NMRT Board Member Final Report

1. Office Name: Director of Leadership Development

2. Office Term : 2004-2005

3. Discuss/summarize your involvement with your committees this year:

My involvement with the Shirley Olofson Committee, 3M/NMRT Grant Committee, President's Program Committee, and Leadership Development Committee rested mainly with checking in with each committee to see if they had any questions during the year as to what they need to be doing to make their committee work a success. The award committees chose their recipients and are now actively proposing new criteria/priorities for the awards that will be discussed with the board. My initial involvement with the President's Program Committee was minimal because much of their work is done working with the NMRT President on her theme, but as time went on and their chair had unforeseen circumstances happening, I became more involved to support the co-chair in the logistics of setting up the conference program. The Leadership Development committee is also one where I haven't had much dialogue. Because the program is no longer being sponsored by a vendor, we looked at what the program could be and what the committee could do with the budget that they were given.

4. Based on your year's experience in this office, what future directions do you see your office or NMRT needing to take this year or the following year?

Sally Gibson has done a great job in holding a discussion about reorganizing NMRT. I put much of my own input into that discussion and believe the future direction that this office and NMRT needs to take will come out of that reorganization. I also still see NMRT becoming more involved with other ALA divisions to help them promote programs to new members and encourage new members to get involved with these divisions.

5. What tips or hints do you have that might help your successor carry out the duties of this office?

Keep a separate e-mail folder for each committee's e-mail that you are copied on to keep track of where they are in their committee work. If you do not hear from a committee for quite awhile, check in with the chair to make sure he/she has no questions for you and that things are on target for the year.

6. Please address the role of the board member as coordinator. For example, with student outreach split among three committees reporting to three directors, somebody will need to take the initiative to make sure things are going smoothly. Another example would be projects between membership, alumni, and student outreach which need to be coordinated. How might activities such as this be handled by board members efficiently and smoothly? Your thoughts here will be most helpful for future boards.

I think with the new organization of which director each committee will be supervised by, this will be less of an issue. Committee chairs seem to do just fine with talking to other chairs about projects that need to be coordinated. As long as both directors have knowledge of what is going on with their committees, projects like this seem to run smoothly. Getting the contact information for which person a committee chair needs to talk to from another committee seems to be the most helpful.

7. Date of report: May 27, 2005

8. Submitted by: Shelly McCoy