There are now 12 people on the Executive Committee of CoLRiC.  There were four face-to-face committee meetings, on 9 June 2006, 16 November 2006, 8 February 2007, and 22 March 2007. The annual ‘organising day’ was held by CoLRiC committee members on 10 June 2006. As ever use of email continued to be the major form of communication between the committee members for information exchanges and decisions. 

The total membership stands at 251 colleges, which is 51.4% of all colleges; of whom 14 new members joined during the year.

The key achievements and developments for 2006-2007 have been:

The conference on Survive and Thrive; Learning resources for the future’, that occurred on 9th June in Manchester was both well attended and received, with excellent speakers and workshops, according to the write-up from one delegate in the Newsletter of September 2006 – Issue No. 39. The AMC was successfully held again at the conference and this enabled greater participation and feedback from members.

The fourth qualitative ‘Performance and Impact Indicators’ survey of college learning resources services and their clients was carried out, and the results summary was published on our web site (also in the Newsletter of November 2006 – Issue No. 40).  The fifth survey is currently underway.

Our Professional Development Award winner from 2005, Florence Achen-Ower, gave her report at last year’s conference.  The written report was circulated to members with the Newsletter of November 2006 – Issue No. 40 and has engendered considerable interest.

Great thought and effort by the committee has taken place at various meetings, including and extraordinary meeting in February, and events in identifying the purpose and priorities of CoLRiC for the future, redrafting the mission and objectives to update them and more closely reflect our purpose, and endeavouring to make CoLRiC much more accessible to/owned by its members.

The peer accreditation scheme continues to be respected and used, with a total number of colleges that have been accredited being 26, including two re-assessments as their original assessments were due to lapse.  The criteria are currently being redrafted in line with the technologies, priorities and terminologies.

The CoLRiC information and discussion forum that was set up last year goes from strength to strength, with over 520 e-mails drawing on the idea of professional support and advice to others. This has engendered useful and topical discussion on over 50 subjects.  Notes on a variety of the topics covered have been collated and are available on the website.

The new members' only area of the website is now open for use with few problems and many of our members successfully registered with this section.

Lesley Gaj
June 2007