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This year's Southeast Chapter regional meeting was held November 10–13, 2005, in St. Petersburg, Florida. The conference hotel was the Hampton Inn and Suites St. Petersburg Downtown, overlooking the beautiful Tampa Bay waterfront. The hotel was very well located for walking to various galleries, the Pier, the BayWalk shopping/eating megaplex, and most of the weekend's conference venues.

Most conference participants arrived on Thursday afternoon or evening, picked up their packets in the hotel lobby, and had dinner on their own at any number of restaurants in the area. I understand several people walked or took the 25-cent trolley to the Columbia Spanish restaurant at the end of the Pier and had an excellent meal.

Friday began with an early morning meeting in the hotel's conference room for those interested in helping with planning the ARLIS/NA national conference to be held in Atlanta in 2007. With the conference planning manual in hand and everyone poring over the job descriptions of the various duties to be performed, we were able to get volunteers for most of the big positions. We still need several chapter members to step up, fill in the gaps, and help round out committees being formed for planning the Atlanta conference. Please see the minutes from the November 11 conference planning meeting listing who has signed up to do what, and either volunteer to head a committee yourself or at the very least help your colleagues with planning in any way possible. Since we will be the hosting chapter, it is imperative that each and every one of us does his or her part to help Atlanta 2007 be the most interesting, diverse, and successful conference ARLIS/NA members will have ever attended.

After a short coffee break, we reconvened in the hotel meeting room to have an overview of the weekend's conference schedule, given by conference co-planners Tom Caswell and Ann Lindell. Tom and Ann then led a "visioning workshop" for the conference attendees to sort of take a mini environmental scan of our chapter's membership. Details of this workshop will be forthcoming, and Ann and Tom hope to use the results to develop future workshops and talks of interest for our members.

We then broke for lunch on our own and agreed to meet later that afternoon in front of the Museum of Fine Arts to begin our tour of the museum's library. Jordana Weiss is the museum's sole librarian on staff, and she led us on a fascinating, energetic look at the inner workings of her collection, including a behind-the-scenes glimpse of their beautiful bookbinding and repairs operation. A handful of highly skilled volunteers have basically handed down the tradition for decades. We all left in awe at how much Jordana manages to accomplish with a volunteer staff and a small library budget. Jordana is also now a new member of ARLIS/SE—so welcome, Jordana, and thank you for a most interesting tour of your facility. Upon completion of the MFA library tour, we walked a short distance across the park to the historic Renaissance Vinoy Resort. Staff historian Elaine Normile led us on an enthralling guided tour of this recently refurbished hotel's gardens, galleries, and ballrooms. This 1920's hotel and resort is a fine example of historic preservation of a landmark property.

After a morning of meetings and an afternoon of touring, conference attendees were ready to relax. We reconvened for a rooftop reception at the nearby Harbour Hill Clubhouse (courtesy of Ann's parents). The reception also doubled as the venue for the presentation of the 21st Annual Mary Ellen LoPresti Awards for excellence in arts-related publishing in the Southeast. Winners were announced as we dined on hors d'oeuvres and gazed out at the St. Petersburg sunset. Rather than cramming the book awards into our chapter business meeting like we usually do, I think we all agreed this was the most relaxed, fun, and picturesque LoPresti Awards presentation yet!

The optional group dinner that night was a unique dining experience at a place called Dish at BayWalk. It's a funky, Mongolian BBQ-type restaurant where you pick up a "palette" and "create" your own meal by picking the ingredients, and then watch them be cooked on a huge grill—perfect for a group of creative art librarians and associates, eh?

Having our book awards on Friday evening actually made Saturday morning's business meeting a bit more relaxed as well. We were able to concentrate on the agenda and finish up any leftover items from the previous day's discussion of the Atlanta 2007 conference planning. It was a full agenda, but we were able to keep on schedule and break for lunch by noon.

Later that afternoon, we met at the bus trolley stop (with a quarter in hand!) in front of the hotel. The trolley took us on a 25-minute loop around the city, highlighting many of the tourist spots, before dropping us off at the Salvador Dalí Museum. We went on a guided tour of the museum's extensive collection of original Dalí artwork. Outside of Dalí's own museum in Spain, the St. Petersburg collection is the most comprehensive collection of his work in the world.

