ILA/ACRL Executive Board Meeting
June 18, 2010, 10:00 AM
Room 310 Cole Library, Cornell College
Minutes
I. Welcome: President Iber convened the meeting at 10:07am.
Present: Brett Cloyd, Dan Boice, Ryan Gjerde, Kate Hess, Natalie Hutchinson, Mary Iber, Kathy Magarrell, Beth McMahon, James O’Gorman, Kathy Parsons, Ericka Raber, Leslie Ross, Jen Rouse, Sara Scheib, and Kari Weaver,. Not present: Deb Seiffert.
II. Approval of Executive Board minutes from April 22, 2010 – approved as presented.
III. Treasurer’s Report
Balance 1/1/10 | | 3,269.97 |
Dues | | 675.00 |
Spring Meeting/other | 6,096.37 |
Total available funds | | 10,041.34 |
Less expenses to date | 4,792.85 |
Balance in account | | 5,248.49 |
IV. Reports
A. Committees
i. Awards: Cloyd presented a proposal for a $200 scholarship to attend a conference outside of Iowa. The board offered suggestions for adding “regional” language to allow attendance at regional in addition to national events. Participation may be virtual or in person at a national conference related to libraries. The award would be given up to 2 per year, $200 each. The source of funds would be ILA/ACRL membership dues and existing funds. Nominations will be due by September 15. An official application form must be used. The form will be available on the ILA/ACRL website. A rubric will be developed to rate applications. The award will be for ILA/ACRL members who have been in Iowa for three or more years. The Awards Committee will meet to select up to two recipients. The winners will be contacted by the committee within 3 days of the selection, either by phone or email.
Winners will be asked to report on the conference they attend at the next ILA/ACRL Business meeting. Awards will not be offered more than once every 5 years per individual. Librarians should have been working in the field for a minimum of 3 year years. Receipts will be re-imbursed by the ILA office.
There was discussion for how it would be best for awardees to share their experiences, and there was agreement that an article in the Newsletter was good idea. The committee just sent out nomination information for fall conference scholarship. The Awards committee will next consult with Ellen Neuhaus and ILA.
ii. Directory: Iber read from Deb Seiffert’s email. Sara Schieb set up Google for the Directory Committee to plot the location, address and hotlink to either the institution's webpage or if they don't have one then to ILA/ACRL's Directory information listed for them. Seiffert has invited all the Directory Members to the map so they may make their additions. This project is in its early stages, this so only a few institutions are listed right now.
iii. Electronic Communications: Scheib reported that Mara Egherman put together ILA/ACRL Facebook (FB) page to share conference photos, videos, etc. As a chapter of ALA’s ACRL, we should be mindful of ILA social networking policy; Scheib will contact admin for ILA site and ACRL national. There was discussion of the function of the FB page (push content vs. forum for discussion). The Board supported the committee’s decision to maintain the FB page.
ILA/ACRL Spring Conference video recordings: 5 videos got lost by Kirkwood AV Services; read-only files were created, so they are not easily editable; content not yet up on site. This has been a good learning experience. Scheib will continue to work on posting Barbara Fister’s presentation. Discussion of what to do next year focused on making the process more manageable. Maybe try one track or just one session with two cameras?
iv. Fall Program: Boice reported that Jeannette Woodward will be a pre-conference speaker on the topic customer-driven libraries. Fred Gertler, who was unable to attend the Fall 2009 ILA Conference, is also scheduled to present at a concurrent session, as is Matt Goldner from OCLC.
v. Membership: Magarrell reported that she will give 2010 membership list to Sara Scheib to post to the site. One hundred thirty-four members by May (lost 49; gained 19 new members—total loss of 33). Magarrell will talk more with committee about increasing membership. Magarrell asked Board members to send one thing they get out of ILA/ACRL membership.
vi. Newsletter: Ross reported that the committee just published Jun 2010 newsletter which included a lot of session reviews. Ross praised her committee. Summer issue will include library news, letter from Pres; deadline is July 15. Two more newsletters after that. It was suggested that the newsletters could be pushed out to more places such as FB.
vii. Nominating: Gjerde sent reminder/call for volunteers to ILA/ACRL listserv. There is a need for more Spring Conference planning members, and it’s desirable to get a chair in place before July; the Chair will need to be approved by Exec. Board.
viii. Spring Conference: McMahon reported that there were generally very positive comments about the Spring Conference: good venue, informative sessions. There were 116 attendees, with a loss of ~$710.18 or $741.55. McMahon praised conference planning committee. There are new challenges for reconciliation of the finances due to the multiple payment processes involved in online registration implemented this year. For example, AmExpress takes its fees off top. This has been a learning experience for the committee. Cost containment issues prompted McMahon to suggest a longer term for chair for continuing oversight; maybe 3-year understanding/commitment 1st yr (learning), 2nd yr (point person), 3rd year (advisory role). There was some discussion that this is the desired practice.
