In the past year, support and need for LOUIS has not waned a bit!

LOUIS and its members again joined for the 2012 LOUIS Users' Conference on October 15-16, 2012 at the West Baton Rouge Tourist Information & Conference Center in Port Allen, LA. Many librarians attended, as presenters and attendees. Many thanks to the sponsors of the event, and to the Board of Regents. A member of the BoR was in attendance, and we are all appreciative of their support.

You can find more photos from the event on LOUIS' Facebook.

The LUC 2011 conference is underway, helping librarians across the state share their knowledge!

See the LOUIS site for details.

The Aug. 8th 2011 issue of the LOUIS Newsletter is out, and it includes an update and assessment of the LOUIS crisis and our experiences with HCR 129, indicating that although we have not been able to procure funding, we did succeed in spreading awareness of LOUIS and its importance.

...this amazing community of academic libraries spent a grueling year accomplishing 3 goals: finding funding for FY 11-12, branding LOUIS and highlighting the resources/services and return on investment, and setting the stage to define a sustainable funding model for the future. Due to the hard work of so many, these goals have been achieved.

How can I say that that there were any successes since we still don’t have the level of Regent’s funding we had in 09-10? Let’s start with what I consider the best news of the year: unanimous adoption of HCR 129 by the House and Senate....

While the Senate was looking at HCR 129 on June 23rd (2011), the Louisiana Board of Regents was meeting and talking about various things, including HCR 129 and the status of LOUIS and its funding. Here's a clip of that, at about 3 1/2 minutes:

You can see the full original video of the entire meeting here.

Here is an email LOUIS Exec. Director Sara Zimmerman sent to LOUIS library directors on Thursday (June 23) which explains some things about the current status of the LOUIS Crisis and what HCR 129 means; all is verbatim except the addition of some hyperlinks:

Group, I wanted to give as accurate an update as I can at this time. There are still some uncertainties, but for now, this is what is going on.

As you are all aware there was a huge grassroots effort to get the word out about LOUIS. Many, many people in the academic library community stepped up and went well beyond expectations to make sure that the details of LOUIS were well known. It is my belief that these efforts paid off in our best interest.

On June 15th The Daily Comet, which serves the Thibodaux area, published an article on the LOUIS crisis and the then-upcoming (now passed) HCR 129. You can read it here:
Cash shortage for electronic library system could hurt students