized a meeting at OCLC on Sept. 19, 1974, to gather together health sciences librarians and OCLC staff to talk about these problems. Although her title didn't suggest it, Ann became the first OCLC liaison to health sciences librarians, the first in a long succession of them, leading up to HSOCLCUG's current liaison, Linda Arnold. Among the twenty-three librarians attending were Lillian Kozuma (representing NLM), Olyn Ruxin (head catalog librarian, Cleveland Health Sciences Library), Brett Kirkpatrick and Remedios Silva (assistant librarian for cataloging and head of cataloging, respectively, Health Sciences Library, SUNY at Buffalo), Shirley Cameron (head cataloger, University of Texas Health Science Center at Dallas), Doris Bolef (project director of HECC, Washington University, School of Medicine), Sarah Salley (head of catalog department, Medical College of Ohio), Josephine (Jo) Yeoh (head medical librarian, Riverside Methodist Hospital, Columbus, Ohio), Doris Haag and Patricia Bentley (both of the Medical Center Libraries, University of Cincinnati), Pamela Biggs and Sharon Walbridge (both of Wright State University), Jean Soong (head of cataloging, Welch Medical Library, Baltimore), Janet Boynton and Henry Lemkau (both of University of Rochester Medical Library), Marcia Davidoff and Bettina Wolff (both of New York State Library in Albany), Anita Allen (head of technical processing, University of New Mexico, Library of the Health Sciences), Sheila Pelosi (chief cataloger, Countway Library of Medicine, Boston), Barbara Gates (librarian/coordinator, Interuniversity Council of the North Texas Area), Marita Krivda (technical services head, University of Massachusetts Medical Center), Jane Robinson (head of cataloging, Falk Library, University of Pittsburgh), and Ann Hocevar (field operations assistant, NELINET).

Little did anyone there know that some of them would later play major roles in HSOCLCUG: Ruxin, Kirkpatrick, Cameron, Bolef, Salley, Kozuma most prominently.

The purpose of the September 19 meeting was to discuss problems of cataloging and input, where the standards established by OCLC general membership did not meet the special needs of those attending. The catalogers gave many recommendations for change to the OCLC staffers at the meeting. For example, they raised the question for the first time about what would happen to OCLC records loaded from NLM tapes if a matching LC record was loaded later. All NLM data would be bumped. At that time, only new serial titles were being contributed by NLM, but there was much discussion of larger loads of NLM records. Later that fall, many of their recommendations were adopted or set into motion. Equally important, however, the meeting sparked a feeling of special community among the catalogers that led them to meet again and again to solve their problems.

Before the September 19 meeting, Olyn Ruxin had drafted a letter, dated September 3, intended to go to nineteen personal contacts at other health sciences libraries that were using OCLC. Olyn said that it occurred to her at the Medical Library Association (MLA) meeting in 1974, that some of them may be interested in forming a group. She had not sent the letter before the September 19 OCLC meeting. Now she had more contacts and an updated list. Informal contacts in the months following led to an important small sharing session at MLA Cleveland on June 5, 1975. More and more libraries had started reclassifying their collections by this time from LC or other systems. In a memo to her staff, dated December 5, 1974, Olyn says: "There are approximately 15 health sciences libraries using NLM classification, and several others which use LC or other classification systems."

In April and May 1975, invitations were sent out to speakers and to librarians to come to a "Sharing Session for OCLC Members to Share Experiences in Automated Cataloging of Health Science Materials," scheduled for Thursday, June 5, 11:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m., in the Cleveland Room at the Sheraton Cleveland Hotel.

Retriever, the MLA conference newsletter, ran a special supplement on Wednesday, June 4, that said:

"OCLC members who use NLM classification/MeSH headings to share experiences in automated cataloging of health sciences materials (Cleveland Room).

OCLC will be represented by Phyllis Bova and Meg Sarver; NLM will be represented by Lillian Kozuma. Other OCLC members who will participate are:

a) Cleveland Health Sciences Library. Susan Hill.

b) Medical Center Libraries, University of Cincinnati. Patty Bentley.

c) Medical College of Ohio at Toledo. Sarah Salley.

d) New York State Library, Medical Library. Marcia Davidoff.

e) State University of New York, Albany. Remedios Silva.

f) University of Massachusetts, Medical Center Library. Donald Morton (for Marita Krivda).

g) University of New Mexico, Health Sciences Library. Anita Allen.

h) University of Rochester Medical Library. Lucretia McClure (for Janet Boynton)

i) Washington University, School of Medicine Library. Debbie Yedlin.

Mrs. Olyn K. Ruxin, Head Catalog Librarian of the Cleveland Health Sciences Library, is organizer of the session, which will focus on practical matters, specifically . . . [various topics] . . . and the possible formation of a special interest group within MLA."

The agenda for the June 5 meeting was: Introductions; Individual library experiences (5 minutes each); OCLC input standards; Adding NLM/MeSH to existing records and NLM use of LC class number in 060, 096, 090?; What to do if OCLC doesn't retain NLM/MeSH information when existing records are replaced by MARC II records lacking it?; Main entry problems (differing LC and NLM main entries); Miscellaneous (ISBD (M), ISBD (S), audiovisual materials; Establish a CE course in OCLC/NLM usage?; Establish a special interest group within MLA, with newsletters and/or meetings between MLA annual meetings?

The pace of events that eventually led to the formation of HSOCLCUG began to accelerate. There was a meeting already scheduled for the following month, Friday, July 18, at the Olin Library, Washington University, in St. Louis, called: "Colloquium on OCLC for Medical Libraries." It was being sponsored by the Midcontinental Regional Medical Library.

Right after MLA Cleveland, however, the staff at Cleveland Health Sciences Library began to work in earnest on a newsletter and to become a clearinghouse for sharing of health sciences OCLC information. On June 19, Henry Segal, assistant catalog librarian at CHSL, typed a memo titled "Suggestions for OCLC-Medical Library Newsletter." At this point, the still fuzzy concept of the organization was referred to as 'OCLC-Medical Libraries Group.' The last sentence of his memo was: "I suggest SOM 'Start of Message' which is unique to OCLC." The SOM triangle is pencilled in on the original memo in the HSOCLCUG archives. Henry had typed this historic memo on a manual typewriter, with errors backspaced and typed over, on the reverse side of a discarded photocopy of a page from a nursing journal.

At the July 18 Colloquium at Washington University, Olyn announced that Cleveland had already begun work on a first issue of a newsletter. At this point, Olyn was still thinking in terms of an MLA interest group. Doris Bolef seems to be the first one to suggest setting up a Users Group, and that it would include representatives from NLM to meet regularly. Paul Olson (Midwest Health Science Library Network, John Crerar Library, Chicago) suggested a working committee on a task force to spell out their concerns. There were five volunteers: Paul Olson, Doris Bolef, James Falasco (University of Illinois at the Medical Center, Chicago), Patti Armes (University of Texas Health Science Center at Dallas), and Olyn Ruxin. Doris suggested announcing the task force and calling for at least five additional librarians to join.

In these two meetings, there was general agreement on three points:

1. That OCLC recognize medical library members as a special group with special problems.

2. That MLA recognize a special interest group of OCLC users.

3. That there be a clearinghouse for the exchange of information about medical library OCLC use.

In late August, the CHSL staff published the first issue of Start of Message, with Olyn as the editor. Thus began a long succession of editors leading to SOM's current editor, Charlie Spencer Lackey (Duke University Medical Center Library). Olyn held the post for six years, the second longest of any editor. Cindy Fedders (Washington University School of Medicine Library), who took over in 1993, was editor the longest. Olyn adopted the whole numbering system (plus date) for identifying issues, a numbering system that continues today. The first issue explained the unique problems of health sciences libraries and provided a summary (or resume, as it was called) of the June 5 MLA Cleveland sharing session and the July 18 St. Louis colloquium. At the end was a list of seventy-five people, with contact information, who were receiving the issue in the mail or in person. Subsequent requests depleted the initial run of 125 copies. The first issue established CHSL as a clearinghouse and provided documentation that there was a movement or community in a formative stage.

The Task Force that formed from the July 18 meeting in St. Louis arranged an all-day meeting for October 7 in Room 5011 of the O'Hare Hilton adjacent to O'Hare airport in Chicago. On September 29, Olyn Ruxin and Susan Hill (CHSL) drafted a memo to be discussed at the October 7 meeting, addressed to "Task Force on Organization of Health Science OCLC Users Group." This appears to be the first document that actually used the name of the organization to come. Their memo itemized three areas to be discussed: purposes, specific goals, and organization of the group. Notably, the purposes in the memo were almost identical to the objectives section of the first set of Bylaws that were adopted in spring 1976. Even today in 2003, the objectives of HSOCLCUG in the current Bylaws are essentially the same as what Olyn and Susan wrote in their memo in 1975. The last item on the memo was: "Determine a formal name for the group." As it turned out, the name they had put at the top of their memo was the name that the Task Force chose at the October 7 meeting.

There were fifteen people at the meeting: Patti Armes (University of Texas Health Science Center at Dallas), David Bishop (Midcontinental Regional Medical Library, University of Nebraska Medical Center), Doris Bolef (now at East Tennessee State University Medical Center), Linda Baum (NLM), Ted Caron (Mayo Clinic Library, James Falasco (University of Illinois at the Medical Center), Susan Hill (CHSL), Lillian Kozuma (NLM), Charles Lewis (Virginia Commonwealth University Library), Jean Miller (Medical Library Center of New York), Janet Mixter (Loyola University Medical Center Library), Paul Olson (John Crerar Library), Olyn Ruxin (CHSL), Sarah Salley (also called Sally Salley, at Medical College of Ohio in Toledo), and Deborah Yedlin (Washington University School of Medicine Library).

In the afternoon Jim Falasco proposed formation of a formal users group, membership consisting of one vote per health science library OCLC user, with an elected board of directors to coordinate policy and negotiations with OCLC. After much discussion, the consensus was that it should be an independent organization (independent of MLA and cutting across OCLC geographic networks), and that the name would be Health Science OCLC Users Group. (The name was formally changed in 1984 to Health Sciences OCLC Users Group, but over the years, both before and after 1984, the singular and plural forms are seen in correspondence, documents, and even in the subtitle of Start of Message.) An independent group would be more effective in expressing their special needs to OCLC. Also, the group would not have to wait for MLA to end its moratorium on special interest groups. (MLA was to embark on a reorganization over the next two years.)

Two institutional membership categories were proposed: those libraries that were already OCLC users or had signed contracts and those libraries that were thinking of becoming OCLC members. A call for new members would be put in the next issue of Start of Message (which appeared in December). A formal membership meeting would take place at the next MLA meeting in June 1976.

A steering committee was appointed with the charge of approaching OCLC (that is, Fred Kilgour) to gain recognition for the group. Other committees were formed: membership and publicity, continuing education, input standards, and liaisons to NLM and to the RMLs.

Five people were appointed to the Steering Committee: Paul Olson (chair), Patti Armes, Doris Bolef, Susan Hill, Olyn Ruxin.

Three people were appointed to the Membership and Publicity Committee: James Falasco, Jean Miller, Olyn Ruxin.

Five people were appointed to the MLA Meeting and Continuing Education Committee: Ted Caron, James Falasco, Susan Hill, Janet Mixter, Sarah Salley.

Five people were appointed to the Standards and Conventions for OCLC Input Committee: Linda Baum, Charles Lewis, Jean Miller, Sarah Salley, Deborah Yedlin.

Lillian Kozuma became the NLM liaison. David Bishop became the RML liaison.

The central practical issue that these committees were to work toward was OCLC recognition of another national standard: NLM. Probably no one there fully appreciated how ambitious and elusive this goal was to prove to be in the decades that followed.

For most early HSOCLCUG'ers, the October 7 meeting at the O'Hare Hilton represents the birth date and birthplace of HSOCLCUG. For those more formally-inclined, HSOCLCUG did not officially come into existence until the first set of Bylaws was adopted and officers elected during the first annual meeting on June 15, 1976 in the Marquette Inn Ballroom at the MLA 1976 meeting in Minneapolis.

On October 16, Olyn visited OCLC and met with Fred Kilgour to explain the new group and its purpose. This was a good will-seeking ambassadorial visit, because both knew that the issues involved were too formidable to attempt to tackle quickly. The issue of getting NLM CATLINE records into the OCLC database, for example, high on the agenda of HSOCLCUG'ers, would not be resolved satisfactorily for another decade (!). Years of frustration lay ahead.

On January 23, 1976, the Task Force held a second meeting in Cleveland in the Foster Street Room at the Marriott Inn on West 150th (not at CHSL, but on the west side within easy reach of Cleveland's airport). There were eighteen librarians from ten states there, in a serious organizing mood, and they concentrated on three areas: planning for the MLA 1976 program in Minneapolis, charges to the committees, and the mechanics of moving the Task Force toward an organization with Bylaws and elected officers.