B. Ad hoc Committees
i. Mentoring: Rouse reported that just a couple of people have contacted them with interest in the Mentoring Program. The application deadline has been extended to Aug. 30. Decisions (matching) will be made by Sept. 30, so that matched pairs will be able to have their initial meeting at the fall conference.
ii. Scholarly Communications: Hess reported that the committee will conduct a membership needs’ assessment in the fall to determine what the role of ACRL should be.
C. Representatives
i. ACRL Government Relations Representative: O’Gorman reported on the Federal Research Public Assess Act in the House of Representatives. House Bill 5037, similar to Senate bill S. 1372 “…requires federal agencies and departments with…research budgets of over $100 million to make available via the Internet the final articles resulting from research funded by U.S. taxpayers (the public) no later than six months after publication in a peer-reviewed journal.” Passage of this bill is ACRL’s number one legislative priority.
ii. ACRL Chapters Council Representative: Parsons had nothing new to report. She will be attending the Chapters Council Meeting at ALA, along with Iber and will report on our chapter’s progress as well as gain ideas to bring back.
V. Other Business
A. Planning for implementation of the Strategic Plan we submitted to ILA (appendix A)
The Board spent about ½ hour discussing priorities in relation the 3-year strategic planning goals we created as a board earlier this year. Each board member shared their top priorities and reasons for their importance. Some of the goals are currently being addressed; others need more fundamental planning before implementation. The goals feed into 3 major categories: Membership, Technology, and Outreach. Outreach covered administrator, faculty and public, school librarians, and scholarly communication. Members signed up to work in one or more of the outreach areas. Iber will post shared documents on each of the major categories where everyone can post their ideas and suggestions.
By-Laws changes – Iber mentioned that if any by-laws changes are to be requested this year, that needs to get to ILA soon, so ILA can vote and proper advanced notification can be made to ACRL Members. There were no known upcoming changes.
The meeting was adjourned at 12:15 p.m.
Next meeting: Friday, Sept 10, 2010 at Cornell College.
Appendix A - submitted to ILA Strategic Planning Committee - March 1, 2010
Where do we as a committee/subdivision want to be in three years?
ACRL would like to
-
- increase our membership.
- make special efforts to recruit new librarians to join and participate as well as reaching out to academic librarians who are members of ILA, but not ACRL.
- be more efficient in our work.
- use technology to improve our processes as well as in our communication to members.
- help administrators understand the importance and value of librarians' service to state organizations as a worthwhile outreach activity that benefits state-wide efforts.
- develop and begin to implement a plan to educate faculty and the public about the work of librarians and the value of their contributions to their institutions through sharing research and experience
- learn and share information about scholarly communication to the faculty, and to fellow librarians (both practical applications such as addendum to publishing contracts, and the intricacies of trends such as open access and their relationship to potential changes in tenure and in the open sharing of ideas)
- work more with school librarians: building bridges between school and academic librarians, especially in understanding what students in high school are learning, and what colleges are expecting them to know. Can we find ways to make the transition more productive for the students? Develop partnership with AASL to consider the AASL Standards for the 21st century learner and the ACRL Information Literacy Standards and find some ways to navigate between the two.
- make significant improvements to the ILA/ACRL website, including establishing clear guidelines for responsibilities, timelines, and public relations.
How to tackle? Maybe groups to handle each #, suggestions for responding… Some of the above already have committees.
2. How will we know when we get there?
- Monitor the numbers in membership, attendance at sponsored events, participation in committees, etc.
- Assess our plans for increasing advocacy or communication; then observe the results of such communications. Is there any softening of attitude, changes in policy? (these might take longer than 3 years to take place)
- Observe changes in the websites, in communication and clarity of responsibility
3. What do we have to do to get there?
- think about what our members need
- evaluate the effectiveness of the programs we have in place to see if they meet the perceived needs
- communicate to bring together knowledge and resources we share to help one another
- establish a timeline for implementing these ideas
- have various already established committees take on the appropriate projects, and establish interest groups, committees, etc. to work on ideas which don’t currently have a proper channel
- see what’s being done in other state ACRL orgs
