ALAO Executive Board Meeting Minutes

Submitted by Alison  Ricker

Board Meeting Minutes (draft)

2/20/2009

Academic Library Association of Ohio
Board Meeting – February 20, 2009
OHIONET – 10:00 a.m.

Present: Karen Wilhoit, Deberah England, Carolyn Sanders, Joyce Wright Harris, Ann Raney, Traci Welch-Moritz, Rob Withers, Kathy Williams Wright, Ione Damasco, Ken Burhana, Stephena Harmony, Peggy Rector, Douglas Morrison, Judy Verdi, Kathy Burns, Rocki Strader, Kiffany Francis, Angel Jackson, Alison Ricker, Christine Rigda, Brian Gray, Ann Watson.

Absent:
Jo Ann Calzonetti, Lindsay Miller, Frank Bove, Steven Kenneally, Pat Antonelli, Kristen Kirchgesler, Susan Scott.

Introductions

Karen Wilhoit announced that a branch campus library of WSU is reducing the size of their collection by approx 75%. She is part of the team working on that project.


1. Review of minutes from November
Approved with correction: add Traci’s last name to the attendance.

2. Officer reports. Questions or discussion of posted reports.

Report from Peggy: new polyvinyl folders have been ordered and received; Peggy has updated stationery and note card templates, let her know if you need them.

Nominating Committee report
One candidate for Treasurer so far; five for Board Member at Large, need one or two more.
Need two candidates for Vice Pres/Pres Elect.

Two-week online election to be held in late March, with winners announced in April.


3. Committee reports

Professional Development Committee:

Twelve applications were received for the professional development award, 2 were discounted because they were late. Alice Crosetto, UT, will be awarded $1435 for attending and presenting at ACRL National Meeting; Yuezeng Shen will receive $565 to attend the Innovative Users Group National meeting in May.

Diversity Scholarship – the call for applications has gone out, board members, please promote this opportunity.

Workshop planning by Diversity Committee – May 1 at Kent State, Intercultural Communication. The committee has lost one member, and will request appointment of someone to fulfill that term.


4. Government Relations discussion (Ann Watson)

Call for $600 travel grant for Legislation Day (May 11-12) was sent electronically – no responses so far. Ann will send the flyer to all OhioLINK US Cargo locations. Academic librarians seem less interested or less invested in the need to talk directly to legislators. