Minutes of meeting on January 20, 1996

Author: Elizabeth Brown <elizabeth.brown@ibid.library.gatech.edu> at Internet

Date: 6/19/96 4:47 PM

Priority: Normal.

TO: Suzanne Byron at Library

TO: LSILL@Vh&A.CC.ND.EDU at INTERNET

TO: district@penn.com, at INTERNET

TO: LIBMJH@langate, gsu.edu at INTERNET

TO: msamson@cms.cc.wayne.edu at INTERNET

TO: kimberley robles@csufresno.edu at INTERNET

TO: bwick@&&e.cudenver.edu at INTERNET

TO: j-mamer@amu.edu at INTERNET

Subject: NMIRT# 1

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New Members Round Table

Minutes of the Meeting Held Saturday, January 20, 1996.

Members present:

Liz Brown, Suzanne Byron, Karen Cook, Betsy Fordon, Laura Galvan-Estrada, Carol Gill Marilynn Green, Judy Harnbrick, NMRT Liaison, David Harlan, Pat Henderson, Paula Hering, Dora Ho, Mary Jo Howard, Carol Kern, Patricia Klob, Jon Marner, Eileen Oliver, Tina Oswald (Cognotes), Joan Reyes, Ronald Russ, Michael Samson, Laura Sill, Rita Smith, Bob Wick, Ann Williams, Elaine Yontz

Elaine called the meeting to order at 830 a.m. and welcomed everyone present. She outlined the new meeting format and noted that she and Laura would need feedback. Since not all committee reports were universally distributed this time, members were to contact Elaine for copies.

Sue Byron made a MOTION to adopt the agenda, and Betsy seconded. The motion PASSED.

Elaine encouraged participation in the discussion but explained that only the elected officers could vote.

By-Laws/Governance Committee - Laura Sill

Laura distributed a draft for a handbook entry for the Governance Committee that she had been charged to write. She explained that she had combined Bylaws and Committee on Governance charges. Laura thought that combining the Governance and Resources Committees would create too unwieldy a committee.

Laura explained that the Resources Committee would review the budget, serve in a supportive role for the Treasurer, and look at the big picture of NMRT. Rather than create Ad-Hoc committees, other committees would fall under Resources. Laura also explained that Resources would evaluate issues such as the MACE overload, Governance would monitor how well NMRT met its goals;

Resources would evaluate how well NMRT used its resources.

Carol Kern was concerned that volunteers, possibly new members, would be dealing with the budget. She suggested that the officers could actually be a budget committee. Laura countered that Resources would be advisory in nature and would mainly make sure the appropriate discussion took place.

Ann Williams added that we had more committees than we needed and discouraged the idea of adding a Budget and Finance Committee. Betsy wondered if the Board should wait until it discussed the possible restructuring of NMRT, but Elaine explained that the proposed restructuring was more concerned with rearranging existing committees.

After much discussion, Betsy MOVED that the group table this matter until Monday. The MOTION passed.

Affiliates Director's Report - Jonathan Mamer

Jonathan reported briefly that the Affiliates Program was faring well.

Vice-President's Report - Laura Sill

Laura reported that the Vice-Presidential activities had been “normal.” She was currently dealing with committee interest forms. She announced a Conference Planning meeting on Sunday that would focus on the ALA conferences in Washington, DC and San Francisco.

Membership was up 10.4% from last year. Personal contact has been very important, and Elaine encouraged everyone to keep it up.

Proposed Restructuring of NMRT - Laura Sill

Elaine praised Laura's “elegant” restructuring proposal. Laura reported that no voting was intended, just discussion.

Elaine noted that the Nominating Committee would do the committee assignments. Much discussion ensued as to exactly how the nominating committee would do this. With term appointments, a new nominating committee would come in halfway through the process and would be working on nominations, but the appointment process lasted the whole year.

Betsy made a MOTION to table the discussion about the role of the Nominating

“Committee in making appointments until the Monday Board meeting. The MOTION was seconded and PASSED.

