I'm delighted to announce that Dr. Hunter Rawlings III, the President of the Association of American Universities (AAU) and former President of both Cornell University and the University of Iowa, will be giving the closing plenary address at the CNI Fall Membership meeting, to be held December 10-11, 2012 in Washington DC. In his role as President of AAU, Hunter is ideally positioned to offer us important insight into the future of the higher education system and the roles of multi-institutional collaboration, information technology, digital content, and other developments in shaping that future. This should be a very exciting conclusion to our meeting.

I am also personally looking foward to giving the customary opening plenary for the fall meeting; there have been so many fascinating new developments over the past year that I want to discuss, as well as sharing thoughts on the future, and the role that CNI will play in shaping that future.

We are still finalizing the breakout sessions, and the list will be announced here when it's ready. But I can assure you that we have a great collection of sessions in store, including some coverage of developments in massive open online classes, an update on the Digital Preservation Network, a report on the National Archival Authorities Infrastructure, a session on the national e-text pilots, a discussion of Wikipedia and cultural memory organizations, an introduction to the new international Research Data Alliance, and a federal funder panel. To mention only a few.

So look forward to an outstanding meeting this December, and please register if you haven't done so already.

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI