NOTE:
** = Required Field
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Name of Group:
New Members Round Table Executive Board
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Type of Meeting (Physical or Electronic Board Meeting): Physical
Board Meeting
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Date Submitted:
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Date and Time (When Meeting Called to Order):
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Place: Orlando, Florida, Embassy Suites –
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Name of Chairperson (or Substitute) and Recorder: Beth Kraemer, President,
and Chrissie Anderson Peters, Secretary
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List of Attendees: Beth Kraemer, President; Sally Gibson,
Vice-President/ President-Elect; Joseph Yue, Past-President; Chrissie Anderson
Peters, Secretary; Bill Jenkins, Treasurer; Marilyn Ochoa, Membership Services
Director; Nadine Flores, Networking Director; Shelly McCoy, Outreach Director; Melody
Allison, Parliamentarian; Laura Kortz, 3M/NMRT Professional Development Grant
Committee; and Kim Sanders, ALA.
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Statement about the reading and approval/correction of the Minutes from the
Group's Previous Meeting: Minutes from the three previous Board Meetings (e-Board
Meeting on 12/15/2003, Midwinter Meeting in San Diego on 01/10/2004; and e-Board
Meeting on 02/05/2004), had been approved at the e-Board Meeting held on June
15, 2004. The Minutes from the June 15 Board Meeting had not yet been prepared
at the time of this meeting so there were no Minutes to approve at the Board Meeting
at Annual Conference in Orlando.
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Signature of Recorder/Secretary on Official Copy of Minutes: Chrissie Anderson Peters
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Hour of Adjournment: Approximately
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Body of Report:
Call
to Order:
President Kraemer called the
meeting to order at
Extension
of Term for Treasurer:
Due to the resignation of the
Treasurer-Elect (Ed Armstrong), current Treasurer, Bill Jenkins, has been
requested to remain on as Treasurer for one more year, in order to train the newly
elected Treasurer-Elect, Catherine Collins, to assume the responsibilities of
the office at the end of Annual Conference in
NMRT ALA Hotel Project Follow-Up Report:
Bill Jenkins reported on what
had transpired since the e-Board Meeting where he introduced the idea of NMRT
booking a block of rooms in an
Extension
of Database Ad Hoc Committee:
The first item under the heading of new business was
a proposal to extend the Database Ad Hoc Committee. (See attachment 1 at the
end of this set of Minutes.) Kraemer explained the purpose, background, and
functionality of the Volunteer Database and commented that she would like to
see it moved from the LSU server (where the current Committee Chair, Bill
Armstrong, works) to
Discussion
of Organizational Review:
During the upcoming committee year, the incoming
President, Sally Gibson, will conduct an Organizational Review. Gibson informed
the board, “Bill Armstrong has agreed to chair the ad hoc committee,” and added
that Catherine Collins and Laurel Bliss will serve as the NMRT Board
Representatives. Outgoing Web Committee Chair, Debby Andreadis, “has agreed to
serve as a committee member” and Gibson would like to appoint one or two
additional active NMRT members. The Organizational Review will be conducted for
the purpose of answering three questions: 1) Are all the committees still
necessary; 2) Does every committee have a purpose; and 3) Does the current
committee structure or types of committees meet the needs of NMRT members.
According to the handout distributed by Gibson at the meeting, “The committee
will just look at what has occurred in recent memory and where do we want NMRT
to go.”
The handout also indicated, “In order for the review
to be useful each committee charge will need to be examined and determined if
the committee is still accomplishing that charge.” Committee overlap will also
be examined, as well as effective committee sizes. “The findings will be
presented to the Board at Midwinter. Depending on the results the Board will
determine the course of action” to be taken from there. The goal is for the
review to be finished by Midwinter in order to give the Board the opportunity
to make decisions based on the OR Committee's findings and suggestions. Gibson
concluded, “Then any changes can be implemented before the committee
appointments for 2005-2006 begin.”
Discussion
of the Solicitation and Use of Door Prizes in NMRT Committees:
The discussion opened by explaining to those in attendance that the Exhibitor Contract and Relations Committee (ECRC) and the Local Arrangements Committee are supposed to be in charge of soliciting and obtaining donations from local businesses for conference event “door prizes.” Sometimes, however, committees have not used these two groups for these purposes. Furthermore, Bill Jenkins reported, the Orientation Committee has resorted to spending $100 out of its budget on gift certificates for the locale of the Midwinter Conference instead of working through either/both of the committees that exist for this purpose in NMRT. At this point in the discussion, it was referenced that all “give-aways” were being considered as “door prizes.” Chrissie Anderson Peters, a former Booth Co-Chair and current Secretary spoke up to indicate that the Booth Committee's gift baskets do not take money from NMRT in any way, but are collected items from various committee members' institutions (or, in the case of the Orlando conference, from institutions where any interested NMRT member worked and would send donated items from). Shelly McCoy, the current Outreach Director and the Supervising Board Member for Booth, echoed this fact and it was therefore decided that the Booth Committee give-aways would be excluded from the remainder of the discussion, but also that it should be put into writing that the Booth Committee will not ask for donations for their gift baskets from the Local Arrangements Committee.
