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Special Libraries Association Boston Chapter
Board Meeting
December 2, 2002
Minutes
Attendees: Kathy McCabe, Sue Wolfman, Margaret Howe-Soper, Leslie Knapp, Mary Jo Boland, Liz Bibby, Bob Moore, Amy Pietrowski, Helen Keil, Claudette Newhall, Mary Chitty, Claire Burday.
Meeting called to order at 6 p.m. by Kathy. Reviewed the minutes of the October 15, 2002 board meeting. Motion to approve: Margaret Howe-Soper, seconded Amy Pietrowski.
Kathy shared news from SLA HQ:
Stephanie Tolson from HQ sent highlights from the Fall Board Meeting. Of interest to the chapter;
- The branding task force survey has winnowed the list of possible new names to two - 1. 'SLA' as an acronym 2. IPI - Information Professionals International. 'tag lines and descriptors can be added'.
- New Chapter Governance documents will be discussed at the Winter Meeting. There has been progress in developing these for SLA units. Units are no longer required to have bylaws, but those in place will remain until they finalize governing documents. This is a result of the Task force on simplification: making it simpler for units to govern themselves. Changes are easier without bylaws. Hence, they will be replaced by 'governing documents'.
- The Finance Committee is reviewing options to improve association finances. One option is to sell the building and relocate within Washington. DC.
- Two units - Networking Committee and the Mid-Missouri chapter (membership: 11) are dissolving. On the positive side, the Asian Chapter is trying to revive, and a new Iowa Chapter has thirty members and growing.
Program Committee Report
Liz presented the Program committee report. We are on track for the video conference targeted for early February. Tom Clark has speakers locked in, SLA president and president-elect (Bill Fisher/Cindy Hill). We are also on target for the joint video-conference at Smith College. We are trying for a date in February when Simmons students will be back. Sue Wolfman asked if vendor support was necessary. Smith is donating the facility and Liz said there were few expenses.
Liz polled the board on whether we should have a winter social event, and raised broader concerns on what value, precisely, members had for the programs. When asking members what they most value about the meetings, the answer is usually 'to network'. Her concern was that if we arrange purely social networking meetings, without pre-registration, will members continue coming to the regular programs? After some discussion, the opinion was presented that attending programs is seen as a networking option, and if the topic is good, that's a plus.
As to why attendance is dwindling? It was noted that individuals need to be more selective in what they can attend. Costs are tighter and, more and more, it must be justified as relevant to one's work. Further, all-day meetings are too much time away from work.
On the logistical front, any social event needs to be in mid-January to avoid conflict with professional meetings. Would such an event cannibalize the video-broadcast program? Concensus: no. Perhaps it's worth doing another survey of ideas for programs from membership. Program evaluations don't pick up much information. Amy Pietrowski suggested 'semantic web' as a scitech workshop. On the back-burner was how 9-11 impacted organizations in handling information. A discussion ensued, noting that goals for the workshops were to broaden librarians' view of their career options, and to identify and explain cutting-edge technology. No exact dates for workshops has yet been set, but that will be a priority of the next meeting.
Leslie: incidentally, the Treasurer should be receiving financial reports from Program committee. There's even a form.
Professional Development Program report
Liz presented on P.D. Program. Attendance at Linda Moulton's workshop was just 37, 6 of them vendors. This was disappointing. Despite a great effort by Linda in containing meeting costs, it lost $684. People attending evaluated it as a great success. The speakers were excellent, and the venue (Doubletree) was great. A handout was produced and posted for sale on the website for $25/copy to recoup costs. Leslie noted that Linda should be commended. She worked very hard to make the day worthwhile for attendees, vendors, etc. Incidentally, in the future we need an ST5 form - a new from - for tax free transactions. We probably should have taken advantage of the tax-exempt status in the past; we certainly will in the future.
Director of Finance Report
Tom Clark had hoped to attend but could not.
Treasurer's Report
Leslie: [At the last board meeting, Kathy asked Leslie to evaluate online payment systems like Paypal]. Paypal is technically viable and the actual account is free to set up. Payment is essentially immediate. Paypal charges transaction fees. For each payment, they would charge the chapter 2.9% plus 30 cents. SLA events average $30, from which we'd pay about a dollar per transaction. The difficult part is that each meeting is a different price, and would need a different set of links, creating a lot of work for our web mistress. It doesn't lend itself to doing meetings like we do. At this point Mary Jo needs to pursue the technical issues. Perhaps the experience of other chapters that have been doing it could be helpful? Hopefully by next board meeting we can delve deeper.