The December issue of SOM had included a membership form. Dues covered the calendar year, January - December 1976, until 1982 when they were changed to a fiscal year with a revision of the Bylaws. Dues were $2 for individuals, $5 for associate institutions, $10 for active institutions (active members received three copies of SOM). It was planned that the next issue (which appeared in March) would include another call for new members. It is not clear if anyone at the meeting knew, but less than three weeks later (February 11), NLM would catalog SOM and add the record to the OCLC database (#1984865) and SOM would also have its own ISSN (0361-0241) which would appear for the first time on the March issue.

The Task Force nominated Patti Armes as Chairperson, Susan Hill as Vice Chairperson, and Janet Mixter as Secretary-Treasurer. Patti had been working on the proposed Bylaws with some help from others on the Task Force. One month after the next issue of SOM was mailed (which allowed enough time for membership to build), another mailing would go out to active members which would include the slate of officers (Patti, Susan, and Janet) and the proposed Bylaws for voting.

The Standards and Conventions for OCLC Input Committee presented a paper of proposals, which included: (1) Input of NLM copy by local libraries (NLM should be considered an authority for input with the same integrity as LC), and (2) Follow NLM interpretation of AACR and NLM authority file for original cataloging.

Ginger Bullock (Cleveland Health Sciences Library) presented a report on the work of the OCLC/ILL committee. The January 23 meeting appears to be the first time where Ginger's name appears in the archives. Years later her name would change to Garvin, then later to Saha. She would eventually be President and hold other elected and appointed positions. She and Susan Hill have been HSOCLCUG members the longest.

The eighteen Task Force members present at the January 23 meeting were: Patti Armes, Linda Baum (NLM, substituting for Lillian Kozuma), David Bishop, Doris Bolef, Ginger Bullock, James Falasco, Doris Haag (University of Cincinnati Medical Center Libraries), Susan Hill, Jean Miller, Janet Mixter, Jean Mueller (Indiana University School of Medicine Library), Paul Olson, Mary Piper (CHSL), Don Potts (SUNY Buffalo Health Sciences Library), Olyn Ruxin, Sarah Salley, Connor Tjarks (Virginia Commonwealth University - Medical College of Virginia), and Debbie Yedlin.

Patti finished the proposed Bylaws in late March and sent them to the Task Force for approval. Then they were mailed out to active members in April, with a return deadline of May 1 in order to be counted. The first objective in the Bylaws, then and now, was: "To establish and maintain at OCLC a voice that will be heard and recognized as that of a large group of users with specific needs; to be in close contact with OCLC operational staff [later changed to operations staff]."

The May issue of SOM (the fourth issue) announced that the Bylaws had been approved by a ninety percent margin. It included the agenda for the June 15 meeting and announced a new CE course for MLA. The HSOCLCUG membership list kept growing. As of June 10 there were twenty-seven active institution members (using OCLC), eleven associate institution members (thinking about joining OCLC), and twenty-nine individual members, bringing the total to sixty-seven. In another count, by June 1976 there were over fifty health sciences libraries using OCLC.

The first annual meeting began at 3 pm, Tuesday, June 15 in the Marquette Inn Ballroom during the MLA annual convention. Task Force members wore large round buttons which read: "We are HSOCLCUG [start of message triangle] Experienced." Paul Olson, as chair of the Steering Committee of the Task Force, began the meeting. The first part was an information sharing session. Then the first Business Meeting followed.

During the sharing session, Lillian Kozuma spoke about NLM. Ann Ekstrom spoke about OCLC. Patti Armes spoke about HSOCLCUG and included a short history of the events leading up to this meeting. Olyn Ruxin spoke about what she called the operational interface with NLM data in OCLC. Lillian Kozuma gave another talk, this one on standards among OCLC health sciences libraries.

During the Business Meeting, Patti announced that the first set of Bylaws had been voted on and adopted. Paul then presented a list of voting members. The Nominating Committee presented their report on the slate of officers, which was then unanimously elected. The Steering Committee was dissolved. The new officers took over: Patti as HSOCLCUG's first Chairperson, Susan Hill as Vice Chairperson (Chairperson Elect) who would plan the programs for the coming year, and Jan Mixter as Secretary-Treasurer. Reports from the interim committees followed. The financial report was given by Olyn. The HSOCLCUG account balance on June 15 was $212.31. New business consisted of appointments to committees and liaison officers.

Jim Falasco, one of the former Task Force members, had taught the new CE-35 course for the first time at MLA on Saturday and Sunday, June 12 and 13, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The title was: OCLC Utilization in Health Science Libraries. CE-35 would be taught and revised by others in HSOCLCUG, including Patti and Olyn, in coming years.

In May, OCLC had established its first users support center, called the Western Service Center, located in Claremont, California, an eastern suburb of Los Angeles. It was created to serve California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington. Patrick Barkley, director of libraries at Claremont Colleges was its first director and Myra White was the coordinator librarian. Its name changed to OCLC Pacific in 1982 and then back to OCLC Western Service Center in November 2000, almost two years after Western Library Network (WLN) merged with OCLC (January 1999). OCLC Pacific moved to the nearby suburb Rancho Cucamonga during the 1990s and finally to another nearby suburb Ontario in the early 2000s. The former WLN office in Lacey, Washington, is now OCLC Western's Lacey office.

Summer 1976-1980

With the election of Patti Armes as the first Chairperson of HSOCLCUG, Susan Hill as the Vice Chairperson/Chairperson Elect, and Janet Mixter as Secretary-Treasurer at the June 1976 MLA meeting in Minneapolis, the work of the group began to refocus on continuing education, continuing to help new OCLC members with setting up their own OCLC workflow, and pursuing the objectives as specified in the Bylaws. Susan is still an HSOCLCUG member today in 2003.

While there were about sixty-six members in June 1976, there were really only twenty-six voting members because only active institutional members could vote (that is, those institutions that were already OCLC users or had signed contracts and had joined HSOCLCUG, in contrast to associate institutional members and individual members, who could not vote). Those voting members were:

Arizona Medical Center Library, University of Arizona

Cleveland Health Sciences Library

East Tennessee State University, College of Medicine Library

Georgetown University School of Medicine Library

John Crerar Library

Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Welch Medical Library

Loyola University, Medical Center Library

Mayo Clinic Library

Medical College of Georgia Library

Medical College of Ohio at Toledo, Mulford Library

Medical Library Center of New York

Medical Research Library of Brooklyn/SUNY-Downstate Medical Center

New York Academy of Medicine Library

Ohio State University, Health Sciences Library

St. Luke's Hospital Center, Bolling Medical Library (New York)

State University of New York at Buffalo, Health Sciences Library

Thomas Jefferson University, Scott Memorial Library

University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Library

University of Cincinnati Medical Center Libraries

University of Connecticut Health Center Library

University of Kentucky Medical Center Library

University of New Mexico Health Sciences Library

University of Rochester, School of Medicine & Dentistry, Miner Library

University of Texas Health Science Center at Dallas Library

Washington University, School of Medicine Library

Among the individual members at the time were Naomi Broering (Georgetown University Medical Center), Anaclare Evans (Wayne State University, School of Medicine Library), Wilma Ewens (Medical Center Library of New York), Josephine Yeoh (Riverside Methodist Hospital Medical Library in Columbus, the first hospital library in OCLC), and Ellen Caplan (OCLC). Anaclare would go on to hold many offices in HSOCLCUG during the 1980s, including one she herself created during an important reorganization in 1984: Administrative Secretary. Wilma would become an associate editor of Start of Message during 1981-1983 when she was at Georgetown University. She changed her name to Wilma Ewens Bass and remains a member today in 2003. Josephine is library director at Riverside today. Ellen served as co-liaison with Ann Ekstrom (OCLC) in HSOCLCUG's early years, especially for MeSH and NLM classification questions, and she created a new division in OCLC in 1978 for user support which became the division containing our liaisons.

The associate institution members were:

Albany Medical College, Library of Health Sciences

Beth Israel Medical Center, Medical Library (New York)

Menninger Foundation, Professional Library

Roosevelt Hospital Medical Library (New York)

Michigan Dept. of Education, State Library Services

Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center/Rush Medical College Library

Syntex USA Library (Palo Alto, California)

University of Nebraska Medical Center, Library of Medicine

University of Pennsylvania, School of Medicine Library (Philadelphia)

University of South Dakota, School of Medicine Health Science Library

Vanderbilt University, Medical Center Library

Susan Hill was chair of the Program Committee and organized a December 2-3, 1976 meeting at Cleveland Health Sciences Library. Seventy-six persons attended, despite zero temperatures, snow, and bone-chilling winds coming off Lake Erie. Some came to take the CE-35 course, others to participate in the discussions and seminar. The first day focused on standards issues and policies, while the second day was oriented toward a workshop on what Olyn Ruxin called the operational interface of OCLC, followed by an idea exchange on the broad range of OCLC uses. People talked about their printers attached to their OCLC terminals (Tycom, GE, Scope, etc.) and experience with serials and AV workforms, and it set a precedent for future HSOCLCUG meetings for many years to come. Lillian Kozuma of NLM and Ann Ekstrom of OCLC were there to give talks. Dr. Joseph Leiter, associate director operations at NLM, gave a talk on the second day. The meeting was unusual, however, for being scheduled in the winter, and there do not seem to be any mid-winter meetings held for the next two and a half decades until 2002.

The Program Committee met during the December meeting at CHSL to plan for the second annual meeting which would be held in conjunction with the June 1977 MLA meeting in Seattle. The Program Committee included Jeanne Mueller, Paul Olson, Olyn Ruxin, Edwina Walls (University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Library, but not present at the meeting), Shirley Cameron (University of Texas Health Science Center at Dallas), Rick Forsman (University of Connecticut Health Science Library), and Susan Hill. Topics of great interest to the membership at the time were the new CONSER program, NLM's CATLINE and AVLINE tapes, OCLC's future systems, and helping new OCLC users (for example, in MARC coding).

By June 1977, membership had grown to 129 (50 Active, 25 Associate, 54 individual members) and the account balance had reached $760. The second annual meeting took place Wednesday, June 15, in the Bainbridge Room of the Washington Plaza Hotel, five blocks from the MLA convention hotel, The Olympic, in Seattle. There were many topics discussed, including NLM's participation in CONSER which had recently begun operation after a long planning process. The topic that was uppermost on most attendees' minds, however, was the imminent contract between NLM and OCLC for OCLC to load NLM's CATLINE tapes.

NLM had already been entering its current serials cataloging in OCLC since July 1975. There had been a meeting in April involving CONSER, NLM, and OCLC to work on the technical issues on entering NLM's retrospective serials cataloging into OCLC, and the licensing agreement was finalized later in the year. AVLINE tapes were not part of the agreement. It was a widespread expectation that OCLC would begin loading the monograph records from the current CATLINE tapes early the next year (1978). This did not happen, however.

HSOCLCUG had an Executive Board meeting and a business meeting at its June 15 meeting. It was felt at the time, because of MLA schedule conflicts, that there was not a large enough percentage of the membership present at the business meeting to constitute a quorum, so those members present felt that they could not vote on any business, such as Bylaws revision. By the next year, the criterion for a quorum at the business meeting had been defined as those in attendance. That simplified the carrying-on of business, and it is defined the same today. In contrast to the business meetings, a quorum for the Executive Board meetings is a majority of the Board members, for mailed ballots thirty-three percent of the total paid membership, and for specially called meetings ten percent of the total paid membership.

Barbara Markuson of INCOLSA spoke at the meeting on networking and networks (for example, OCLC, Washington Library Network, BALLOTS, the Toronto network). Others spoke on COM catalogs and shared cataloging. The top continuing education priority was OCLC and documentation for using OCLC.

Sarah Salley, Medical College of Ohio, had been elected Vice Chairperson/Chairperson Elect for 1977-1978 in a mail ballot that preceded the annual meeting. James Raper, Medical Library Center of New York, was elected Secretary-Treasurer. HSOCLCUG adopted a new logo for its stationery: a drawing of an OCLC terminal displaying the Start of Message triangle followed by HSOCLCUG. This would be HSOCLCUG's logo for the next decade and a half.

In late 1977, HSOCLCUG was exploring the possibility of becoming a subset or committee of a formal RML organization, but the idea never went anywhere. The Regional Medical Library system developed in a different direction and HSOCLCUG had no role to play in the system.

A new governance structure for OCLC was approved in December, and the name Ohio College Library Center was changed to OCLC, Inc. During 1978, however, the name began appearing on letterhead as OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. OCLC had activated its User Services Division in May 1977, and by February 1978, the Division's staff had grown to 12, three of whom were known as User Advisors. Gretchen Whitney became health sciences librarians' first official User Advisor. Ellen Caplan continued handling MeSH and NLM classification problems for health sciences librarians, though.

In NLM, HSOCLCUG's liaison, Lillian Kozuma, became acting head of the Cataloging Section in early 1978.