Secretary‘s Report - Liz Brown

Liz reported that she had distributed the minutes that she had taken at the Board Orientation at Annual, along with the minutes that Angela Jones had taken. She noted that NMRT had a new Archivist, JoAnn Jacoby. She commended the Handbook Chair, Lani Teshima-Miller, for her work on distributing the new Handbook. All committees' chairs and officers should have received them.

Treasurer's Report - Mary Jo Howard

Mary Jo Howard reported that the draft distributed at the meeting was not quite up to date; it would be a little different by the time it was submitted to COPES

The group noted various changes to e proposed budget. After discussion of how NMRT could not get vendor support for the Leadership meeting, Betsy MOVED that the budget for coffee and tea at the leadership breakfast be increased by $150 to $175; Laura seconded. The MOTION passed.

Elaine, Laura, Judy, and Mary Jo were to meet afterwards to discuss the budget. Betsy, therefore, moved to table approval of the budget. Laura seconded, and the motion PASSED.

Immediate Past President's Report - Betsy Fordon

Betsy noted that she had a new address. She distributed the Nominating Committee report on behalf of Chair Joanna Burkhardt and presented the 1997 slate. The nominees were: Suzanne Byron, Vice-President/President elect (running unopposed); Carol Kern, Treasurer (running unopposed); Nancy George and Antoinette Nelson, Secretary; Ann Gordon, Mary Lang, Michael Samson, and Paula Hexing, Directors. Nominees for petition candidates for Council included John Culshaw, Joan Reyes, and Joanna Burkhardt.

Betsy then MOVED to adopt the slate as proposed by the Nominating committee. Bob seconded. The MOTION passed.

Strategies for Electing NMRT Members to Council

The group had a fruitful discussion strategies for getting NMRT members elected to Council. Only about 2500 votes were required for election to Council; there were 900 members of NMRT. Electing our nominees to Council was quite possible with a little extra effort. Ideas discussed included a separate mailing, Footnotes, the post-conference COGNOTES, Library school alumni newsletters, state associations, the Affiliates program, PLA (the last week of March), and the candidates' biographies on the NMRT Web page, NMRT members should “get the word out” t in their institutions, and the candidates themselves should take initiative and do some campaigning.

Mary Jo noted that this year was especially crucial for getting NMRT members elected to council; extra effort or expense would be well justified. The main issue in front of the group, then, was whether to have the special mailing, which was estimated to cost $330, or to go with a Footnotes reminder. Bob asked if moving up the Footnotes deadline were possible, and Rita suggested Feb.20 at the earliest.

Rather than focusing on the voting deadline, members present decided to focus instead on when the ballots would be sent out. Judy Hambrick informed the group that ballots would go out on April 3 first-class. The group agreed to coordinate our publicity effort with that date, since NMRT wanted to catch people when they first received their ballots. Having Footnotes out by then would not be possible, so a special mailing would probably be justified. The money for a special mailing could come out of the Footnotes budget, and money for copying could be done at

people's institutions.

Betsy made a MOTION that the NMRT President send out a special mailing for ALA Council candidates from NMRT and the other Roundtables, and that $500 to be allocated from the Footnotes budget. Bob seconded. The motion PASSED.

Laura suggested sending a letter to each Roundtable head, asking for the Roundtables' support of our nominees and vice versa. Elaine would call on the Nominating Committees and Publicity Committees for help.

Footnotes

The next Footnotes issues would be a conference issue. The deadline was to be March 1 .

Publicity and Public Relations Director - Bob Wick

Bob reported that he had mainly been adjusting to his new position He noted that three of his committees had issues, which were on the Agenda separately.