Leslie: Total of $5646 in Project account. The Minority scholarship fund: $276.82. Operating Account: $23761.80, and a bank error of 61 cents(!) Kathy asked when the allottment from HQ could be expected? Leslie: probably April. Overall: "Things are fine."
Membership Report
No report.
Employment Report
Claire: Nine jobs were posted since the last meeting. Concerns: should the board produce a policy statement on how and who can post jobs to the board? Specifically, can a policy be enacted that jobs be sent to Claire, not posted directly? There was a posting to the list by a member containing inaccurate info and the employer was upset because internal information was posted. There has also been a recent rash of people posting directly to email. Please filter postings through Claire. Aside from avoiding the recent problem, some postings are for the web site, some are for email, which is another decision people have to make.
Claire asked about setting up a face-to-face networking group for unemployed members and wondered how many we have? Various ways of tracking or deducing this were discussed, as well as incentives for unemployed members to take part. Kathy noted that the Chicago chapter hosts an informal face-to-face breakfast for unemployed members. She volunteered to get a list of members exercising the reduced membership rate, Claire will settle details on the forum, then announce it.
Vendor Support
Sue Wolfman: spoke with Wontauk. They will contribute towards the reception at the Annual Meeting in NY.
Logistics Report
Claudette: the committee will be meeting in 2 weeks to review the policies introduced at the previous board meeting and report back then. Once dates for the program meetings are set, we have volunteers ready and waiting to cover the programs.
Student Relations Report
Al Thibeault emailed: could the board approve the student stipend to attend the annual conference, in the amount of $2100? Concensus was that the cost seemed high. Based in part on the LA trip, which incurred high travel costs, Kathy suggested a more realistic stipend, taking all factors into account, which would be $1500.
Chapter Discussion List
Hope emailed: the discussion list has 577 normal members, 23 unsubscribed, 3 expired. Hope is inviting the unsubscribed to subscribe, with good results.
Affirmative Action Scholarship report
Margaret: Danielle Barney is the cochair, and she just completed her pregnancy, which has prevented the committee from meeting. The brochure needs to be written. They plan to have it out in a December-January time frame. Criteria for winner: either from New England, attending any ALA-approved program, or a student from elsewhere attending library school in New England. The person must be a member of the minority groups recognized by the government. The Committee expects to report more soon.
Other issues
Bulletin -In January, Teresa is planning to send a post card reminder to members without email addresses, reminding them that the issue is electronic, and asking them to register an email address with SLA or join the discussion list.
Kathy reminded the board it was time to establish a Nominating Committee and asked for nominations. The committee customarily includes a past-president and a member from the previous year's committee.
Email from Millie Gonzalez, Simmons College student group participation in Chapter events: Millie, president of the Simmons SLA group, suggested working on the WGBH fundraiser. It was considered a good idea for students. We have since learned that WGBH wants money to volunteer. The concensus was that there must be other volunteer activities we can do that might generate some publicity and not charge us for taking part. Claire will pursue this and will report back.
Liz received an email from Steve Thorpe of the Mary Baker Eddy Library. As part of a marketing effort, he suggested having a chapter meeting at the library. They specifically want to do an open house for librarians, and wanted to use the chapter mailing list to send invitations to members. Kathy and Mary Jo noted that Headquarters owns the list and has restrictions on its use, and this was likely not an acceptable use. As a compromise, we can post the announcement on the web site.
Kathy: Datamatic, a publisher, has persistently approached her to ask if we want a directory done by them. Individual members would have to buy copies. Given that our association does this for free? Concensus: we are not interested.
2nd item: At the Oct. 15th meeting, the chapter voted a $1000 donation to the Jim Matarrazzo scholarship. The fund is at $60K, but the committee wants to double it. There have been abundant solicitations to members. Mimi Drake has requested we post one last solicitation letter to the discussion list. Hope will post the letter, and that may be as far as the chapter can accommodate the scholarship fund. It was noted that economically it's not a healthy climate for fund raising.
Kathy: suggestions for the next board meeting? Mary suggested her facility, January 14th.
The meeting was concluded at 7:45 p.m. Amy motioned, Sue seconded.
Bob Moore
Secretary
Past minutes:
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Executive Board Meeting Minutes
SLA
SLA-Boston