Jeanne Mueller (Indiana University School of Medicine) was elected the new Vice Chairperson/Chairperson Elect in the spring for 1978-1979. Two candidates tied in the voting for Secretary-Treasurer: Anne Swedenberg (Georgetown University Medical Center) and Brett Kirkpatrick (New York Academy of Medicine Library. That was the first and only time a tie vote has occurred in HSOCLCUG's history. It was decided to split the office: Anne became Secretary and Brett became Treasurer. Sarah Salley (now at East Tennessee State University College of Medicine) became Chairperson for 1978-1979.

HSOCLCUG had its third annual meeting at the Indianapolis-Holiday Inn Airport on April 10 and 11, 1978. That was the first time the meeting was not in conjunction with the MLA annual meeting, and it began a tradition of separate meetings that has continued until today. It was the first time, also, that the annual meeting lasted more than a fraction of one day. Annual meetings would eventually grow to four-day affairs by the mid 1980s and continuing on until the late 1990s. HSOCLCUG did have an informal meeting, however, at the 1978 MLA annual meeting in Chicago at the Palmer House, June 15.

Revisions to the Bylaws were approved at the Indianapolis meeting. The new Bylaws said HSOCLCUG could meet apart from MLA, could have elections by mail ballot after the annual meeting if necessary, and could change the Bylaws by mail vote.

Chairperson Sarah Salley appointed two Ad Hoc committees, the first two of many to come in the years ahead. The first was the Ad Hoc Committee to Study the Impact of AACR2 on Health Sciences Libraries using OCLC, chaired by James Raper (Medical Library Center of New York). The second was the Ad Hoc Committee to Study the Group Structure (of HSOCLCUG), chaired by Michael La Croix (Wright State University School of Medicine). Rick Forsman was chair of the Bylaws Committee. Debbie Yedlin worked on continuing education course development. Shirley Cameron was chair of the Documentation Committee.

By late 1978, Chairperson Salley and Doris Bolef both moved from East Tennessee State University to the Library of Rush University in Chicago. Michael LaCroix's Ad Hoc Committee reached a conclusion in early 1979, after discussing HSOCLCUG structure, that there was a definite need for a special interest group within MLA having to do with technical services in general. The seemingly low key idea grew over the next few years to result in the formation of the MLA Technical Services Section on June 18, 1982.

OCLC Users Council was created in early 1979, Council Bylaws were approved, and formal elections were held. The Council delegates did not meet as a full Council until October.

OCLC still had not loaded the current CATLINE tapes by early 1979, which they had been promising to do since 1974. Therefore, Chairperson Salley sent a resolution to the newly formed Users Council in May urging OCLC to do the load. Users Council also passed its own resolution on the matter. Finally on August 15, the OCLC logon message announced that current CATLINE loading had begun. Even though everyone was very happy, it didn't take long for HSOCLCUG to realize that the retrospective CATLINE records were not being loaded. This situation would drag on into the mid 1980s. Additionally, OCLC discontinued the current tape loading the next year because there were big changes going on in OCLC and there was no time for CATLINE tapes. First was the new AACR2 and how OCLC was going to implement it. Second was OCLC's move during 1980 to brand new headquarters still under construction in Dublin on the far northwest side of Columbus.

Cleveland Health Sciences Library assistant catalog librarian Henry Segal died June 2, 1979. He was the one who had originated the name Start of Message for the newsletter.

Brett Kirkpatrick (New York Academy of Medicine Library) was elected the new Vice Chairperson (Chairperson Elect) in the spring for 1979-1980. Kathryn Hoffman (Houston Academy of Medicine, Texas Medical Center Library) was elected Secretary-Treasurer. Jeanne Mueller now became Chairperson at the fourth annual meeting at the Holiday Inn West Lane Avenue in Columbus, Ohio, May 14-16, 1979. She soon started to collect records and materials from the past activities of HSOCLCUG and asked members to send her archival materials. Thus HSOCLCUG's archives were born.

There was an audiovisual cataloging course at the Columbus meeting, followed by talks on AACR2 and medical libraries and about the OCLC computer facilities, about users' experiences with the OCLC ILL subsystem and OCLC serials control subsystem, and there was an OCLC tour. Minor revisions to the Bylaws were approved.

During Jeanne's year as Chairperson, she was invited to represent HSOCLCUG at the February 3, 1980 OCLC Users Council meeting in Columbus. Users Council wanted to find out more about the growing number of user groups. The On-Line Audiovisual Catalogers (OLAC) group was formed during the year. Jeanne created two new Ad Hoc committees: the Ad Hoc Committee to Study the Impact of the OCLC On-Line Serials Union List Function, chaired by Tom Sink (Medical College of Ohio), and the Ad Hoc Committee to Study Priorities, chaired by Brett Kirkpatrick. Other committee chairs included James Raper (Catalog Code Revision), Deborah Yedlin (Continuing Education), Shirley Cameron (Documentation), Anaclare Evans (Nominating), and Program (Brett Kirkpatrick).

Rick Forsman, who had moved from the University of Connecticut to the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1979, was chair of the Bylaws Committee that proposed revisions that were approved at the fifth annual HSOCLCUG meeting at the Hotel John Marshall in Richmond, Virginia, May 1-3, 1980. The most significant revision by far was in the titles of the top officers. HSOCLCUG Chairperson now became President while the Vice Chairperson (Chairperson Elect) became Vice President (President Elect). Also at the meeting, outgoing Chairperson Jeanne (the last officer to hold that title) reported that there was sentiment to appoint a committee to investigate the establishment of a technical services special interest group in MLA. Olyn raised the question whether an archivist should be appointed, but the discussion didn't lead to a decision, and it would be many more years before an archivist position was created on the board. Deborah Yedlin was elected Vice President (President Elect) for 1980-1981, and Kathryn Hoffman was reelected Secretary-Treasurer. Brett Kirkpatrick became President.

There were talks on NLM's SERLINE, the OCLC union list subsystem, CATLINE tapes in OCLC, COM catalogs, in-house production of online catalogs, and an all day workshop on AACR2.

The Continuing Education Committee split into three subcommittees after the Richmond, Va. meeting: Quality Assurance (of OCLC member input and enhance), Documentation (which would absorb the formerly separate Documentation Committee and update the Care Package to help libraries that were new to the OCLC system), and a third to study the educational aspects of the annual meetings. The CE Committee the previous year had begun to think about how to structure HSOCLCUG workshops/courses so that they could be authorized for MLA continuing education credit for recertification in MLA.

The Documentation subcommittee completed the care package. It had five parts: introduction, selective bibliography, samples of workform tagging sheets, a sample workflow, and 'Some bits and tidbits.'

1980 was a year of great change, and not just because of the advent of AACR2 and OCLC's move to its new Dublin headquarters. OCLC staff had grown to over 400 persons by the beginning of the year. Gretchen Whitney , OCLC's User Advisor for HSOCLCUG, left OCLC in the first half of 1980, and Kate Nevins became the new user advisor or liaison.

The Claremont, California-based OCLC Western Service Center opened up an office in Portland, based at the University of Portland, with Bruce Preslan as senior coordinator. It opened offices in San Francisco and Seattle, too, but those closed. The Portland office continued on through the 1980s and 1990s in different Portland locations, then closed in the early 2000s. In 2003, besides the major offices in Ontario and Lacey, OCLC Western had field offices in Santa Rosa, Calif. and Spokane, Wash.

By the end of October, 182 medical libraries were using OCLC. In November, OCLC introduced its serials control subsystem union listing capability, and by the following spring there were already eight union lists operating, with three more in the conversion phase. This was the second capability of the subsystem -- the first was check-in in 1975, the third was to be claiming capability scheduled for 1982. In December, Rowland Brown replaced Fred Kilgour as President of OCLC, and OCLC converted its union catalog records to AACR2 form, an enormous effort. By mid February 1981, OCLC was operating in its new facility in Dublin, near the I-270 outer belt and Highway 161 interchange. Its name was changed from OCLC, Inc. (which it had since late 1977) to OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc., and it had a new logo.

During 1980, too, Christa Hoffmann was appointed head of the Cataloging Section at NLM.

The 1980s

At the sixth annual meeting at the Holiday Inn Clayton in St. Louis, April 29-May 1, 1981, Olyn asked to be replaced as SOM editor. Olyn had produced 23 issues over a six year period. Suzanne Grefsheim (George Washington University Medical Center) became the new editor that fall, and Wilma Ewens (Georgetown University) became assistant editor. Rick Forsman was elected Vice President (President Elect) for 1981-1982, and Dick Miller was elected Secretary-Treasurer. Deborah Yedlin became President.

There was lots of discussion of AACR2 and its impact. Conflicts existed between NLM name authorities and LC name authorities. There was an AACR2 tagging workshop. There were talks on the OCLC serials union list capability and OCLC's new acquisitions subsystem. It was at the St. Louis meeting that the first online catalog developed by a medical library was demonstrated: the BACS system at Washington University Medical School Library. The prominent local systems in 1981 were BACS, CLSI, and Dataphase Systems.

Besides the Continuing Education subcommittees, now chaired by Diana Zinnato and Patti Fields, other committees included Catalog Code Revision Committee, chaired by Anaclare Evans and the Committee to Study the Impact of the OCLC Online Serials Union List Function, chaired by Tom Sink.

An Ad Hoc Committee to Study the Feasibility of Establishing a Technical Services Interest Group within MLA had been formed and offered the following resolution (which was accepted): 'Resolved, that the Health Science OCLC Users Group enthusiastically supports the creation of a Technical Services Section within MLA for the purpose of addressing those issues and concerns which have an impact on technical services operations in all health sciences libraries.'

On August 13, 1981, President Deborah Yedlin sent a letter to OCLC's Rowland Brown urging OCLC to resume the CATLINE tape loading. Within a month, OCLC did indeed resume the loading. In a September 16 reply to Debbie, H. Paul Shrank of OCLC blamed the delay on AACR2 and 'the Move'. The new Dublin facility was dedicated during the week of September 20-25.

At the seventh annual meeting at Stouffers Dublin and OCLC in Dublin, Ohio, April 28-30, 1982, April Wreath (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) was elected Vice President (President Elect) for 1982-1983, and Anaclare Evans (Wayne State University) was elected Secretary-Treasurer. Rick Forsman became President. Bylaws revisions were approved, the most important being to have annual membership dues cover the fiscal year (July - June) rather than the calendar year (January - December) as it had been since the beginning. Total membership had reached 200, a huge jump from the previous year of 75 which had been a temporary reversal of the slow growth in the late 1970s. Membership would continue to climb during the 1980s.

Online public access catalogs were the number one topic. OCLC presented Charles Hildreth's 'Online Public Access Catalogs: the user interface.' Karen Markey presented 'Online Public Access Systems: data collection and analysis.' There was an all day workshop on development of an online catalog. Many OCLC staff gave talks on topics such as the use of OCLC archival tapes as the basis for an online catalog. Even President Rowland Brown gave a one-hour talk.

Rick was invited to the May 23-25 meeting of the OCLC Users' Council to present a ten-minute background on HSOCLCUG. He outlined the history, organization, and concerns of HSOCLCUG, calling it "The HSOCLCUG Story", and his talk appears in the October 1982 issue of SOM.

Rick told the Council that HSOCLCUG was established in 1975 and was the oldest of the formally organized users groups. He said three factors were prominent in the formation of the group: (1) Significant differences in cataloging practice between LC and NLM; medical libraries had unique needs; (2) In 1974, most of the networks and even OCLC staff had trouble answering our questions; it was often more expedient to call a colleague who was already familiar with the OCLC cataloging subsystem; (3) MLA had generally ignored technical service issues and therefore was not perceived as a source of support for health sciences libraries joining OCLC.

Rick offered several recommendations to the Users' Council based on HSOCLCUG's perspective. One was especially relevant in light of the union listing woes of today: "Along the same lines, for years, the NLM has encouraged and financially supported the development of union lists among health sciences libraries. NLM is currently creating a national biomedical serials holding database on its own computer. They have gone to great effort to provide a mechanism to allow the incorporation of serials holdings already in machine readable form so that this data need not be re-entered by libraries. HSOCLCUG hopes that cooperation between OCLC and NLM can produce a similar transferability of data .... We do not wish to be isolationists, but neither can we afford to abandon the mechanisms that have so successfully supported sharing among biomedical libraries."

A major objective of Rick during his presidency was to rally HSOCLCUG members and others to work through their Users' Council delegates to persuade OCLC to load the retrospective CATLINE tapes. Users' Council had passed a resolution the previous year urging OCLC to load these tapes, but OCLC was not convinced that the retrospective tapes were of sufficient value to anyone. Also, OCLC was alarmed by their own estimate of the duplication rate between existing OCLC records and CATLINE NLM records on the retrospective tapes. However, Rich Greene at OCLC completed an internal study the following year (1983) of the predicted duplication that the retrospective tapes would cause. This time it was found that only fifty-eight percent of the retrospective tape records would be duplicates, compared with seventy-eight percent of the records on the current CATLINE tapes which had already been loaded.