The Fate of the Video

Bob wondered if producing an up-to-date video was viable, since we had had fewer requests for it every year. Library schools had been the biggest users, but there was not a big market now. The video was outdated and riddled with errors. NMRT should discuss with Linda Golian (of the Library School Outreach Committee) the need for the video. Joan suggested making any new video into a (much shorter) quick time movie to put on our Web page. Bob noted that the

Video consisted of many stills, which would indeed transfer to the Web easily. Library school presentations, then, could be done from our Web page. In the meantime, Marilynn would bring the video to annual. One idea was to show the video at the social, in a corner, for historic and entertainment interest.

Flyers

Marilynn explained that two brochures were presently being distributed: the NMRT Membership Application Brochure and the NMRT Committee Brochure. Each month Marilynn received a list of new NMIZT members, to whom she sent the Committee flyer (Bob clarified that the membership brochure would not go to members). The Membership flyer went to such groups as the Local Arrangements and Library School Outreach Committees.

Members present expressed the need for outreach to all new members of ALA. The list of new members who joined ALA every month was very large. Many new members of ALA were not aware of NMRT, but the cost of printing and mailing to all new members would be at least a thousand dollars per month, according to Bob (around 300 new members a month). Getting the mailing labels from ALA would be no problem, however, Presently, ALA sent out quite a bit of NMRT information when people requested basic information, Judy reported.

The group talked about using listservs and the Web Page for outreach purposes, since those methods did not cost anything.

Marilynn mentioned the idea, originally put forth by Linda Golian, of producing the “dot” stickers that say “Ask Me About NMRT.” There was a MOTION to approve the idea of these stickers in concept, to have Marilynn research the cost, and to notify the Board for a cyberspace vote around March 1 so the dots could be prepared by Annual, The motion PASSED.

Publicity Committee - Joan Reyes

The discussion next turned to plans to revive the Publicity committee. Joan Reyes reported that she wanted to transfer the publicity function from individual committee chairs to the Publicity Committee. Joan outlined plans for a “canned” publicity announcement that would be a sort of composite to go out on lists. She wanted to point people to the Publicity committee. Laura Sill, suggested that NMRT look at the handbook entry to make sure the revised publicity function was in there so committee chairs would not mistakenly do publicity on their own.

Joan would still have a traditional print flyer, but people receiving e-mail could use word of mouth to spread the word. Many institutions did not have e-mail at all, however. Elaine noted the importance of both print and electronic publicity.

Joan also wanted the Web page to go to the chair of the Publicity Committee. The NMRT Web page was out of date and housed on a server to which NMRT did not have access; the ALA page did not even have a link to it. Judy Hambrick noted that ALA “had Netscape in the building” and would now have control over its Web pages rather than the University of Illinois at Chicago. She noted that NMRT would be able to send Web page material to Rob Carlson, who would do everything, including html mark-up.

In terms of Web page submissions, Ann Williams noted that it was important to use the Publicity chair as a gateway, not to have different committees sending Rob Carlson submissions. Karen Cook added that it was important not to overwhelm the Publicity committee, and Ann Williams stressed the need for pilot testing. Laura noted that internal communication was an important issue that the Resources Committee should review.

Laura made a MOTION that all NMRT publicity be filtered through the Publicity Committee; Betsy second. The motion PASSED.

Internet Ad Hoc Committee - Ann Thornton

Ann Thornton congratulated Priscilla Klob on a well-maintained MAC page. She noted that she had heard many ideas during the meeting about using the Web, but she wondered who was going to mark up those pages and get them up in a timely fashion. Disk space was a very important issue---at many institutions disk space was tightly controlled. Time-frame questions were also important. She noted that she would like to talk with Rob Carlson at some point- NMRT might want to look at fading another site, in the meantime, while waiting for ALA to finish implementing its new system. Priscilla had had access to her server, which was very necessary. Judy agreed that looking for another interim site would be a good idea. Thus, Ann would try to find a new site and someone active in NMRT to take it over.

Other ideas included having library schools add links to our page. Joan mentioned that we could take advantage of interactivity, such as interactive forms. The source could be copied from the inactive page on the UCLA library school server. Joan mentioned that she had her own server on her terminal; Joan and Ann would be in close contact about the outcome of the Web page.