Basically, Jenkins and others wondered if it is
really necessary to offer door prizes at events like Orientations and
the Midwinter Social since there is an overall, greater “purpose” to these
sorts of events. All in attendance agreed and the issue will be examined more
closely in the upcoming Organizational Review and a report will be prepared
with suggestions guiding when and where to request donations. All agreed that
budget money should not be utilized for gift certificates, however.
Discussion
of the Membership Promotion and relations Committee:
Shelly McCoy, who supervised
the MPR this year as Outreach Director, addressed the need for NMRT to
prioritize “who [this committee] needs to focus on, what their goals should be,”
etc. Basically, McCoy related that the lack of focus on the purpose of this
committee makes it very difficult to see projects completed in any given
committee year and that some of the projects seem better suited for other NMRT
committees.
In the context of the
discussion, those Board Members in attendance responded that they felt the
first part of “who to focus on” should include current NMRT members; secondly,
they felt like the committee should attempt
to include those who are current members of ALA of five years or less, but are
not currently members of NMRT, within that focus. Another point was to concentrate
on members as students, rather than as recent graduates. It was suggested that
it might be more appropriate for the Publicity Committee to work on developing a
new NMRT brochure, a project that has been in the works for several years, yet
never seems to see completion during any one committee year and is begun anew
the next year. Then it seemed to make more sense for the MPR to continue on the
content of the publication and ask Publicity to work on the layout – which, in
turn, led to a discussion of whether or not someone at
Discussion
on NMRT Membership/Alumni Recruitment Proposal:
Yue approached the Board pertaining to ideas for creating
a separate category of NMRT membership, one for those who have reached their
limit of ten years as active members (or, in some cases, may have moved on to
become more active in other ALA units after a few years of activity with NMRT),
that would be considered “NMRT Alumni.” Yue explained that this would be beneficial
to NMRT in several ways, including revenue diversity ($10 per person who joins
as an Alumni Member), increased opportunities for regular NMRT members to
network and make contacts with NMRT Alumni who are active in other units and
also in hiring positions in their own work environments, and increased
availability for regular members to pair up with mentors (at conference and
otherwise). Kim Sanders explained that, to include such a distinction on
membership applications is not up to her (and ultimately, not even up to NMRT),
but to ALA, and that there may be a “nominal fee” involved with making such a
change, but that the cost is still unknown at this time. Sanders noted that
some divisions do this on occasion and that it probably would not be a problem,
but that it may take time to have the templates changed to include another
level of membership. Jenkins inserted that Gerald Hodges, at
Other
Business:
Incoming President, Sally Gibson, presented outgoing
President, Beth Kraemer, with a lovely clock to help give her “more time” in
the coming year than she had in the past year. Kraemer accepted it with visible
gratitude and thanked everyone for a wonderful year, adding with a laugh,
however, that she would not advise anyone to have twins during their
Presidential term.
Secretary Peters had one further point for the Board to
consider going into the new committee year, based on some questions she had
received in talking with people who stopped by the NMRT Booth in the Exhibits
Hall on opening morning. With the new level of membership recently voted into
existence by
Adjournment:
With nothing further to add or discuss, outgoing
President Kraemer presented the gavel to incoming President, Sally Gibson, and
the ALA Annual Conference Board Meeting was adjourned at approximately 12:20
p.m., in order to provide time for a quick break between that meeting and the
NMRT New Board Orientation that followed at 12:30 p.m. in the same room.
Attachment
1 – Proposal to Extend Database Ad Hoc
Committee
From (name and office/committee): Database ad hoc
Committee
Date:
********************************************
A. Board
action requested: extend ad hoc committee for another year
B. Background:
The
Database ad hoc committee was created in the 2003-04 term to redesign the
online volunteer database used by the incoming NMRT President to organize
volunteers into committee appointments.
C. Rationale: The ad hoc
committee was not able to fully complete the conversion to the new database
this year and would like to extend their appointment in order to finish the
project.
·
NMRT survives due to its volunteers; this database
is necessary to organize those volunteers.
·