Volume 16, Number 2, May 1994, p.1

President's Letter

Our Board Meeting was in March, sadly, our last meeting with Liz Welsh who has resigned from the Newsletter, having being snatched up by a group of archaeologists to edit their work. It is wonderful that her editorial skills have been recognized outside our group and we wish every success at her new job.

I hope that as many of you as possible will join me, at our Asilomar Conference on Tuesday September 27 during morning coffee, to thank Liz for the sterling work she has done for us all.

Fortunately Carolyn Tallent has agreed to jump into the breach and will be helping Liz with this issue of the Newsletter and then go solo on the September issue. I hope all of you that are involved with the Newsletter will give Carolyn your support and help during her apprenticeship. She comes to the task with a great deal of enthusiasm and full of ideas so do not be surprised if you see a few changes.

We have run out of the Spanish edition The Guide to Handling Anthropological Museum Collections and the Board has agreed to reprint at least 100 copies which will continue to be available through Nancy Odegaard. This has proved a useful addition to our teaching tools for those of us who teach in Latin America.

Patricia Leavengood is working on trying to get all the submissions for the post prints of the Lost Compensation Symposium by June. Please can I encourage those of you that are involved to meet this deadline as we would like to have the post prints available for purchase at our September Meeting.

The meeting plans at Asilomar are well underway and you will shortly receive an information package with all the details do not forget the dates are September 25-27. The conference will be a package of 2 nights and 6 meals and this will be handled by WAAC in a similar way to last year. Those of you wishing to stay longer can make your own arrangements with Asilomar for the extra days.

I was delighted that two of our members, Vinod Daniel and Mark Gilberg, have proposed a half day workshop, on non-toxic methods of pest control, for our upcoming meeting. We are hoping that it would help familiarize participants with a simple non-toxic technique using low atmospheres for pest eradication in museum objects.

The quest for papers has begun and I hope we will have as much variety as last year. We are trying to entice a conservator from Mexico City to come and talk to us about her research into Meso American paper making techniques. I would like to encourage more discussion during the paper presentation and to this end the papers submitted should be no more than 20 minutes in length so that the audience will have an opportunity to ask questions. I think of our WAAC meeting as being an arena for the exchange ideas and lively interaction with the talks acting as catalysts to this end. I look forward to seeing many of you at Asilomar.