On June 18, 1982, MLA's Board of Directors approved the formation of a new MLA section: the Technical Services Section. From the beginning and for many years following, HSOCLCUG members were influential in TSS, holding offices, and coordinating the efforts of both organizations.

During Rick's presidency, there were two ad hoc committees at work: the Ad Hoc Committee to Study Retrospective Conversion Projects, chaired by Darel Robb (Medical College of Wisconsin) and the Ad Hoc Committee to Study the Impact of the OCLC Online Serials Union List Function, chaired this year by Harold Shaffer (Indiana University).

In January 1983, Toni Brozgal at OCLC replaced Kate Nevins as our OCLC user advisor or liaison.

On the March 1983 Start of Message masthead, co-editor Wilma Ewens is now listed as Wilma Ewens Bass.

At the eighth annual meeting at Carolina Inn in Chapel Hill, N.C., April 20-22, 1983, Kathy Hoffman (Houston Academy of Medicine/Texas Medical Center Library) was elected Vice President (President Elect) for 1983-1984, and Frances Lynch (Vanderbilt Medical Center Library) was elected Secretary-Treasurer. April Wreath became President. Total membership had reached 270.

The big topic at the 1983 meeting was integrated library systems. Three major systems presented were one that OCLC had recently begun to market, CLSI, and BACS from Washington University. Development of the forthcoming OCLC M300 workstation was first mentioned, although it was referred to as a 'terminal.'

A proposal was made in the Executive Board meeting to establish a permanent secretariat so that HSOCLCUG could have a stable address, bulk mailing privileges, and tax exempt status. This would allow the organization to become incorporated.

Lois Culler replaced Wilma Bass as Start of Message co-editor. Lois and Suzanne Grefsheim (the editor who succeeded Olyn) both worked at George Washington University Medical Center.

OCLC's days of infamy arrived in the fall when OCLC proposed to make the networks its marketing agents and offered them new contracts that changed their relationship. All the networks refused to sign the contract, however. OCLC also tried to claim a right to copyright its database. The networks rejected that idea, too. So did the library community. And yet, OCLC still had not loaded the retrospective CATLINE tapes. President April Wreath wrote an open letter to Rowland Brown urging him to decide this as soon as possible, and it appeared in the February 1984 issue of SOM, but there was no reply. Meanwhile, Toni Brozgal, the new OCLC user advisor for HSOCLCUG of less than a year, was replaced by Mary Burgett. The rapid succession of user advisors became a trend in the mid 1980s, causing a great deal of wonder among many HSOCLCUG members. Still, HSOCLCUG was healthy and growing, reaching 304 paid members by early 1984. The three eastern regions (1, 2, and 3) accounted for more than two-thirds of the membership, and region 6 (Pacific Northwest) had the fewest members.

Maybe the most important event in 1983 was one that went by almost unnoted. Harold Shaffer reported that OCLC and NLM had signed a contract to add the NLM control number (later known as the SERHOLD unique ID) to 45,000 OCLC serials records. This may have been in response to Rick Forsman's plea to OCLC in May 1982. Thus began a joint interest between OCLC and NLM that continued to evolve right up to today (2003).

At the ninth annual meeting at the Barclay Hotel in Philadelphia, April 11-13, 1984, Harold Shaffer (Indiana University School of Medicine Library) was elected Vice President (President Elect) for 1984-1985, and Ginger Garvin (Cleveland Health Sciences Library) was elected Recording Secretary (title change from Secretary-Treasurer). Anaclare Evans was the first person appointed to the new permanent, appointed office of Administrative Secretary. The new office was created and made permanent mainly in order to have a stable address for the financial accounts, so that they didn't have to move every year. Kathy Hoffman became President. Kathy later appointed an Ad Hoc Committee to Study the Uses and Management of Microcomputer Hardware and Software in HSOCLCUG libraries in July, chaired by Carmel Bush. Microcomputers were becoming important in libraries, and the committee did a survey.

There was an all day workshop on microcomputers and sessions on technical services workflow problems, serials control, and audiovisual cataloging. A Retrospective Conversion Committee had been working during the year and conducted a survey gathering data on recon projects planned or underway in health sciences libraries. It had a second goal to serve as a clearinghouse for recon information.

OCLC had introduced the M300 workstation. It used DOS 2.0, and the keyboard looked like a normal OCLC terminal keyboard except it also had function keys and a numeric keypad. OCLC had introduced an ILL Microenhancer (program) on the M300 and would introduce a cataloging microenhancer and acquisitions microenhancer later in the year. There was a first mention of OCLC's LS/2000 system. Group access was being added to the OCLC ILL subsystem in order to extend its use to ILL network libraries that were not OCLC members.

NLM began participating in CONSER in 1984. DOCLINE had been made available to resource libraries other than the regional medical libraries. Cataloging procedures at NLM had become almost totally automated. NLM was beginning a project to map LC subject headings to MeSH (Medical Subject Headings).

Major changes to the Bylaws were approved before the annual meeting in Philadelphia, more than any other year in the history of the organization, before or since.

1. The name of the HSOCLCUG was changed from Health Science OCLC Users Group to Health Sciences OCLC Users Group (note the plural).

2. The Secretary-Treasurer's position was renamed Recording Secretary.

3. A new permanent, appointed office was created: Administrative Secretary.

4. Annual dues were raised to $5 for Individual membership, $10 for Associate Institutional, and $15 for Active Institutional membership.

OCLC user advisor Mary Burgett had responded to HSOCLCUG for Rowland Brown with an explanation for the delay in loading CATLINE retrospective tapes. OCLC had been working on other, higher-priority projects. She offered two alternative solutions: one called 'setholds', which would simply set holdings in the union catalog, but would lose medical data from 104,800 CATLINE records and would require programming; the second solution would be to load the tapes and create 209,600 duplicate records that would affect all OCLC users. HSOCLCUG discussed it at the annual meeting and decided to consult with NLM.

NLM responded that it preferred the sethold option for CATLINE loading. President Kathy Hoffman then sent a letter to Tom Sanville at OCLC saying that HSOCLCUG preferred the 'setholds by extended match' option. By winter, OCLC staff had developed methods of duplicate detection for minimal-level cataloging records. It was apparent that these methods could also be applied to CATLINE load records. This development changed the picture again. In the May 1985 SOM, Harold Shaffer reported that OCLC had agreed to load all retrospective tapes into the database. Coverage for NLM, then, would extend from the present back through 1801. OCLC estimated the project should be completed by January 1988.

In early 1985, David Bates became the new OCLC user advisor, replacing Mary Burgett. Also early in the year, some SOM contributors, such as Ginger Garvin and Lenny Rhine (University of Florida Health Science Center Library), began to experiment with submitting articles electronically to Editor Suzanne Grefsheim.

At the tenth annual meeting at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, April 16-19, 1985, Bernie Baldini (University of Kentucky Medical Center Library) was elected Vice President (President Elect) for 1985-1986, and Tim Mason (Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine Library) was elected Recording Secretary. Harold Shaffer became President. This was the first annual meeting that spread over four days. Attendance at the meetings was high. Four day meetings would continue into the mid-1990s.

Another Bylaws revision was approved before the Birmingham annual meeting: Individual members could now vote or hold office, even if they were not affiliated with Active Institution members.

There was a full day workshop on integrating and interfacing library systems, including bibliographic utilities linking, bibliographic databases, LANs, Open Systems Interconnection (OSI), and the Linked Systems Project (which involved LC and RLIN initially and later OCLC in online authority record creation). Lenny Rhine (University of Florida Health Science Center Library) presented a study on the psychological impact of adoption of an integrated online system on a technical services department. There was also a talk on a psychologist's view of the impact of automation. Sharing sessions included archival tape production and quality control, serials control, technical services workflow, and the practical aspects of handling microcomputer hardware and software.

President Harold Shaffer appointed a Committee on Relevant Issues, chaired by James Estrada (University of Connecticut Health Sciences Library).

HSOCLCUG members continued to move around the country. Late in the year, former President Debbie Yedlin left the library world and went to work for General Motors in Detroit. In December, former President Rick Forsman moved to the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center Library where he is today (2003).

By early 1986, OCLC was releasing news about their plans for a major overhaul of the OCLC system, called the Oxford System at this early stage. The Oxford project would result in the OCLC system that lasted all through the 1990s and up to today (2003) when it is quickly being replaced by a new Oracle database-based system.

NLM celebrated its 150th anniversary during 1986. NLM announced that it had successfully used OCLC tapes to load serial holdings records into SERHOLD. It planned to use SERHOLD to make DOCLINE more attractive. DOCLINE ILL requesting had become available in 1985.

At the eleventh annual meeting at the Omni Netherland Plaza in Cincinnati, Ohio, April 15-18, 1986, Ginger Garvin (Cleveland Health Sciences Library) was elected Vice President (President Elect) for 1986-1987, and Robert Pisciotta (University of Nebraska) was elected Recording Secretary. Bernie Baldini became President. Total membership had reached 305, probably the peak in the history of HSOCLCUG. There were more personal members now (169) than institutional members (135 active).

James Estrada's Committee on Relevant had issued its report on April 3, just before the Cincinnati meeting. Among its recommendations were these four:

1. Centralized geographic locations for HSOCLCUG meetings, emphasizing cost and convenience of transportation for the majority of membership. Consider meeting at NLM and OCLC, too, as in this pattern: regional site, NLM, regional site, OCLC, etc. Also think about the location of the MLA annual meeting.

2. Fewer sharing sessions, each covering two to three topics rather than currently many sessions with small attendance.

3. Look at strategic plans of MLA, OCLC, SLA, etc., to see if they have relevance to HSOCLCUG.

4. Seek continuing education credits for HSOCLCUG programs or cosponsor specialized/advanced MLA CE courses as part of the annual meeting.

President Bernie (Bernadette) Baldini appointed a task force, chaired by Doris Haag (one of the original HSOCLCUG founders), to consider criteria for meeting site selection as recommended in the report.

There was a day-long focus on online systems at the Cincinnati meeting. Michael Gorman spoke on the reorganization/integration of technical and public services. There were talks on retrospective conversion and the impact of online catalogs on public services. OCLC was trying to move more libraries away from the old terminals and to the M300 workstation, which now was compatible with DOS 3.1, in preparation for the new Oxford system. HSOCLCUG members were becoming very frustrated with the continual delay in OCLC's loading of the retrospective CATLINE tapes. OCLC instead had chosen to load the California State database records and was encountering problems.

Sharing sessions at the meeting included audiovisual cataloging, technical services workflow problems, collection development, and microcomputer use.

Lois Culler, assistant editor, took over the editorship of SOM from Suzanne Grefsheim with the October 1986 issue. Suzanne had been editor for five years.

In the October SOM issue, it was announced that OCLC had begun to load the CATLINE retrospective tapes and the November 7 OCLC logon message said that 214,926 retrospective records had been loaded, nearly half the total to be loaded.

Late in 1986, Kate Nevins came back as the OCLC user advisor, replacing David Bates.

In the March 1987 SOM issue, President Bernie Baldini wrote that Rich Greene of OCLC announced that OCLC was going to start retaining MeSH headings and medical call numbers in medical records in the union catalog whenever an incoming LC record bumps the existing record (unless the LC record already had an 060 field and MeSH headings).

At the twelfth annual meeting at the Holiday Inn University Center in Gainesville, Florida, April 7-10, 1987, Robert Pisciotta (University of Nebraska) was elected Vice President (President Elect) for 1987-1988, and Gayle Ablove (Roswell Park Memorial Institute, Medical Scientific Library in Buffalo) was elected Recording Secretary. Ginger Garvin became President. Bernie Baldini said during the meeting that HSOCLCUG was seeking an archivist. (During the following year, however, no one expressed an interest in taking this responsibility.)

Bernie had begun writing a HSOCLCUG policies and procedures manual that would be used and revised by subsequent members of the Executive Board. Bernie finished it in April 1988. It was revised by Ginger Garvin in April 1989, by Bob Pisciotta in May 1990, and by Carrie Willman in September 1995 (currently the most recent revision as of 2003). They were all immediate Past-Presidents.

Ginger taught an MLA item writing workshop at the Gainesville meeting. This appears to be the first CE credit course given by HSOCLCUG that could be used for MLA recertification, and it was tuition-free. There were talks on campus-wide shared records in an integrated library system, regional multi-type library integrated systems, and state-wide serials and ILL systems. Local systems sharing sessions included LIS (Georgetown), LS/2000 (OCLC), and NOTIS. There were focus groups on cataloging, monographic acquisitions systems, serials acquisitions and control, health information for the public (consumer health), and telecommunications.

Christa Hoffmann, Head, Cataloging Section, NLM, announced that Notes for Medical Catalogers had ceased publication this year. All changes in cataloging policy in the future would be included in the NLM Technical Bulletin. Also in Christa's talk that year was the first mention of NLM's development of a Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) and the first mention that NLM was working with the Association of American Publishers on a new standard format for electronic publications called Standard Generalized Mark-up Language (SGML). NLM was continuing to work on its LCSH to MeSH equivalence table in anticipation of its usefulness to UMLS.

OCLC announced it was planning to replace its closed system, hard-coded OCLC communications protocol with an X25-based system called the C function. This would allow a mix of multiple workstations and asynchronous terminals to be chained together and use one OCLC modem, as long as the first terminal on the chain was an M300. OCLC hoped to move libraries to this new type of connection by the end of 1989 in preparation for the Oxford System.

Later in summer 1987, Bob Pisciotta moved to the University of Kansas Medical Center, where he is today (2003).

At the thirteenth annual meeting at the Great Southern Hotel in Columbus, Ohio, April 12-15, 1988, Leslie Ann Bowman (Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science) was elected Vice President (President Elect) for 1988-1989, and Mary Hawks (University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences) was elected Recording Secretary. Bob Pisciotta became President. Total membership had dropped abruptly to 248 during the year because of nonrenewals and remained at about that level with little change over the next few years. HSOCLCUG's two accounts totaled $11,331.47. A Bylaws revision was approved to delete the Associate Institution membership category. There had been only one Associate member. After that, there were only Personal members and Institution members, as there are today (2003). Meanwhile, Anaclare Evans, the Administrative Secretary had begun organizing documents that would be needed to obtain tax exempt status for HSOCLCUG. At the time of the meeting, it appeared that tax exempt status would be obtained within the coming year, but that was not to happen, and the pursuit of tax exempt status would continue on year after year well into the 1990s. Around this time, a drawing of a Wyse M310 workstation began appearing on HSOCLCUG stationery.

Karen Markey gave the keynote address at the Columbus meeting in which she discussed online catalog use studies. Frederick Kilgour talked about OCLC's EIDOS (Electronic Information Delivery Online System) project, which was an early attempt at the e-book that soon faded away. There were updates from NLM and OCLC as usual, but also from LC, ALA and OCLC Research. A continuing education course on NLM technical files was offered. Sharing sessions included cataloging (and the 'greying' of the division between acquisitions and cataloging), the LIS and LS/2000 local systems, effects of automation on technical services, authorities in an online environment, and local quality control.

NLM announced that MeSH in MARC format would be available that summer. NLM was working with CD-ROM MEDLINE vendors and was going to host a conference at NLM in September to discuss the evaluation of the CD-ROM products that were being introduced.

Later in summer 1988, Julie Peterson became the new OCLC user advisor, replacing Kate Nevins. All through the 1980s, OCLC staff who are familiar names today show up in SOM and in communications between OCLC and HSOCLCUG: Glenn Patton, Robert Bremer, Rich Greene, Collette Mak, Chris Grabenstatter, Linda Arnold (who was later to become our current user advisor).

Long-time HSOCLCUG member Bob Lee (Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia) died, and there was a remembrance in the September SOM.

K. Wayne Smith succeeded Rowland Brown as OCLC President and CEO in January 1989.

Editor Lois Culler announced her resignation in early 1989 and her last issue of SOM was March.

At the fourteenth annual meeting at the Congress Hotel in Chicago, April 11-14, 1989, Lenny Rhine (University of Florida Health Center Library) was elected Vice President (President Elect) for 1989-1990, and Sue Gullion (University of California, Los Angeles) was elected Recording Secretary. Leslie Ann Bowman became President. Carrie Willman (Oregon Health Sciences University Library) was appointed the new editor of Start of Message. During the Executive Board meeting, there was the first mention that OCLC might load MeSH in its online authority file. It seemed feasible at the time, especially since NLM had made the MeSH file available in MARC format. OCLC never did, however.

A half-day MLA-approved continuing education pre-conference was given on developing a quality assurance plan for your library.

During the past year, HSOCLCUG's bank account was moved from Nashville to Detroit (National Bank of Detroit) because that's where Administrative Secretary Anaclare Evans was.

At Bob Pisciotta's request, artists at OCLC designed a new logo for HSOCLCUG. It was approved at the meeting and replaced the old OCLC terminal drawing and is still HSOCLCUG's logo today. The new logo first appeared on page 24 of the August SOM before moving to the front page in subsequent issues. An annual budget was first instituted at the meeting.

A Bylaws revision was approved which, among other things, established an Archivist position and added an annual audit. Later in the year, Susan Beck (University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio Library) was appointed to be the first Archivist. Anaclare Evans, who had been keeping the archives, sent them to Susan. During the following year, Susan sorted all the archives and threw out duplicates. The archives now were contained in three acid-free document boxes in Special Collections at Susan's library. There is an OCLC record for them (#21238488), created on March 19, 1990.

OCLC introduced a communications controller to supplement its modem to connect to OCLC. It allowed libraries with dedicated line access to use non-OCLC terminals or workstations on the dedicated line (that is, chain). It was simply a Wyse 286 without a keyboard or monitor, but under the control of a communications program on a 5 1/4 inch floppy diskette.

Herbert White gave the keynote address at the Chicago meeting. Sharing sessions included document delivery, serials control, cataloging, acquisitions, CD-ROMs, and NOTIS. There was a panel presentation on cooperation between technical services and public services.

Tom Clareson became the new OCLC user advisor in the summer, replacing Julie Peterson.

There were two HSOCLCUG deaths in 1989. Long-time member Richard Dilley died May 30. Olyn Ruxin died October 21. A memorial to Olyn appeared in the December 1989 issue of SOM.

During 1989, the Library of Congress stunned the library world, including OCLC, by proposing that it would require a licensing agreement for its MARC Distribution Service records in the expectation that that would help ease LC's mounting fiscal problems. In the face of vigorous protest from OCLC and others, LC withdrew its proposal. As an alternative, OCLC proposed to let LC use the OCLC union catalog for its current cataloging and to reduce LC's backlog, primarily sound recordings and monographs, at reduced prices, make available OCLC's card production facilities, take responsibility for printing and distributing CJK (Chinese Japanese Korean) catalog cards (which LC had discontinued), and make its retrospective conversion services available at attractive prices.

In early 1990, B. J. Gramka (University of Alabama at Birmingham, Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences) volunteered to audit HSOCLCUG's accounts for the past year and a half.

At the fifteenth annual meeting at the Warwick Hotel in Denver, April 8-11, 1990, Cecile Doty (University of Kansas Medical Center Library) was elected Vice President (President Elect) for 1990-1991, and Judy Rieke (Vanderbilt University Medical Center Library) was elected Recording Secretary. Lenny Rhine became President. B. J. was appointed Administrative Secretary, replacing Anaclare Evans, who had resigned. Darel Jay Robb (University of Illinois at Chicago Library of the Health Sciences) was appointed Auditor, replacing B. J.

During the past year, Anaclare had succeeded in getting HSOCLCUG incorporated in Michigan. During the following year the HSOCLCUG accounts were transferred from Anaclare in Detroit to B. J. Gramka in Birmingham.

Walter High (North Carolina State University Library) gave the keynote address. There were panel discussions on pioneering careers in library automation and on libraries and online system vendors. Sharing sessions included cataloging, document delivery, publications and newsletter editing, serials, acquisitions, PC use to augment local systems, LIS, NOTIS, LS/2000, and other local systems. There was a half-morning MLA-approved career-track workshop on goal setting and prioritizing.

There were two resolutions proposed and adopted at the Denver meeting, one by Leslie Ann Bowman on the merging of duplicate records (NLM and other records) in OCLC, the second by Mary Charles Lasater on OCLC loading the MeSH authority file. Both of them were approved, the second one with slight changes, and sent to the OCLC Users Council.

OCLC received both these resolutions favorably. Carol Davis, manager, Online Data Quality Control Section, responded: "The project to detect and resolve duplicate records in the OLUC [i.e. On Line Union Catalog] is currently under development, and we hope to see the first results of elimination of duplicate records by the end of 1990. As currently planned, NLM records will be merged to LC records in most cases."

Chris Grabenstatter, manager, Cataloging Services Section, responded: "The Health Sciences OCLC Users Group resolution regarding NLM MeSH Authority Records came at a good time, as OCLC has just begun work on PRISM service (New Online System) post-Release 1 projects which center around providing expanded authority products and services to OCLC users .... Without the results from the market research, it is not possible to give an indication when the MeSH file might be loaded. However, early indications suggest that the MeSH file will be the first additional authority file to be loaded providing online access through the PRISM service." Unfortunately, the MeSH file was never loaded and, despite OCLC's commitment to it, as of this writing (2003), there is no estimated date when it will be loaded.

It was right around this time (mid 1990), as OCLC was implementing its brand new, state of the art $70 million telecommunications system to accompany its new PRISM interface, that OCLC management began to wonder if they had made a big mistake. There was a fundamental transformation occurring in the networked environment that only a few visionaries at the time could estimate the importance of - - a change that would be the dominant hallmark of the 1990s: the birth of the Internet. OCLC continued with the implementation of the telecommunications system, completing it in November 1991.

The 1990s

At the sixteenth annual meeting at the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza in Washington, D. C. April 16-19, 1991, Stephen Van Houten (University of Illinois at Chicago Health Sciences Library) was elected Vice President (President Elect) for 1991-1992, and Lynne Barnett Bowman (University of Kentucky Medical Center Library) was elected Recording Secretary. Cecile Doty became President. Cecile had not been able to attend the meeting for health reasons. Laurie Thompson, who had worked on local arrangements in Washington, filled in for Cecile.

B. J. Gramka had mailed a proposal for a dues increase to the membership in May, and it was approved. The dues became $10 personal and $25 institutional and haven't changed since then. It was discovered at this time that HSOCLCUG's tax-exempt status in Michigan was not valid in Washington, D. C. It varied on a state by state basis.

There was a discussion during the Executive Board meeting about the recent development of a negative cash flow and a decreasing membership. Conferences were costing more than the revenue they brought in. This marked the beginning of a trend that continued throughout the 1990s.

Robert Beck (Oregon Health Sciences University) gave the keynote address on automated information needs of health professionals. There were reports from two IAIMS (Integrated Academic Information Management Systems) libraries: University of Maryland and University of Cincinnati. Sharing sessions included preparation for automation, collection measurement and evaluation, post automation management, personnel management, LIS, Innopac/Innovacq, NOTIS, and other local systems. There was a report and demonstration of the UMLS in its early stages by Betsy Humphreys of NLM. A continuing education course on telecommunications was offered. NLM staff Martha Fishel, Christa Hoffmann, Alice Jacobs, Dianne McCutcheon, and Rosellen Muniak led a tour of NLM. And there were updates from OCLC, NLM, LC, NIH (National Institutes of Health), and NAL (National Agricultural Library).

Ann Dodson became the new OCLC user advisor before the annual meeting, replacing Tom Clareson who became the new preservation officer for AMIGOS. Ann was at the annual meeting.

Cecile Doty had to resign the Presidency in July because of deteriorating health. She died on October 11. Stephen Van Houten assumed the duties of the President, in addition to Vice President, and shared some of the duties with immediate Past President Lenny Rhine.

At the seventeenth annual meeting at the Sheraton Gunter Hotel in San Antonio, April 7-10, 1992, Carrie Willman (Oregon Health Sciences University Library) was elected Vice President (President Elect) for 1992-1993, and Liz Mikita (Thomas Jefferson University, Scott Library) was elected Recording Secretary. Stephen Van Houten became President. Cindy Fedders (Washington University School of Medicine Library) was appointed the new Start of Message Editor, replacing Carrie who was now Vice President. Cindy would continue as Editor for the next ten years. Beginning with the June/September 1994 issue (no. 71/72), SOM was being mailed twice a year, each mailed issue being a double issue in numbering (two issues in one).

Membership had fallen twenty percent from the previous year to 180, the largest drop being in institutional memberships. One result of this membership drop was that HSOCLCUG no longer could qualify for bulk mailing rate for SOM distribution without printing extra, unneeded issues and mailing them back to the Editor. Later, the number of SOM issues per year was reduced to save money. Bulk rate was nineteen cents per copy mailed versus first class which was fifty-eight cents per copy.

Much of HSOCLCUG business was being conducted on the Internet now such as: planning for the annual meeting, conducting committee business, and transmitting copy for SOM. Stephen Van Houten in his President Elect message in March 1992 SOM noted the rapid rise of electronic mail, the burgeoning use of BITNET and Internet, and the development of lists such as PACS-L, MEDLIB-L, Autocat, and Serialst.

The IRS had denied tax-exempt status for HSOCLCUG during the year due to problems with HSOCLCUG's articles of incorporation and the incomplete filing of appropriate fees.

