NOTE: ** = Required Field
** Name of Group: New Members Round Table Executive Board
** Type of Meeting (Physical or Electronic Board Meeting): Electronic Board Meeting
** Date Submitted:
** Date and Time (When Meeting Called to Order): December 15, 2003, 12:00 p.m. Eastern
** Place: Electronic –
NMRTBD Discussion List
** Name of Chairperson (or Substitute) and Recorder: Beth Kraemer, President and Chrissie Anderson
Peters, Secretary
** List of Attendees: Beth Kraemer, President; Sally Gibson, Vice
President/President-Elect; Joseph Yue,
Past-President; Chrissie Anderson Peters, Secretary; Bill Jenkins, Treasurer;
Ed Armstrong, Treasurer-Elect; Sara Morris, Leadership Development Director;
Marilyn Ochoa, Membership Services Director; Nadine Flores, Networking
Director; Shelly McCoy, Outreach Director; Stacey Shoup, Councilor; Sally Leahey, 3M/NMRT Social Committee; CJ Wong, Booth Committee;
Courtney Young, Diversity Committee; Melody Allison (Governance Committee –
Parliamentarian); Valentine Muyumba (Mentoring
Committee); Jodie Mattos (Student Chapter of the Year
Award Committee); and Kim Wobick (Student &
Student chapter Outreach Committee).
** Statement about the reading and approval/correction of
the Minutes from the Group's Previous Meeting: Past-President Joseph Yue moved to approve the March and June 2003 electronic meeting
minutes with any changes to be presented by the Secretary before the vote.
Chrissie Anderson Peters, the Secretary, had no corrections or amendments;
thus, the motion carried.
** Signature of Recorder/Secretary on Official Copy of Minutes: Chrissie Anderson Peters
** Date and Hour of Adjournment: December 18, 2003, 6:00 p.m. Eastern
** Body of Report:
Block of Rooms for Orlando
While waiting for Board members to sign in to the electronic
meeting, Treasurer Bill Jenkins discussed plans to have an Orlando hotel hold a
block of rooms where New Members Round Table (NMRT) members would have top
priority in booking reservations. This came as a result from responses Jenkins
garnered prior to the e-Board Meeting from members wishing to have more
“official” ALA Conference hotel arrangements for Orlando than has happened in
the past. (As of the meeting, the survey results were located electronically at
http://www.smu.edu/cul/distance/nmrt-survey.html
and were compiled from responses submitted by 156 people (roughly 25% of the
631 people subscribed to NMRT at the time of the survey and approximately 10%
of the total NMRT membership.) Jenkins summarized the results before explaining
the basic principle of the experiment: “When GODORT did this in the past, a
password was distributed to GODORT members. Using this password allowed you to access
the special block of rooms through the ALA hotel reservation website. So it
should be simple, but we would be responsible for distributing the password to
members.” A couple of members asked questions via the NMRTBD discussion list,
but there wasn't much to discuss other than the general ideas behind it as this
will be an experiment to see if such an option would work for members in the
future.
Approval of Slate of Candidates
Laurel Bliss, Nominating Committee Chair, and Past-President
Joseph Yue presented the slate of candidates for the
upcoming Spring elections. [See Supporting Document 1 for the list as it was
distributed to the Board for consideration.] The slate was approved
unanimously, with a comment added by Treasurer Bill Jenkins with the submission
of his approval. His comment was regarding the number of people running for
office in NMRT and how he hoped that the number could be more contained in the
future. Joseph Yue, Past-President, informed those
electronically present that we would be able to discuss the issue more fully
after voting had taken place. Once the slate was approved, Laurel Bliss
responded with an agreement that she felt that it was a large number of people,
particularly for the positions of Director. She countered with two more
questions: “Is there an ideal number of candidates? And how could we achieve
that?” Yue added, “There is no formal mechanism on the book
on weeding out candidates if they meet the requirement established in our
Constitution and Bylaws as well as ALA policies. Each year nomination committee
has to deal with too few or ‘too many' nominees. This year, we articulate to
all pontential [sic] candidates what each office's
responsibilities and opportunities are and open to any questions they may have
with time and resource commitment. I think this is as far as we can do with the
authorities [sic] nomination or past-president have.” Yue
suggested that it might be feasible for an ad hoc committee to investigate
further if there was an interest among the membership to do so. Secretary
Chrissie Anderson Peters responded with a lengthy email, the gist of which was
that leaders in NMRT promote the leadership potential and encourage members to
get involved on a daily basis; to somehow “limit” the number of people who could
run for office seemed in direct opposition to that “get involved” mentality.
