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The article discusses the importance of succession planning for libraries. We read the stories in the paper: an organization with tremendous influence goes from leading edge to leaderless in one horrible stroke of fate. Recently, McDonald's Corporation announced the sudden death of its chair and CEO, Jim Cantalupo. Yet the organization barely skipped a beat, announcing a new chair and CEO within days. Investors barely responded, and the $40 billion multinational purveyor of Big Macs and Supersize Fries survives better than most of our waistlines. The saving grace for McDonald's is succession planning, a common program in large corporations. Many librarians understand that they, too, have enormous responsibilities to stakeholders-the members of the public who rely upon their libraries for education, research, enrichment, and enjoyment-as well as the library's employees. Succession planning is more than planning for contingencies if the proverbial Mack truck wipes out your management team (heaven forbid!). It means assessing, as the Multnomah County Library, Portland, OR, has done, the number of key positions (not just top management positions but all variety of specialties and areas of expertise) that could become vacant in the near future. And, once the gaps are identified, providing training, coaching, special assignments, and other developmental opportunities so that staff members are ready to move into them when the time comes.

This article focuses on the plan of Bowker Business Research (BBR) to help solicit corporate funding for a library collection of Envirofiche, a BBR microfiche subscription service of major journals, speeches, conference proceedings, symposia papers, reports, and studies covering environmental topics. Blighted by the Exxon Valdez disaster, corporations have been seeking to improve their image with today's green consumer, and BBR believes libraries which are facing increasing budget cuts of specialized information sources provide the perfect outlet for image enhancement. It is a benefit of major corporations to establish a positive presence in the public according to BBR vice president and publisher Ralph C. Ferragamo. Local corporate sponsors donate Envirofiche text from 1971 to the present as well as its print and CD-ROM indexes. BBR contributes fiche cabinets to house the collection. BBR will also conduct training seminars for library personnel. The sponsorship remains somewhat flexible. Elizabeth Wachendorfer, a campus development officer at the University of Houston in Texas expressed her interest in the BBR plan, but would like to have sponsorship of a continuing subscription and computer equipment compatible to the current library system.