By the time of the San Antonio meeting, OCLC had merged 57,000 NLM records, mostly with LC records, and was continuing with that project.

Kevin Long (Baylor College of Medicine) gave the keynote address on medical information environment and the medical library and talked about Baylor's Virtual Notebook System, their IAIMS project to produce an electronic analog of the lab notebook. There was a panel discussion of local networks and institution response. Sharing sessions included cataloging, collection management, ILL, document delivery, Internet/email, electronic journals/electronic publishing, PRISM, hardware and telecommunications, OCLC EPIC and FirstSearch, and local systems Innopac, LIS, and NOTIS. A continuing education course preceded the meeting.

During 1992, NLM and OCLC cooperated to add the NLM title control number (also known as the SERHOLD number) to some serials records. They were stored in the 069 field and facilitated filling ILL requests among health sciences libraries that were using NLM’s DOCLINE system. Dianne McCutcheon was the principal NLM contact for this project. NLM had contracted with OCLC in 1983 to add title control numbers to 28,000 OCLC serial records, but many older serials records in OCLC still lacked title control numbers, and some current records lacked them, too. Nevertheless, in 1990, Region 5 (TX, LA, OK, AR, NM) and Region 3 (Greater Midwest Region) health sciences libraries began reporting their journal holdings to NLM through OCLC. By 1993, sixteen groups (842 libraries) were reporting their journal holdings this way. OCLC had become the biggest single source of data in SERHOLD. The success all depended on the presence of an 069 OCLC field containing a SERHOLD number. NLM CONSER cataloging and health sciences libraries that enriched OCLC records by adding an 069 field increased the number of records in OCLC that could be used for transferring data. This arrangement lasted until 1999 when NLM implemented Endeavor Voyager as its new integrated library system which made the annual holdings data transfer unworkable. At the time of writing (2003), NLM and OCLC were once again working to create a way to transfer holdings data from OCLC to NLM SERHOLD. In July 2003, the transfer of data in the other direction (SERHOLD to OCLC) was implemented and was declared successful.

At the eighteenth annual meeting at the Great Southern Hotel in Columbus, April 14-17, 1993, Sharon Bressert (University of Cincinnati Health Sciences Library) was elected Vice President (President Elect) for 1993-1994, and Lisa Kindrick (University of New Mexico Medical Center Library) was elected Recording Secretary. Carrie Willman became President. The Executive Board continued a discussion about possibly establishing a Cecile Doty Memorial Award.

A revision to the Bylaws was approved by the membership, mostly to bring the Bylaws into accordance with IRS recommendations for tax-exempt status. This was the seventh time the Bylaws had been amended. Earlier revisions of the original 1976 Bylaws occurred in May 1980, April 1982, April 1984, April 1985, April 1988, and April 1989.

In light of declining membership (it had dropped another fifteen percent to 152) and meeting attendance, a lengthy discussion was held at the 1993 meeting on the focus and future direction of HSOCLCUG. A motion was drafted by Ginger Saha and accepted by the membership for the President to appoint a small task force, including the OCLC liaison to examine the issues and draft a strategic plan. At the time, Ginger was also head of the Ad Hoc Committee on Tax Status and was investigating the continuing problem of incorporating HSOCLCUG. Rules for incorporation varied from state to state.

Gary Handman (University of California at Berkeley) gave the keynote address on what he called the 'cosmic and public service implications of audiovisual cataloging', particularly minimal-level vs. full-level cataloging. Glenn Patton of OCLC presented a talk on the history of minimal-level cataloging. There was a continuing education course on Bitnet and Internet. A progress report on OhioLink was presented. There was a bus trip to OCLC for a tour. Sharing sessions included document delivery/ILL, hardware and telecommunications, collection management, electronic publishing and e-journals, cataloging, EPIC and PRISM, and local systems Innopac, LIS, NOTIS, and others. At OCLC, Martin Dillon talked about cataloging resources on the Internet, Dianne McCutcheon about the new NLM SERHOLD reporting through OCLC, and a panel of five OCLC staff discussed PRISM services.

Later in 1993, Clarence Walters became the new OCLC liaison, replacing Ann Dodson who retired from OCLC.

Leslie Ann Bowman (Philadelphia College of Pharmacy & Science) set up HSOCLCUG’s first electronic discussion list in a test phase and became the list owner. It was intended for the Executive Board and appointed committee chairpersons. The Health Sciences Libraries Consortium in Philadelphia provided the necessary computer support at no cost to HSOCLCUG through June 1994. The list address was HSOCLCUG-L@shrsys.hslc.org.

At the nineteenth annual meeting at the Carolina Inn in Chapel Hill, N. C., April 20-23, 1994, Monica Unger (Ocasek Region Medical Information Center, Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine) was elected Vice President (President Elect) for 1994-1995, and Beth Schneider (Treadwell Library, Massachusetts General Hospital) was elected Recording Secretary. Sharon Bressert became President. Karleen Darr (Carlson Health Sciences Library, University of California – Davis) was appointed the new Administrative Secretary, replacing B.J. Schorre (formerly B. J. Gramka).

The Executive Board discussed whether to change Start of Message into an electronic newsletter and decided against it because not enough libraries had Internet access yet. It decided to fund the HSOCLCUG list which was now no longer free.

Janet Swan Hill gave the keynote address on cataloging as a subjective activity. Frederick Kilgour, who had moved from Columbus to Chapel Hill, was the luncheon speaker. Technical services outsourcing was a hot topic in the mid 1990s and Wright State University staffer Karen Wilhoit talked about Wright State's nationally controversial experience with outsourcing. Monica Unger presented an update on the OhioLink consortium. A continuing education class on disaster preparedness was offered.

Later in 1994, Darel Robb, the auditor, died. President Sharon Bressert covered his duties.

At the twentieth annual meeting at the Clarion Harvest House in Boulder, Colorado, April 26-29, 1995, Carole Francq (Rush Lilly Medical Library, Indiana University School of Medicine) was elected Vice President (President Elect) for 1995-1996, and Mary Ann O'Daniel (Florida Center for Library Automation) was elected Recording Secretary. Monica Unger became President. Gerri Eisenberg (Allegheny University of the Health Sciences) was appointed the new auditor.

OCLC had initiated a new quality control project in March 1995 to improve the consistency of series and MeSH headings in WorldCat using global correction software it had developed. OCLC seemed to be taking a new interest in MeSH that year, so Leslie Ann Bowman prepared an updated resolution on the MeSH loading which passed unanimously at the Boulder meeting and was sent again to OCLC. The Executive Board and Business Meeting also passed a motion offered by Ginger Saha to incorporate in Ohio. She volunteered to be the incorporating agent. During the past year, Karleen Darr had transferred the accounts from the University Credit Union in Birmingham to the University and State Credit Union in Davis, California.

The Boulder meeting featured a reunion of many Past Presidents who reminisced about events and accomplishments during their terms: Susan Hill, Brett Kirkpatrick, Rick Forsman, April Wreath, Bernie Baldini, Bob Pisciotta, and Leslie Ann Bowman.

A continuing education course was offered on how to be a fearless employee and improve your workplace when you are not the boss. Don Muccino (OCLC) gave the keynote address on the National Information Infrastructure, the Internet and OCLC. Victor Spitzer from University of Colorado Health Sciences Center presented a talk on NLM's Visible Human Project. He performed the original Visible Human imaging under contract with NLM. Sharing sessions included cataloging interactive media, health sciences resources on the Internet, format integration, and technical services workflow and outsourcing.

By September, Past President Carrie Willman had completed a revision of the HSOCLCUG policies and procedures manual, which remains the current version in 2003.

Late in 1995, it was announced that OCLC had completed the cleanup of the MeSH headings in the online union catalog. Also around this time, OCLC introduced Passport for Windows, which was the most significant change in Passport during the 1990s.

Linda Arnold became the new Library Member Relations Program Manager at OCLC (liaison to HSOCLCUG) in February 1996, replacing Clarence Walters. Linda remains the liaison as of the time of writing.

At the twenty-first annual meeting at the Park Central Hotel in New York City, May 1-4, 1996, Connie Machado (Rowland Medical Library, University of Mississippi Medical Center) was elected Vice President (President Elect) for 1996-1997, and Annette Williams (Eskind Biomedical Library, Vanderbilt University) was elected Recording Secretary. Carole Francq became President.

Barbara Tysinger (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) set up HSOCLCUG's first web page at: http://www.unc.edu/~tysinger/hsoclcug/hsoclcug.htm . The website remained there until 2001 when President Mary Holt moved it to Tulane University in New Orleans. The Executive Board at the New York meeting discussed moving Start of Message and the Proceedings to the web but decided not to and to continue them in paper instead. The Board appointed a one-year Ad Hoc Publications Committee, chaired by Cindy Fedders, to review existing publications, methods of distribution, alternate formats, and present a report the next year.

The Board also eliminated the Archivist position and reassigned responsibilities to the Administrative Secretary (Karleen). Karleen had started using Microsoft Money for the financial records and Microsoft Access for the membership records during the past year and had also set up a listserv at the University of California-Davis, replacing the earlier one in Philadelphia. The new list address was hsoclcug-lib@ucdavis.edu . Now she was serving as archivist as well.

There was renewed concern at the New York meeting about the continuing decline in membership and meeting attendance. Karleen was asked to send out a survey to current and former members to try to gather information as to why members were leaving, which she did that summer. Survey results showed that sixty-five percent of HSOCLCUG members responding were also MLA members and fifty-eight percent of those responding favored scheduling the HSOCLCUG annual meeting in conjunction with the MLA annual meeting (but thirty-eight percent opposed the idea).

For years following President Cecile Doty's death in October 1991, the Board had been planning to establish a Cecile Doty Memorial Fund with the assistance of her family. At the New York meeting, however, it was decided that too much time had gone by, and the idea was dropped.

A continuing education course on teaching and creating the web in your library was offered. Lois Weinstein (Medical Library Center of New York) gave the keynote address. Sheila Intner gave a second keynote address. Sharing sessions included OCLC-to-SERHOLD reporting, OCLC access via the Internet, web-linked online catalogs, and the National Library of Medicine Classification, 5th edition.

At the twenty-second annual meeting at the Fairmont Hotel in New Orleans, March 19-22, 1997, the Executive Board discussed the most serious crisis possibly in the history of the organization: the Nominating Committee could find no one to run for Vice President (President Elect), so no election was held. President Carole Gall (formerly Carole Francq) had sent a letter to the membership in February outlining the problem and asking for nominations, but there were no nominations from the membership. The Board discussed the crisis at length and decided to go ahead with planning the 1998 meeting in Cincinnati with a Program Committee but without a Vice President. Connie Machado became President.

The tax-exempt status problem had still not been resolved. A lawyer who had been consulted about it advised that HSOCLCUG needed an address for its records and recommended California because the Administrative Secretary was there.

In the Business Meeting at the New Orleans meeting, there was much discussion about the issue of OCLC not loading the MeSH authority file. Also dominating the discussion was the continuing membership and meeting attendance decline.

Marshall Keys of NELINET gave the keynote speech. Erik Jul of OCLC talked about OCLC's new Intercat Project which was a proof-of-concept project to determine the feasibility of catalogers cataloging Internet resources. A continuing education workshop on cost effective use of OCLC in technical services was offered.

NLM announced at the New Orleans meeting that it had begun exploring the purchase of a new commercial integrated library system.

An election was finally held in November, and Janice Carter (Health Sciences Center Library, St. Louis University) was elected Vice President (President Elect) for 1997-1998, and Lynne Barnett Bowman (Medical Center Library, University of Kentucky) was elected Recording Secretary. Lynne has been Recording Secretary ever since. The office was changed from an elected position to an appointed position in 2002 by a revision of the Bylaws.

OCLC introduced its Cataloging Micro Enhancer for Windows in January 1998. Robert L. "Jay" Jordan became the fourth OCLC President and CEO in May, replacing K. Wayne Smith.

At the twenty-third annual meeting at the Omni Netherland Plaza in Cincinnati, May 7-9, 1998, the crisis had become acute. Only seventeen members attended. The meeting lost money. Over $1,800 in meeting expenses had to be paid from savings. There had been no nominations for Vice President once again and no election. Janice Carter became President.

A half-day continuing education workshop on handling archives was offered. Tom Sanville from OhioLink talked about his academic library consortium. Christa Hoffmann of NLM presented the first glimpse of NLM's plans for major changes in the MeSH headings next year. Linda Arnold of OCLC talked about MARC Holdings format and OCLC's union list local data record maintenance, Dublin Core, OCLC's PURL service (persistent URLs), and OCLC's Electronic Collections Online (OCLC's archival electronic journals service).

