Message From
the Association
President

Revenues . . . have expanded dramatically, contributing to a more robust budgetary foundation for member initiatives and
enhanced services

ATLA is an extraordinary collection of individuals
and institutions

January 2001

Dear Colleagues,

In this, the third annual report for ATLA, you will see evidence of the continued health of our association and its programs and activities. We are now approaching the end of the first five-year term of our Executive Director, Dennis Norlin. Dennis and the staff in Chicago have done an excellent job of recapturing and focusing the vision of the work of the association. The considerable improvement in the financial position of the association over the last several years can be attributed to the vision and initiatives that Dennis has developed with the staff and the Board.

As we saw in last year's annual report, making the ATLA Religion Database available to a variety of third-party vendors has dramatically expanded the scope and impact of our premier published resource. Our database is subscribed to now by over 800 institutions, reaching well beyond the membership institutions of the association. Revenues from this product have expanded dramatically, contributing to a more robust budgetary foundation for member initiatives and enhanced services.

January 2001 will see the Phase I release of the ATLAS full-text serials project. This ambitious effort to provide the first full-text electronic journals in religion, with depth beyond the most recent years of a publication, will quickly become another core resource for libraries. Increasingly, full-text journal articles, linked from indexes or search engines, are becoming standard fare for students and researchers. ATLAS provides one of the most robust disciplinary resources available to researchers today. As was pioneered by the JSTOR project, ATLAS will digitize as far back as fifty years for periodicals. We extend the JSTOR model by utilizing the indexing data present in the ATLA Religion Database for these titles, providing a more robust and functional searching capability. When the second phase of ATLAS is released, fully searchable text for each of these articles will further transform the accessibility of these documents for research.

Another major change for the association this year, though one less visible to many members of the association, has been the move of the headquarters from Evanston to downtown Chicago. A relocation of an operation of this size is difficult, requiring careful planning and coordination. This gets more complicated when there are publication deadlines to meet and computer servers to keep functioning. All things considered, the move went very well, and the new headquarters are a vast improvement over the cramped quarters in which the association staff has worked for years. And, as Dennis has previously said, next year we will add an electronic conference and training center as well. The headquarters will serve as a resource for the membership in a way it never has before.

After repeated difficulties with the software developer, a new and improved Windows version of the ATLA Religion Database is finally available. Much later than we had hoped or intended, the release was delayed because testing by staff and ATLA members showed deficiencies that would have been unacceptable.

Even as a new Windows version is finally complete, planning and development is underway for the next version, which will be operating-system independent, following a web-browser interface model.

Creation of the Professional Development Committee is another new development in the past year and represents a move to expand and enhance the continuing education resources offered for our membership. The Special Committee for International Collaboration is an initiative inaugurated this year to expand and encourage connections between our membership and theological librarians outside of North America. The organizational ends of the association of fostering the professional growth of its members and encouraging meaningful collaboration are manifest in each of these efforts.

ATLA is an extraordinary collection of individuals and institutions. Our association has accomplished much over the years, more often than we realize. We are extremely fortunate to have such talented members and employees. This report illustrates what we have been able to accomplish, as well as the foundation upon which we are able to strive to do yet more.

Cordially,

Bill Hook
President