John. F. Helmer, Executive Director of the Orbis Cascade Alliance, has announced that he will retire in March 2016. His involvement began with the ORBIS consortium in Oregon in 1993 as a systems administrator, and in 1999 he became its Executive Director. Helmer's many accomplishments include the merger of ORBIS with Cascade in 2002, establishing the Orbis Cascade Alliance. Both ORBIS and Cascade operated individual INNOPAC integrated library systems, with a union catalog and direct consortial borrowing capability provided through INN-Reach. The two INN-Reach implementations were combined when the organizations merged. INN-Reach was replaced by OCLC WorldCat Navigator in 2008. Under Helmer's leadership, the Orbis Cascade Alliance conducted an extensive procurement process for a shared automation environment that ultimately led to the selection of Ex Libris Alma and Primo and its successful implementation concluding in January 2015.
Bibliotheca, the global company offering RFID-based self-service and security technology products for libraries has added two North American business development managers. Doug Potts comes to Bibliotheca from previous positions at Innovative Interfaces and OCLC and will represent Bibliotheca in the Northwest United States. Amber Thompson has been promoted from within the company and will serve as a business development manager for the northeastern United States.
Lynn Silipigni Connaway, Senior Research Scientist for OCLC, has been elected as President of the Association for Information Science and Technology for 2017 and will serve as president- elect beginning in 2016.