Later that night we were able to unwind and explore dinner options on our own. Many of us strolled the main streets of downtown, which were alive that evening for the city's second-Saturday-of-the-month Gallery Walk. Browsing the galleries and chatting up the local artisans, the walk was a great way to get a taste of what the local art scene is like in St. Pete—and work off any extra calories one may have gained throughout the weekend!

Overall, it was an exhilarating weekend full of good weather, good cheer, networking with colleagues, and taking in all that St. Petersburg has to offer. Ann and I would like to thank everyone who attended for making it such a successful conference. Special thanks go out to Tisha Mauney, Max Mauney, and Hope Johnson for helping with signage and packet distribution.

See you in Atlanta next fall!

From Liz Gentry, Booth Western Art Museum, Cartersville, Georgia:

I'm busy gathering reading and viewing materials for our new traveling exhibition, An Artist with the Corps of Discovery: The Lewis & Clark Journal Suite by Charles J. Fritz. This exhibition opened Thursday, December 9, and closes on April 9, 2006.

St. Petersburg was wonderful. I volunteered to be the Silent Auction Coordinator for the Atlanta ARLIS/NA Conference in 2007. If anyone is interested in helping and if anyone has any suggestions as to how it should be handled, please contact me at lizg@boothmuseum.org or by phone at 770-387-1300, ext. 235. I know it's early to be thinking of this, but time will go by fast and it will be here before we know it.

From James A. Findlay, Broward County Main Library, Bienes Center for the Literary Arts, The Dianne & Michael Bienes Special Collections and Rare Book Library, Fort Lauderdale, Florida:

The exhibition WPA Museum Extension Project, 1935–1943: Government Created Visual Aids for Children from the Bienes Center's Collection runs through April 30, 2006. A printed catalogue of approximately one hundred pages to accompany the exhibition will be available in February of 2006.

Call for entries: 2005 Florida Artists' Book Prize, cosponsored by the Bienes Center and the Florida Center for the Book. The ninth annual prize of $2,000 will be awarded in the spring of 2006.

Criteria for entry: book must be created or published in an "edition" (cannot be one-of-a-kind); artist's primary residence must be the state of Florida; and the book must have been created or published in the calendar year 2005. The deadline for submission is January 16, 2006.

From Sarah E. McCleskey, Axinn Library, Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York:

I hope everyone had a great time in St. Petersburg; I was thinking about all of you that weekend. I am looking forward to the ARLIS/NA conference in Banff in May; I will be leading part of a collection development workshop put together by Kim Collins and Nensi Brailo. I hope to see many of you at the conference.

I am enjoying my job here at Hofstra, but I miss being an art librarian very much! I have a lot to keep me busy here. We start our implementation of a new library system, III's Millennium product, this week, and I am looking forward to this challenge as we make the change from DRA Classic. I'm so glad that Hofstra chose III; Clemson has recently migrated to III as well, and I will get to see my pals from there at the Innovative Users Group meetings from now on! We are also in the midst of a renovation of our main floor, and installation of a sprinkler system throughout the library.

Last week I attended the ARLIS/NY Chapter holiday party at the Accompanied Library, housed in the National Arts Club building on Gramercy Park. The party was lovely, and I got to catch up with some of our friends from New York. After the party, I had dinner with Roberto Ferrari and some of our friends from the New York Chapter. Roberto seems to be settling well into graduate school and enjoying his studies. We both always speak fondly of the Southeast Chapter and all our friends there. I miss you!

From Kathleen List, Ringling School of Art and Design, Sarasota, Florida:

The Ringling School Library Association celebrated its thirtieth anniversary, 1975–2005, with a membership party for more than two hundred guests and members in Ringling School's Kimbrough Library. This fall the Library Association presented the library with its annual pledge of $100,000 for acquisitions, donated $50,000 for an endowed scholarship honoring their past presidents, and added $400,000 to the Library Endowment they created five years ago. Total giving by the Library Association since its founding in 1975 is more than $3 million.

Kathleen List, Director of Library Services, was honored as one of the founders of the Five Colleges of Ohio at their tenth anniversary celebration November 10 at Denison University. Kathleen was Director of Libraries at Ohio Wesleyan when Denison University, Oberlin College, Kenyon College, Ohio Wesleyan University, and the College of Wooster formed the Five College consortium in 1995.

Allen Novak and the work of the Sarasota Model Railroad Club were featured in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune for the Sustainable Sarasota model they created. The model is on display in the North Sarasota Public Library Branch of the Sarasota County Library System.

Ringling School had a successful reaccreditation review by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS).

The Southeast Chapter of ARLIS/NA is pleased to announce the winners of its 21st Annual Mary Ellen LoPresti Art Publication Awards Competition for publications produced in 2004.

There were 45 entries: 26 monographs, 13 exhibition catalogues, 3 artist's books, and 3 serials. Entries were submitted from 22 publishers: 6 university presses, 9 museums, 2 commercial publishers, and 5 in other categories. Among the states submitting entries were Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and North Carolina with 4 publishers each; Tennessee with 3; and Mississippi, Puerto Rico, and South Carolina with 1 each. This was the first year that Tennessee submitted entries.

The winners were announced by Melissa McDonald, 2005 LoPresti Awards Chair, at a special reception at the ARLIS/SE annual meeting in St. Petersburg on November 11.

LoPresti Award for Outstanding Monographs

Darty, Linda. The Art of Enameling: Techniques, Projects, Inspiration. New York: Lark Books, 2004. ISBN 1-57990-5072. $24.95 (cloth)

Publisher description: "With this lavish introduction to the centuries-old art of enameling, even beginners can effortlessly create imaginative designs. Written with clarity and passion by a leader in the field, this book covers all the popular techniques, the fundamentals of setting up a studio, and fourteen fabulous projects. The various methods covered include everything from traditional Cloisonné, Champlevé, and Plique à Jour to experimental techniques such as firing enamel onto mesh forms. The author lives in Greenville, N.C."

LaFerla, Jane, and Veronika Alice Gunter. The Penland Book of Handmade Books: Master Classes in Bookmaking Techniques. New York: Lark Books, 2004. ISBN 1-57990-474-2. $34.95 (cloth)

Publisher description: "Every year Penland, the innovative school where crafters from around the world come to hone their skills, offers a master class in the art of bookmaking that's simply without equal. Now it's available to everyone, in a technical and inspirational guide that showcases ten contemporary book artists who have taught at the institution. Four hundred illuminating photographs highlight the crafters as each one demonstrates all the details of his or her particular expertise."

LoPresti Award for Outstanding Exhibition Catalogue

Manoguerra, Paul A., with an essay by Janice Simon. Classic Ground: Mid-Nineteenth-Century American Painting and the Italian Encounter. Athens: Georgia Museum of Art, 2004. ISBN 0-915977-54-0. $25 (softcover)

Publisher description: "Featuring essays by Paul Manoguerra, curator of American Art at the Georgia Museum of Art, and Janice Simon, professor of art history at the Lamar Dodd School of Art, Classic Ground . . . accompanies the exhibition of the same title. The exhibition brings together a group of paintings by American artists as a result of their mid-nineteenth-century Italian travels on the "Grand Tour." Thomas Cole, Martin Johnson Heade, Albert Bierstadt, Jasper Francis Cropsey, and other American painters created a body of work featuring Italian landscapes, people, buildings, and life. Classic Ground situates American paintings, with Italian subject matter, in the context of mid-nineteenth-century politics, gender, ideology, religion, and popular culture."

LoPresti Award for Outstanding Multimedia Work

Hayes, Alexandria, editor, and Earl Hébert, illustrator. Zydeco Shoes: A Sensory Tour of Cajun Culture. Gretna, La.: Pelican Publishing Company, 2004. Book and CD. ISBN 1589802462. $39.95 (cloth)

Publisher description: "This collection of vivid, humorous paintings by self-taught artist Earl Hébert takes the reader into the real heart of Cajun culture—the back-road music halls, the small-town family gatherings, and the all-important, spicy, local cuisine. With its evocative text, authentic Cajun recipes, and enclosed music CD, Zydeco Shoes celebrates the joie de vivre of South Louisiana and its people."

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