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Today I want to give you a brief state‐of‐OCLC report. I want to begin with finances, because a financially strong OCLC is absolutely critical to the pursuit of our public purposes.

OCLC has grown since 1971 from 54 libraries to 17,000 libraries, from the state of Ohio to 47 countries around the world, and from revenues of $67,000 to almost $100 million. In addition to cataloging, OCLC now provides a broad range of products and services in resource sharing, reference, and electronic publishing. The Forest Press Division of OCLC publishes the Dewey Decimal Classification, the world's most widely used library classification system. OCLC also operates MAPS, The MicrogrAphic Preservation Service, a nonprofit corporation based in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, that provides high‐quality preservation microfilming for libraries. Information Dimensions, Inc., a for‐profit subsidiary acquired in April 1993, develops and markets computer software products for managing electronic documents and text on leading mainframe computers, microcomputers, workstations, and PCs. IDI provides an exciting strategic fit for OCLC in full‐text electronic publishing, electronic archiving, and information management—three areas of growing importance in OCLC's future.

I want to give you a brief state‐of‐OCLC report. Fiscal year 1991/92 has been a good year for OCLC, a year of significant accomplishments. I want to put some perspective on the events of this fiscal year, which will end June 30, 1992, and I want to put some perspective on where we are headed. I would like to do this within the context of our strategic plan.

In order to expand availability of the FirstSearch system, OCLC has instituted a new subscription pricing option. The University of Utah became the first institution to select the new pricing system.

Reports the minutes of the winter meeting of the OCLC Users Councils, January 23‐25, 1995, which focussed on “The NII, the Internet, and OCLC: The Next Generation”. Speakers talked about Freenets, the effects of current federal legislation on the development of a national information infrastructure (NII) for an information highway, and how librarians need to influence public policy making to remain key players in the development of the National Internet Infrastructure.

French Libraries Sign Retrospective Conversion Contract with OCLC OCLC will convert to machine‐readable form more than 600,000 bibliographic records for six French academic libraries. The records will also be loaded into the PANCATALOGUE, France's national union catalog of monographs.

Reports on the OCLC Users’ Council meeting of February 5‐7, 1996. Issues discussed included nominations for the board of trustees, the OCLC president’s report, the Users’ Council executive committee report and reports on users of electronic information. Also under discussion were a number of strategies for the future.

“Values and Visions = Policies and Actions” was the focus of the May OCLC Users Council meeting, continuing the theme “Transforming Technologies: Reconstructing Libraries for the New Information Community.” During the period between the February Users Council meeting and the May Users Council meeting, a “Trends in Library Services Survey,” also known as the values survey, was mailed to 390 OCLC member libraries: 330 libraries that belong to the OCLC Library Market Research Panel and the 60 Users Council delegates by the OCLC marketing and sales division.

The OCLC Users Council met at OCLC headquarters in Dublin, Ohio, on January 9‐11 to discuss “Libraries, OCLC, and Electronic Publishing.” It was the second of three meetings devoted to the council′s 1993‐94 theme, “The Bibliographic Commons and Beyond: Electronic Publishing and Knowledge Management.”

The Online Journal of Current Clinical Trials, the world's first peer‐reviewed medical journal distributed by computer, began publication on July 1. OJCCT is a joint venture of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and OCLC. AAAS developed the editorial content and focus of the journal, and OCLC developed its programming and technology.