She also pointed out that “10 people running for one office only makes up a
tiny fraction of the overall membership” of NMRT (which was roughly 1300
members at the time of the meeting). She added that having more candidates
running might also be one way of getting more people to vote in elections,
citing that only 208 NMRT members voted in last year's election – the mentality
that, if these ten people tell ten friends to vote for them, then 100 more
people would be involved with voting. No further messages were posted regarding
the issue of limiting the number of candidates.
As the time to vote on this matter approached, President Beth Kraemer announced that the agenda item was not ready for presentation and asked that it be removed for this Board meeting. Allowing sufficient time for Board members to object, the agenda item was removed, thereby resulting in no vote or discussion.
President Beth Kraemer explained what the “consent agenda”
procedures entail, as defined by Sturgis. The consent agenda “‘is a portion of
the printed agenda listing matters that are expected to be non-controversial
and on which there are likely to be no questions.'” The members are given time
to read over the list, choosing to remove anything opposed or questioned by any
member from the consent agenda list. If something is removed from the consent
agenda, it is then moved to the regular agenda for discussion and a vote; if no
one chooses to remove anything from the consent agenda, the items pass “‘en
bloc without discussion, saving the time that would be required for individual
votes.'” The two items on the consent agenda, the Booth Charge Change and the
Diversity Charge Change [see Supporting Documents 2 and 3 for more details],
were not called into question or opposed by any members attending the
electronic meeting and were therefore passed at the pre-announced time when no
opposition had been voiced. The consent agenda proposals passed by general
consent. [As a side note, one item was removed from this consent agenda prior
to the actual presentation of the consent agenda. The 3M Social Committee's
Charge was removed by President Kraemer early in the meeting with the following
explanation: Though we have not been able to track down a record of the
approval of the 3M Social charge, considering that this is a years-old
committee, we will operate under the thought that the charge was officially
approved back when the committee was created and does not need to be approved
now.”
With the final agenda item completed, President Kraemer left the floor open for final announcements for the last hour of the electronic Board meeting. With no further discussion, comments, or announcements, Bill Jenkins moved that the meeting adjourn at 6:00 p.m. Eastern.
Supporting Document 1: Slate of Candidates for NMRT Elections in Spring 2004
Proposal for NMRT 2003 Dec board meetingFrom: Laurel Bliss, Chair, Nominating CommiteeDate: 12/8/03 A. Board action requested:Approve slate of candidates for NMRT offices. B. Background:
The
nominating committee has solicited nominations for the offices of Vice
President/President-Elect, Secretary, and 2 Directors.
C.
Rationale:
According
to Article III of the Bylaws, “Following the meeting of the nominating
committee and at the annual midwinter conference, the committee chair will
submit a slate of nominees for office to be approved by the Executive Board.”
Given that the Executive Board is meeting in
December,
the committee is submitting the slate early.
The ballot for candidates is due to ALA by January 30.
D.
Impact on:
NMRT needs to elect new officers on an annual
basis.
Submitting a slate of candidates is a
committee charge.
N/A
4.
Finances (Please indicate amounts here with only brief descriptions. Detailed
descriptions of costs should be supplied in E. Supplemental information below.)
N/A
E.
Supplemental information (e.g. complete text of the report or policy; and for
any proposal that requires additional funding, provide a description and
justification for each item):
Slate of Candidates:
Vice-President/President-Elect (2004-2007)
Bill
Armstrong
Nadine
Flores
Melody
Allison
Secretary (2004-2005)
Cassandra
Osterloh
Amanda
Roberts
Kim
Wobick
Ihsia Hu
Director (2004-2006)
Jodie
Mattos
Jill
Grogg
Laura
Kortz
Aaron
Dobbs
Laurel
Bliss
Gaye Hinchliff
Paul
Kelsey
Tanzi Merritt
Donna
Braquet
Marilyn
Ochoa
Catherine Collins
Supporting Document 2: Booth Committee Charge Change
Proposal
Form for NMRT
From:
Bruce Stoffel and C.J. Wong, Chairpersons, Booth
Committee
Date:
October 17, 2003
********************************************
A.
