American Library Association

New Members Round Table

1994/95 Executive Board and New Board Orientation

Monday, June 27, 1994

The ALA/NMRT Executive Board Meeting was called to order at 2:00 p.m. by President Joanna Burkhardt. The following members were present:

Kathy Kie, Suzanne Byron, Maria Laude, Karen Cook, Jeffrey Levy, Elaine Yontz, Laura Sill, Jenifer Abramson, Betsy Fordon, Nancy Cummings, Dora Ho, Michael Samson, Cathy Hartman, Donna Hogan, Angela Jones, Ann Snoeybos, Judy Hambrick, Mary Jo Howard, Jimmie Lundgren, Jo Ann Lahmon, Joan A. Reyes, Susan Benjamin, Elizabeth Brown, Bea McKay, Joanna M. Burkhardt,

Paula Hering, Darlene Nichols, Barbara Wachle, Marilyn Green, Janet Lynch Ford, Kay Castle, Michael Coleman, John Culshaw, Mark Ferguson.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Joanna had no announcements.

UNFINISHED BUSINESS

Style Manual

Joanna reported on a proposal for a style manual that Richard Dickey had been working on and that NMRT would be responsible for producing. Richard had submitted a detailed outline to ALA, and ALA is interested in working with it. Richard is no longer working on it and Joanna asked if we want to go forward with it and if anybody was interested in working with it. Joanna opened the floor for discussion. There was some discussion on whether there was a draft copy of the manual, but apparently there is not a draft. The matter was deferred until Midwinter.

Scholarship Committee report

Paula Hering reported that the winner of the EBSCO scholarship award was Patricia Currey, with the runner-up being Patricia Dougherty. Both have been notified, and Patricia Currey has already sent in her acceptance form and the money has been sent to Queen's College, where she is attending school. The new

scholarship applications will hopefully be ready soon, but were not ready in time for them to be in the NMRT booth in Miami.

NEW BUSINESS

ALA Self Study Committee

Elaine Yontz went to the hearing on the concept paper and document produced by the ALA self study committee. This committee is an effort to address the concerns of members about ALA and its direction; there are concerns that ALA is too big, too confusing, and there is too much duplication of effort. This committee wants

input from members; there will be a synopsis available of the report at the Council Meeting on Tues., June 28, in the Convention Center. There will be a page at the end of the report which members can use to send in comments and suggestions.

There was a question on whether there was an effort to get rid of the round tables; Elaine replied that there was not. However, in some places in the document there is no mention of round tables; but Elaine reported that this was merely an oversight and there will be an effort to include the term "round tables" throughout

the document. Elaine said that NMRT was already doing a lot of the things that the document talked about in a broad sense, such as training people to be successful members of ALA and to look at ALA as a broad organization rather than little boxes.

Elaine reported that there has been talk about putting a mechanism in place to review committees, round tables, and divisions every so many years to see if they are still needed. Three years has been suggested, but some think is this time

period is too short.

Elaine encouraged everyone to look at the document and respond. Joanna noted that copies will be sent to (executive board members?) because the report would be discussed at Midwinter. Elaine replied that the mail-in sheets need to be sent in by October because the committee will be meeting again then.

There was no other no or old business at this time. Joanna then thanked the outgoing committee chairs, executive board members and Jenifer for their help and support. The gavel (and microphone!) were then passed to Betsy Fordon, the incoming NMRT president. At this time, the new chairs, officers, and directors

introduced themselves. Orientation packets were then distributed.

Visit from Kay Castle

Kay Castle from ALA came to get input on ALA conference arrangements.

Philadelphia should be much better to get around in than Miami because most conference hotels will be close to the convention center and everything won't be so spread out. If ALA had stayed with Cincinnati, there would have been problems with having enough hotel rooms close to the convention center; this was one of the reasons ALA pulled out of Cincinnati.

Kay is chairing an ALA committee which is looking at both Annual and Midwinter conferences and making recommendations on how they might be improved. They will be looking at scheduling, how to use technology better at conferences, etc. She wanted to talk to NMRT members to get input on how to improve conferences.

Many suggestions and concerns were brought up. Some of these include concerns over shuttle bus service and the need for conference goers to know more about local transportation alternatives. Betsy asked if ALA had finally come up with a

policy about moving conference sites once they had been chosen; Kay replied that there was not a policy currently in place.

Kay said that ALA has decided not to go to New York City because of the high cost of hotels there, but she doesn't agree with that decision.

Other suggestions included having someone to direct people at the shuttle bus pick-up point, having a place where people could meet to find someone else to share a cab with.

Kay then asked about scheduling and the way conferences were set up. She said they were looking into setting up a database with all the meetings in it that could be sorted to find out if there were conflicting meetings. She had also thought of handing out sheets with certain "tracks" on it- (such as collection development) so you could see all meetings and programs on that subject. One suggestion was to divide the tracks by public/academic/special libraries.

Betsy also mentioned that ALA seemed to be getting bigger and there were more meetings than there used to be, and it was getting impossible to do everything that you wanted to do. Kay replied that one purpose for the ALA self-study was to eliminate committees that didn't have a real purpose anymore, so that the

number of meetings could be cut down.

There was also a problem in Miami with the schedulers taking people too literally when they asked for a room that could seat so many people. Kay thought many who were asking for meeting rooms would be willing to negotiate for a smaller room if it meant they could have stayed in Miami Beach instead of having

their meeting in Miami.

Kay also asked about the amount of time set aside for programs. Were two or three hour blocks sufficient, did people want longer or shorter meetings? There was some concern over the time scheduled for the general membership meetings as well as meetings that combined programs with membership meetings.

One person asked if any consideration had been given to picking two or three conference sites that had the best facilities to handle the conference and just sticking with those sites for all conferences. Kay replied that they were already doing that to some extent; ALA basically was now confined to only four or five

cities. Another suggestion was the possibility of holding ALA in Canada; however, there would be many problems with this because of currency exchange, border crossing, etc.

Kay also asked about suggestions on the better use of technology. Some suggestions were: access to e-mail in the conference hotels; electronic information centers; posting the ALA schedule to the ALA gopher. Other suggestions included list of children's activities in the conference cities and evening child care.

Kay then thanked everyone for their suggestions.

Betsy then introduced Judy Hambrick, the NMRT liaison, and encouraged everyone to contact her if you have any questions or need any help.

Social Committee report

Carol Kem reported on the social that was held several days before. The social brought in $2510. The actual attendance was 185. The ticket sales numbered 251, and 313 actual tickets were distributed (includes 62 complimentary tickets).

There were several minor problems. With the late assignment of location, there was a problem with having enough time to print tickets. Several people at the Social asked for a refund. Carol will recommend to next years chair, Donna Hogan, that "No refund" be printed on the tickets. There was also a problem with members

of the general public attending the Social. Some of the problems occurred because the ticket takers at the door were mostly local arrangement people; it was suggested that next year they be given more explicit instructions regarding refunds, non-ALA and press people attending.

Carol had a budget of $7000 for the Social, of which $6983.88 was

actually spent.

There were many compliments about the Social and most seem to have a good time.

There was a suggestion to make the social bigger to attract more people and make more money for the Olofson award. Carol replied that the budget might be stretched to accommodate 400 people, but we would have to go to 3M for more money if we wanted a bigger party. We would also need more advertising and more pre-sale tickets.

Packets

Betsy went over the contents of the packets. Outgoing chairs need to send files and notebooks to incoming chairs as soon as possible.

Several people noted changes and corrections that need to be made in the directory. Betsy asked that all corrections be sent to her by July 15 and she will distribute a new directory.

Each chair should have a list of members for their committee. Some lists of committee members are very short, but Betsy is still appointing people to committees. If you have someone you would like to have appointed to your committee, let Betsy know. She needs to get an acceptance form from them to officially appoint them to a committee. Get potential committee members to

her by August 15. You can still appoint members after that, but ALA needs to have a list of committee members by a certain date for their handbook.

Betsy then went over the New Board Orientation Notes. She reminded everyone that she needs their plan of action by August 15.

On the Calendar, Betsy announced that Steve Kerchoff had resigned as Publicity Chair. Deb Nerud is still Publicity Chair, send any awards publicity to her instead of Steve. The Publicity Chair gets publicity to ALA; keep her in mind for publicity needs; this doesn't have to be just for Midwinter and Annual conference.

Betsy then went over the Treasurers report. Everyone needs to look at this so they know how much money they have to spend on their committee. Requests for reimbursements need to go to your supervising officer to be signed. Betsy also reminded everyone that if they want vendor support for a committee activity, they

should contact Carol Kem, chair of the Exhibitor Contact and Relations committee. Do not go directly to a vendor yourself.

The organizational chart has changed somewhat, a new one will be

issued.

Other items in the packet are report forms for midwinter and annual conferences, a listing of committee definitions, Guidelines for the preservation of materials, Guidelines on Budgetary Expenditures, and NMRT stationary (contact Judy

Hambrick if you need more stationary). Most of the forms in the packet are from the handbook; copy them if you need more.

The new treasurer-will take over at the end of the fiscal year, August 30. Send any requests for reimbursements to the outgoing treasurer, Joni Gomez, by August 1. Mary Jo Howard will begin term as new treasurer September 1.

Joanna went over the treasurers report. She encouraged everyone to try to stay on budget, and to try to get your institution to give you some support. If you need more money for your committee, ask for it. Keep track of what you spend. At Midwinter the budget will be discussed, if some items are way off they can be changed.

Betsy reported that Arthur Curley has chosen the theme for next year's conference as: Libraries, An American Value. This is very wide open, we can use it to fit most any program into this theme. Program planners should keep the theme in mind when planning next year's programs.

Betsy mentioned that a possible theme for the social in Chicago

could be the Swinging 20's.

Carol mentioned there was a problem in the past with money for the Olofson Endowment not going into the correct account. said that Judy has corrected this.

Betsy reminded everyone to plan your report.

NEW BUSINESS

ALA self study

Outgoing chairs should talk to incoming chairs to give and get ideas for the self study.

The meeting then broke up into small groups of outgoing and incoming committee chairs. The meeting was ADJOURNED after these discussions were completed.