A revision to the Bylaws to eliminate the Archivist position was approved by those members attending the Business Meeting in Cincinnati. There was much discussion about the future of HSOCLCUG. Should it disband? Should it continue to meet until there is no money left in the treasury? It was pointed out that MLA/Technical Services Section was in a similar position to HSOCLCUG and was having the same problems with declining membership, although not so advanced. HSOCLCUG was still financially sound with $8,000 in its accounts, but was losing money each year. The general consensus at the Business Meeting was to continue meeting but in conjunction with another organization such as a regional MLA chapter. The members approved a $150 IRS filing fee for securing tax-exempt status in California.

Later in the summer, a plan was formulated to hold the next meeting in Norman, Oklahoma, in October 1999, in conjunction with an MLA/South Central Chapter meeting.

At the twenty-fourth annual meeting at the University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma Center for Continuing Education, in Norman, October 22-24, 1999, only fourteen members had registered. Membership had dropped forty-two percent over the last two years to fifty-seven members, forty-one of whom were personal members. The membership level stabilized in the 40s in the years since then. It's currently around 48-50.

The first day was an afternoon workshop on the MARC Holdings format presented by Frieda Rosenberg and Mary Ann Van Cura.

The Executive Board and Business meetings were dominated by brainstorming discussions of the future of HSOCLCUG. OCLC's CORC pilot project had begun in January and there was substantial interest in participating in it and how HSOCLCUG could influence its development. The CORC (Cooperative Online Resources Catalog) project was originally intended for catalogers and others to catalog Internet resources. By late 2000, however, OCLC management decided to make the technologies developed for CORC which were tested by a couple hundred early-adopter catalogers and other librarians the basis for the next generation OCLC cataloging system, later named Connexion.

There was also great interest in the upcoming major changes in MeSH structure announced by NLM and in MeSH generally in local catalogs and potentially in OCLC. As one part of a huge 'reinvention' effort by NLM, the structure of MeSH subject headings inside NLM's new catalog and ILS LocatorPlus was drastically changed beginning in 1999. Subject strings became generally shorter. Physical format subheadings were eliminated. Form and genre subheadings were moved to 655 and 659 fields internally. It was a major deconstruction which relied on the new functionality provided by LocatorPlus. It was certainly the largest change in MeSH since the elimination of minor descriptors in the late 1980s, at least for medical catalogers. But the MARC records that NLM sent to OCLC and other vendors had their MeSH headings largely reconstructed, but not entirely the way they were before 1999. NLM's reinvention effort during these years (1999, 2000, etc.) was also probably the largest overhaul in NLM since the introduction of MEDLARS and MEDLINE.

Alice Jacobs, NLM, spoke about the new MeSH structure. Rebecca Dean, OCLC, spoke on the OCLC authority control suite. Janifer Meldrum, MARCIVE, presented a talk on automated MeSH authorities processing. Mark Roux, CyberTools, presented CyberTools for libraries, which was his company's MeSH solution.

One major outcome of the Norman meeting was the establishment by Judith Dzierba (Rush University) of a new electronic list called MEDCAT which focused on topics relevant to medical catalogers. It was maintained by Karleen Darr at University of California-Davis as a subscription list (medcat@ucdavis.edu) and replaced the HSOCLCUG list (hsoclcug-lib) Karleen had been maintaining. The list grew quickly and has about 235 subscribers now. Judith became HSOCLCUG's liaison with NLM for several years, relaying answers to cataloging questions from NLM to MEDCAT.

There was no election because there was no nominating committee in 1999 and no candidates for Vice President. Mary Holt (Rudolf Matas Library, Tulane University Health Sciences Center) volunteered to host the next HSOCLCUG meeting in New Orleans in late 2001, in conjunction with the next MLA South Central Chapter meeting in which she was involved. As a result of volunteering, Mary was regarded by the Executive Board to be acting President for 1999-2000. What really happened, however, was that Mary became President (and Vice President) for three years: 1999-2000, 2000-2001, and 2001-2002.

A crucial decision not to disband the organization was made at the Norman meeting by those attending: President Janice Carter (St. Louis University), Mary Holt (Tulane University), Judith Dzierba (Rush University), Lynne Bowman (University of Kentucky), Cindy Fedders (Washington University School of Medicine), Mary Hawks (University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Library), Lisa Mavromatis (Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center), Anna-Liisa Rosner (Mercer University), Joe Blackburn (Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center), Janie Trumbull (Duke University Medical Center Library), and Janet Carter (UCLA).

An official election by mail was held in August 2000 and Mary Holt was elected President and Lynne Bowman reelected Recording Secretary for the 2000-2001 year.

In October 2000, HSOCLCUG submitted a new revision of its 1995 MeSH loading resolution to OCLC Users Council, this time with the emphasis being on a CORC implementation of the MeSH authority file. Revised by Mary Holt, Dan Kniesner, and Betsy Friesen (HSOCLCUG's CORC liaison), the resolution was revised again several times throughout 2001 and into 2002, and the resulting drafts were endorsed by MLA/TSS on May 21, 2002 and by the Medical Section, Biomedical and Life Sciences Division of the Special Library Association in June. OCLC Users Council changed its name to OCLC Members Council in 2001 as a result of new Bylaws adopted in May.

Also in October, HSOCLCUG became active in supporting a proposed joint project between OCLC and NLM to develop the means to transfer journal holdings data from the OCLC union list to NLM's SERHOLD and in the other direction, too. The project was successful in summer 2003 when NLM SERHOLD-to-OCLC data transfer was implemented. There had been an earlier technology during the early and mid 1990s that allowed OCLC journal holdings data to be transferred to SERHOLD, but that technology became inoperable when NLM implemented its new integrated library system, using Endeavor Voyager, in 1999. OCLC was developing a new OCLC-to-SERHOLD journal holdings data transfer system in 2003 and expected to be able to introduce it by the end of the year or in 2004.

The 2000s

During 2001, the HSOCLCUG website was moved to the Rudolf Matas Library at Tulane University and the web address was simplified to http://hsoclcug.org. With the assistance of Joan Gregory at the Eccles Health Sciences Library, University of Utah, HSOCLCUG also undertook a web-based survey of attitudes toward having MeSH authority records available in OCLC's CORC system which found overwhelming support for the idea. Eccles Health Sciences Library had been the first health sciences library to participate in the CORC project.

The twenty-fifth annual meeting at the Hilton Riverside Hotel in New Orleans, October 26-28, 2001, was held in conjunction with a larger, combined meeting of three MLA regional chapters (Southern, South Central, and Midcontinental). The meeting was really concentrated into one day: Sunday, October 28, although there was an HSOCLCUG-sponsored jazz-dinner cruise aboard the Steamboat Natchez on Friday evening, October 26. The major topics during the meeting were electronic resources available from aggregators, new developments in ILL such as OCLC's ILLiad and NLM's Electronic Fund Transfer System (EFTS) for DOCLINE, the future of WorldCat, and the major changes at NLM which included its catalog LocatorPlus, the PubMed database, and the new NLM Gateway interface which replaced the old Elhill and Grateful Med interfaces and allowed simultaneous searching of many NLM databases. Those NLM changes were the result of NLM's 'reinvention' effort. NLM announced in 2001 that the NLM Classification schedule would no longer be revised in print format. A Web version of the classification schedule had debuted at MLA 2001 in May and was to be the only form in the future, gradually becoming a true database-driven schedule. The last print edition was the 5th ed., 1994, revised 1999. Alice Jacobs, Assistant Head, Cataloging Section at NLM gave the NLM update presentation.

Revisions to the Bylaws were approved at the October 28 Business meeting, the most significant being changing the Recording Secretary from an elected position to an appointed position, creating a new position Web Site Coordinator, and eliminating terms of appointed officers, making them indefinite. This was the ninth revision of the Bylaws. After the new Bylaws were adopted, Mary Holt became the new Web Site Coordinator. Mary and Betsy collaborated on the creation of an OCLC Pathfinder on HSOCLCUG's website, which was a live-linked bibliography of web-based resources relevant to HSOCLCUG's interests and activities.

Another, less formal, HSOCLCUG meeting was held in the Hilton Riverside in the OCLC Suite on January 18, 2002 at the ALA Midwinter meeting in New Orleans. The meeting focused on MeSH authority issues, especially in OCLC. There were several OCLC staff attending, including Alane Wilson, who offered suggestions concerning HSOCLCUG's desire for MeSH authority support in Connexion, the next generation cataloging and metadata interface that was under development at OCLC as a replacement for PRISM and Passport. Connexion was the descendant of the CORC project.

Another web-based survey was being drafted and revised by Judith Dzierba and Dan Kniesner to gather information on MeSH authority practices in health sciences libraries, and it was conducted in April, with the results available in time for distribution at the MLA annual meeting in Dallas in May. HSOCLCUG continued advocating for the MeSH authority file to be made available to catalogers through the future Connexion interface.

In 2002, OCLC was starting a migration from its old database system which had supported PRISM all during the 1990s to one that used Oracle DBMS which was needed to support OCLC's ambitious plans for WorldCat and related products and services during the first decade of the 2000s and beyond. OCLC committed itself to implementing MeSH authority control once the migration effort was largely finished. There was no timetable provided, however, unlike the timetables for retirement of Passport and the various releases of Connexion.

HSOCLCUG had a business meeting and social event at the Trinity Hall, an Irish Pub, May 19, at the start of the MLA annual meeting in Dallas. Judith Dzierba (Library of Rush University) became President and Betsy Friesen (Bio-Medical Library, University of Minnesota) became Vice President (President Elect) for 2002-2003.

Wendy Fritzel (J. Otto Lottes Health Sciences Library, University of Missouri-Columbia) later became Administrative Secretary, replacing Karleen Darr who had been elected Secretary of the MLA Technical Services Section. Dan Kniesner (Oregon Health & Science University Library) assumed Karleen's archivist duties. Karleen continued to host the Medcat list. Lynne Bowman continued as Recording Secretary. Immediate Past President Mary Holt continued as Web Site Coordinator. Mary Hawks (University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Library) replaced Judith as the NLM liaison.

Charlie Spencer Lackey (Duke University Medical Center Library) replaced Cindy Fedders as the new editor of Start of Message. SOM made its transition to Web-based publication in 2002 with the December 2001 (no. 94) and September 2002 (no. 95) issues.

The 2003 HSOCLCUG meeting was planned to be at the American Library Association (ALA) annual meeting in Toronto on June 20. A public health scare caused by a SARS virus outbreak, however, caused HSOCLCUG to cancel the meeting. Instead, an email-based meeting of Executive Board members took place on June 30. It was the first official electronic meeting in HSOCLCUG history and was not adequately defined in the Bylaws. The principal purpose was to transfer elected offices. Janice J. Powell Muller (Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences) had been elected by mail ballot as Vice President (President Elect) and became Vice President during the meeting. Betsy Friesen became President. It was agreed that the Bylaws needed to be revised to cover future electronic meetings by HSOCLCUG and to clean up other sections.

Linda Arnold retired from OCLC in June and Nancy Lensenmayer took over in August as OCLC's liaison to HSOCLCUG and other user groups.

NLM announced in summer 2003 that the three green MeSH books (annotated, permuted, and tree) would no longer be published in print but available only online through the MeSH browser which had been introduced a couple years earlier as part of NLM's reinvention. The 'black-and-white' MeSH supplement to the printed monthly Index Medicus, however, would continue to be printed. Thus the last printed editions of MeSH Annotated, Tree, and Permuted were the 2003 editions published at the end of 2002.

Three decades of dizzying change have gone by since health sciences libraries began to join OCLC in 1973. All the people who participated in HSOCLCUG can look back at many accomplishments, not just the influence they've had on OCLC, NLM, MLA, and other organizations, but in helping each other adopt and adapt to the steady stream of new developments. Hundreds of librarians have been involved. Some joined, some dropped out, some came to the meetings, some became officers, committee members and chairs, some got married, some divorced, some changed their names, some had children, some moved, some changed jobs, some changed careers, some got promoted, some retired, and some passed away. All of them contributed in large and small ways. And OCLC and NLM and all of us are better off because they did.

HSOCLCUG's thirty-year anniversary is coming in 2005. What's next for HSOCLCUG? For OCLC? For health sciences librarianship? Much of the future, like the past, is a very daily and monthly event, at work and at home. There will always be a need for librarians to help each other solve problems.

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 Appendix

Deaths

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HSOCLCUG annual meetings

First annual meeting - 1976 - June 15 - Minneapolis - at MLA

Fall meeting - 1976 - Dec. 2-3 - Cleveland - at Cleveland Health Sciences Library

Second annual meeting - 1977 - June 15 - Seattle - at MLA

Third annual meeting - 1978 - April 10-11 - Indianapolis - Holiday Inn Airport (not MLA)

Fourth annual meeting - 1979 - May 14-16 - Columbus - Holiday Inn West Lane Ave.