Board action requested:
The
Booth Committee requests that its official charge, as articulated in the NMRT
Handbook, be modified to delete reference to a traveling booth.
The
existing charge:
The
Booth Committee purpose is to provide an opportunity to promote ALA and NMRT
membership and a location for information exchange. In addition, the Committee
makes arrangements for the NMRT "Traveling Booth" to be exhibited at
state, regional and divisional conferences.
The
proposed charge:
The
Booth Committee's purpose is to provide opportunities to promote ALA and NMRT
membership and to provide a location for information exchange.
B.
Background:
At one
time, in addition to providing for an exhibit at annual conference, the Booth
Committee created a display for use by organizations throughout the year. The
display was shipped to organizations across the country for use at
organizational meetings and exhibits. The purpose of this additional service
presumably was to increase NMRT exposure throughout the year and to
provide
venues other than annual conference for soliciting new NMRT members.
Based
on recollections of current NMRT members, the traveling booth service has not
been actively promoted by the Booth Committee in several years. Nor are there
recollections of a traveling booth being requested by state associations in the
past few years. One NMRT member recalls that the booth was requested by a state
association in 1997 or 1998 but was lost in shipping. Reportedly, a lengthy and
costly effort to replace the lost equipment ensued. With the aid of Quality
books, the display board was eventually replaced. However, since that time, the
board has been shipped to meetings other than annual conference rarely if at
all.
C.
Rationale:
Booth
Committee members have discussed the desirability of reviving the traveling
booth service or deleting the service from the committee mission. Because of
concerns that the experience of 1997-1998 might be repeated and because
requests for use of the service have apparently not been forthcoming in recent
years, the Booth Committee requests that the NMRT Board modify the Booth
Committee mission at this time by deleting reference to the traveling
booth
from the committee charge.
D.
Impact on ...
If approved by the NMRT Board, the
proposal would have no significant impact on the Booth Committee, since the
committee has not received requests for the traveling booth in recent years and
does not anticipate receiving any such requests in the near future. Approval of
the proposal and subsequent modification of the Booth Committee charge would
render the official
committee
charge consistent with recent and current committee practice.
None.
E.
Supplemental information (e.g. complete text of the report or policy; and for
any proposal that requires additional funding, provide a description and
justification for each item):
Not
applicable.
Supporting Document 3: Diversity Committee Charge Change
Proposal Form for NMRT
From (name and office/committee): Courtney
L. Young, Chair, Diversity Committee
Date: November
21, 2003
********************************************
A. Board action requested: The Diversity committee requests that its official charge, as articulated in the NMRT Handbook, be modified to reflect a broader definition of “diversity”.
Current Charge:
The purpose of the committee is to recruit ethnic minorities into membership in the American Library Association and the New Members Round Table and actively involve them in the inner workings and leadership of NMRT.
Proposed Charge Revision:
The purpose of the committee is to facilitate the recruitment of a diverse membership in the American Library Association and the New Members Round Table and actively involve them in the inner workings and leadership of NMRT. This includes women, persons from traditionally underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, persons with disabilities, and gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people. Academic librarians, public librarians, school librarians, corporate librarians, special librarians, library school students, and library supporters also add to the diversity of NMRT.
B.
Background: The current Diversity Committee was created in 1981
as the “Minority Recruitment Committee”, and became a standing NMRT committee
in 1987. In 1996, it was renamed the “Diversity Committee”.
C. Rationale: The 1996 name change for this committee reflects an expansion in popular thought that is not reflected in the current charge. The definition of “diversity” in the new millennium is more inclusive, reflecting other groups who are often discriminated against and marginalized in our society. The explicit addition of these groups to the committee charge will accurately reflect the goals of both the Diversity committee and NMRT. We also recognize that diversity in librarianship is also reflected in the type of libraries we work in, therefore including that all librarians, library students, and library supporters play an important role in the Round Table.
E.
Supplemental information (e.g. complete text of the report or policy; and for any proposal
that requires additional funding, provide a description and justification for
each item):