Picture in your mind an ordinary wooden chair. Your OBS Chair is sitting on this imaginary chair. Now imagine the chair not having a back and me deciding to relax a bit, but having forgotten there’s no back to this chair and I begin to fall. BUT! Suddenly someone catches me mid-fall and when I look around she smiles, and in her hands is the back to this Chair. She says “Brian I think you forgot this.” I reply meekly, “Yeah, I guess I did huh? Thanks Ellen!”

That’s the way my OBS Chairship has gone. I had such great plans for my tenure as Chair of our OBS SIS. I have many people to thank already but I must give a “standing” ovation to Ellen McGrath now, for without her help I haven’t a leg to stand on (old chair joke). So, *thank you Ellen* for all the posts you made on the OBS discussion list; all the phone calls to me for reminders; all the e-mails to the Executive Board; all the e-mails to me reminding me to do a variety of tasks that were way too close to deadlines.

There are several important things to cover for this column. So let’s get to them. First is that we have a task force of volunteers to help with OBS’s strategic plan. Ellen McGrath (name familiar to the reader?) has created a strategic mission draft and the OBS Board is looking at it currently and will be involving the task force. Volunteers for this task force (we could stand a few more volunteers-contact me if interested) include: Pat Callahan (Penn), Sally Wambold (Richmond), Sue Roach (Navy JAG), Ellen McGrath (SUNY-Buffalo), Me (Nebraskee), Becky Lutkenhaus (Drake), and Janet Hedin (Detroit College-at Michigan State).

I’m pleased to announce a new Co-coordinator of the OBS TS Research Roundtable. Becky Lutkenhaus will be working with LeGrande Fletcher. Hasn’t LeGrande done a Grand job with all the info-packed Research & Publications columns in TSLL??!! I am so pleased that this very important part of all our professional growth and education continues. One of the core reasons for being part of a professional organization is the sharing of knowledge through research and publications within and among our colleagues... and... — Opps. Sorry. I temporarily stepped up on one of my most favorite soap boxes. LeGrande isn’t able to attend the upcoming AALL annual meeting in Philadelphia and Chris Long (Indiana-at Indianapolis) a “Long”time participant in the Research Roundtables has volunteered to co-coordinate the RRT at Philly for LeGrande. Thanks to Chris for “Philly’ing” in. (groan) Becky Lutkenhaus will be helping out with Chris at AALL.

Speaking of the OBS & TS Research Roundtable, the new OBS representative (one of two OBS reps) for the OBS TS Joint Research Grant Committee is Ruth Patterson Funabiki (U. of Idaho). Thank you Ruth! Hey, let’s put the JRGC to work!! How about submitting a proposal to the Committee to help you perform research for that article you’ve been wanting to do but your institution wouldn’t help you with the necessary funds to complete it. Corinne Jacox is the Chair, go ahead e-mail her at (cjacox@mail.barry.edu)

Finally, OBS plans on participating in the AALL’s Public Relations Committee “Time Capsules.” If you don’t know about this yet, read on page 22 of the February 2000 issue of Spectrum. We haven’t a clue yet about what our historic (hysteric?) object we want to put in a medium size box. If you have any ideas of what might best “capture” the essence of our OBS-SIS, or online bibliographic services, online automated databases, migrations, MARC, ANSI, URL, interfacing, the Internet, Z39.50, EDI, Dublin Core, Metadata, Harmonization, or *whatever*, contact me or any OBS-SIS Board member. Or... post your idea on the OBS electronic discussion list (obs-sis@aall.wuacc.edu).

Post finally, as Chair of the current OBS-SIS, I pay yet more tribute to Ellen McGrath who has worked so tirelessly and so competently on her OBS history submission for this special 25th anniversary TSLL issue. Kudos Ellen!! She read through hours and hours of TSLL issues and e-mailed to the OBS Executive Board for their comments and contacted others to make sure the information was as accurate as possible. All I can say is “Wow!” Oh yeah, did I tell y’all that she also has a JOB and a LIFE too!!

The last finally for this column. Really. Just to let everyone know, we are working on updating the OBS Web page/s. I apologize for not acting on getting the necessary updates and changes made as I should have. Our volunteer, Sarah Andeen will be making the corrections and we should be fairly current with our Web site by the time you read this.