Fifth annual meeting - 1980 - May 1-3 - Richmond - Hotel John Marshall

Sixth annual meeting - 1981 - April 29-May 1 - St. Louis - Holiday Inn Clayton

Seventh annual meeting - 1982 - April 28-30 - Dublin, Oh. - Stouffer's Dublin

Eighth annual meeting - 1983 - April 20-22 - Chapel Hill - Carolina Inn

Ninth annual meeting - 1984 - April 11-13 - Philadelphia - Barclay Hotel

Tenth annual meeting - 1985 - April 16-19 - Birmingham - University of Alabama at Birmingham

Eleventh annual meeting - 1986 - April 15.-18 - Cincinnati - Omni Netherland Plaza

Twelfth annual meeting - 1987 - April 7-10 - Gainesville - Holiday Inn University Center

Thirteenth annual meeting - 1988 - April 12-15 - Columbus - Great Southern Hotel

Fourteenth annual meeting - 1989 - April 11-14 - Chicago - Congress Hotel

Fifteenth annual meeting - 1990 - April 8-11 - Denver - Warwick Hotel

Sixteenth annual meeting - 1991 - April 16-19 - Washington, D.C. - Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza

Seventeenth annual meeting - 1992 - April 7-10 - San Antonio - Sheraton Gunter Hotel

Eighteenth annual meeting - 1993 - April 14-17 - Columbus - Great Southern Hotel

Nineteenth annual meeting - 1994 - April 20-23 - Chapel Hill - Carolina Inn

Twentieth annual meeting - 1995 - April 26-29 - Boulder - Clarion Harvest House

Twenty-First annual meeting - 1996 - May 1-4 - New York - Park Central Hotel

Twenty-Second annual meeting - 1997 - March 19-22 - New Orleans - Fairmont Hotel

Twenty-Third annual meeting - 1998 - May 7-9 - Cincinnati - Omni Netherland Plaza

Twenty-Fourth annual meeting - 1999 - Oct. 22-24 - Norman, Okla. - University of Oklahoma (with South-Central chapter of MLA)

Twenty-Fifth annual meeting - 2001 - Oct. 26-28 - New Orleans - Riverside Hilton Hotel (with SCC, SC, MC chapters of MLA)

Business meeting and social event - 2002 - May 19 - Dallas - Trinity Hall, an Irish pub (at MLA annual meeting)

Executive Board meeting - 2003 - June 30 - meeting by email because originally scheduled June 20 meeting in Toronto was cancelled due to SARS virus scare

Bylaws: adopted May 1976; revised May 1980, April 1982, April 1984, April 1985, April 1988, April 1989, April 1993, May 1998, October 2001.

Policies and procedures manual (intended to serve as a reference guide for members of the Executive Board): created by Bernie Baldini in April 1988; revised by Ginger Garvin in April 1989; revised by Robert Pisciotta in May 1990; revised by Carrie Willman in September 1995.

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Name changes:

Ginger Bullock --> Ginger Garvin --> Ginger Saha

Wilma Ewens --> Wilma Ewens Bass

Lynne Barnett --> Lynne Barnett Bowman

B.J. Gramka --> B.J. Schorre

Valerie St. Pierre --> Valerie S. Gordon

Carole Francq --> Carole Francq Gall

Susan Beck --> Susan Buentello

Diana Zinnato --> Diana Ryan

Sharon Bressert --> Sharon Bressert-Purtee

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Start of Message editors

Olyn Ruxin, editor, (Cleveland Health Sciences Library) 1975-1981

Suzanne Grefsheim, editor, (George Washington University) 1981- 1986 (Wilma Ewens associate editor, (Georgetown University) 1981-1983; Lois Culler, associate editor, (George Washington University) 1983-1986)

Lois Culler, editor, (George Washington University) 1986 -1989

Carrie Willman, editor, (Oregon Health Sciences University) 1989-1992

Cindy Fedders, editor, (Washington University School of Medicine) 1992-2002

Charlie Spencer Lackey, editor, (Duke University Medical Center) 2002-

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OCLC liaisons to HSOCLCUG

Ann Ekstrom, 1974-1977 (?)

Gretchen Whitney, 1978-1980

Kate Nevins, 1980-January 1983

Toni Brozgal, 1983

Mary Burgett, 1984

David Bates, 1985-1986

Kate Nevins, 1986-July 1988

Julie Peterson, August 1988-August 1989

Tom Clareson, Sept. 1989-February 1991

Ann Dodson, March 1991-May 1993

Clarence Walters, June 1993-August 1995

(no liaison), September 1995-January 1996

Linda Arnold, February 1996-June 2003

Nancy Lensenmayer, August 2003-

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Deaths of HSOCLCUG members

Henry Segal, June 2, 1979

Bob Lee, mid 1988

Richard Dilley, May 30, 1989

Olyn Ruxin, October 21, 1989

Cecile Doty, October 11, 1991

Darel Jay Robb, late 1994?

James Raper, September 1996

Libby Halpin, July 23, 1997

Barbara Van Brimmer, October 9, 2003

Officers and Executive Board, HSOCLCUG

Steering Committee of Task Force, fall 1975-June 1976:

Paul Olson, Chair

Patti Armes

Susan Hill

Olyn Ruxin (also SOM Editor)

Doris Bolef

1976-1977:

Patti Armes, Chairperson

Susan Hill, Vice Chairperson/Chairperson Elect

Janet Mixter, Secretary-Treasurer

Olyn Ruxin, SOM Editor

1977-1978:

Susan Hill, Chairperson

Sarah Salley, Vice Chairperson/Chairperson Elect

James Raper, Secretary-Treasurer

Olyn Ruxin, SOM Editor

1978-1979:

Sarah Salley, Chairperson

Jeanne Mueller, Vice Chairperson/Chairperson Elect

Anne Swedenberg, Secretary (office split because tied vote)

Brett Kirkpatrick, Treasurer (office split because tied vote)

Olyn Ruxin, SOM Editor

1979-1980:

Jeanne Mueller, Chairperson

Brett Kirkpatrick, Vice Chairperson/Chairperson Elect

Kathryn Hoffman, Secretary-Treasurer

Olyn Ruxin, SOM Editor

1980-1981:

Brett Kirkpatrick, President (change in officer title)

Deborah Yedlin, Vice President/President Elect (change in officer title)

Kathryn Hoffman, Secretary-Treasurer

Olyn Ruxin, SOM Editor

1981-1982:

Deborah Yedlin, President

Rick Forsman, Vice President/President Elect

Dick Miller, Secretary-Treasurer

Suzanne Grefsheim, SOM Editor

1982-1983:

Rick Forsman, President

April Wreath, Vice President/President Elect

Anaclare Evans, Secretary-Treasurer

Suzanne Grefsheim, SOM Editor

1983-1984:

April Wreath, President

Kathryn Hoffman, Vice President/President Elect

Frances Lynch, Secretary-Treasurer

Suzanne Grefsheim, SOM Editor

1984-1985:

Kathryn Hoffman, President

Harold Shaffer, Vice President/President Elect

Ginger Garvin, Recording Secretary (change in elected officer title)

Anaclare Evans, Administrative Secretary (new appointed office)

Suzanne Grefsheim, SOM Editor

1985-1986:

Harold Shaffer, President

Bernie Baldini, Vice President/President Elect

Tim Mason, Recording Secretary

Anaclare Evans, Administrative Secretary

Suzanne Grefsheim, SOM Editor

1986-1987:

Bernie Baldini, President

Ginger Garvin, Vice President/President Elect

Robert Pisciotta, Recording Secretary

Anaclare Evans, Administrative Secretary

Lois Culler, SOM Editor

1987-1988:

Ginger Garvin, President

Robert Pisciotta, Vice President/President Elect

Gayle Ablove, Recording Secretary

Anaclare Evans, Administrative Secretary

Lois Culler, SOM Editor

1988-1989:

Robert Pisciotta, President

Leslie Ann Bowman, Vice President/President Elect

Mary Hawks, Recording Secretary

Anaclare Evans, Administrative Secretary

Lois Culler, SOM Editor

1989-1990:

Leslie Ann Bowman, President

Lenny Rhine, Vice President/President Elect

Sue Gullion, Recording Secretary

Anaclare Evans, Administrative Secretary

Carrie Willman, SOM Editor

Susan Beck, Archivist

B.J. Gramka, Auditor (first auditor)

1990-1991:

Lenny Rhine, President

Cecile Doty, Vice President/President Elect

Judy Rieke, Recording Secretary

B.J. Gramka, Administrative Secretary

Carrie Willman, SOM Editor

Susan Beck, Archivist

Darel Jay Robb, Auditor

1991-1992:

Cecile Doty, President (resigned in July 1991 because of bad health)

Stephen Van Houten, Vice President/President Elect

Lynne Barnett Bowman, Recording Secretary

B.J. Gramka, Administrative Secretary

Carrie Willman, SOM Editor

Susan Beck, Archivist

Darel Jay Robb, Auditor

1992-1993:

Stephen Van Houten, President

Carrie Willman, Vice President/President Elect

Liz Mikita, Recording Secretary

B. J. Gramka, Administrative Secretary

Cindy Fedders, SOM Editor

Susan Beck, Archivist

Darel Jay Robb, Auditor

1993-1994:

Carrie Willman, President

Sharon Bressert, Vice President/President Elect

Lisa Kindrick, Recording Secretary

B.J. Schorre, Administrative Secretary

Cindy Fedders, SOM Editor

Susan Beck, Archivist

1994-1995:

Sharon Bressert, President

Monica Unger, Vice President/President Elect

Beth Schneider, Recording Secretary

Karleen Darr, Administrative Secretary

Cindy Fedders, SOM Editor

Susan Beck, Archivist

1995-1996:

Monica Unger, President

Carole Francq, Vice President/President Elect

Mary Ann O'Daniel, Recording Secretary

Karleen Darr, Administrative Secretary

Cindy Fedders, SOM Editor

Susan Beck, Archivist

Gerri Eisenberg, Auditor

1996-1997:

Carole Francq, President

Connie Machado, Vice President/President Elect

Annette Williams, Recording Secretary

Karleen Darr, Administrative Secretary (and Archivist)

Cindy Fedders, SOM Editor

1997-1998:

Connie Machado, President

Janice Carter, Vice President/President Elect

Lynne Barnett Bowman, Recording Secretary

Karleen Darr, Administrative Secretary and Archivist

Cindy Fedders, SOM Editor

1998-1999:

Janice Carter, President

(vacant), Vice President/President Elect

Lynne Barnett Bowman, Recording Secretary

Karleen Darr, Administrative Secretary and Archivist

Cindy Fedders, SOM Editor

1999-2000:

Mary Holt, Acting President

(vacant), Vice President/President Elect

Lynne Barnett Bowman, Recording Secretary

Karleen Darr, Administrative Secretary and Archivist

Cindy Fedders, SOM Editor

2000-2001:

Mary Holt, President

(vacant), Vice President/President Elect

Lynne Barnett Bowman, Recording Secretary

Karleen Darr, Administrative Secretary and Archivist

Cindy Fedders, SOM Editor

2001-2002:

Mary Holt, President

(vacant), Vice President/President Elect

Lynne Barnett Bowman, Recording Secretary

Karleen Darr, Administrative Secretary and Archivist

Cindy Fedders, SOM Editor

2002-2003:

Judith Dzierba, President

Betsy Friesen, Vice President/President Elect

Lynne Barnett Bowman, Recording Secretary (change to appointed office)

Wendy Fritzel, Administrative Secretary

Charlie Spencer Lackey, SOM Editor

Dan Kniesner, Archivist

2003-2004:

Betsy Friesen, President

Janice J. Powell Muller, Vice President/President Elect

Lynne Barnett Bowman, Recording Secretary

Wendy Fritzel, Administrative Secretary

Charlie Spencer Lackey, SOM Editor

Dan Kniesner, Archivist

_____________________________________________________

Nominating Committee Chairs of HSOCLCUG:

1977: Jean Miller, chair

1978: Deborah Yedlin, chair

1979: Ted Caron, chair

1980: Anaclare Evans, chair

1981: Bernie Baldini, chair

1982: Gayle Ablove, chair

1983: Tim Mason, chair

1984: Jim Martinelli, chair

1985: Mary Ryan, chair

1986: Diana Zinnato, chair

1987: Lorraine Raymond, chair

1988: Sharon Bressert, chair

1989: Mary Charles Lasater, chair

1990: Stephen Van Houten, chair

1991: Margaret Rennie Verzwyvelt, then Liz Mikita, chair

1992: Laurie Thompson, chair

1993: John Barr, chair

1994: Barbara Van Brimmer, chair

1995: Susan Banoun, chair

1996: Valerie Gordon, chair

1997: Mary Hawks, chair

1998: no nominating committee

1999: no nominating committee

2000: no nominating committee

2001: no nominating committee

2002: Mary Hawks, chair

2003: Dan Kniesner, chair

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Author Information

Dan Kniesner, HSOCLCUG Administration Secretary, 2004 and the Groups' Archivist. Contact Information: kniesner@ohsu.edu.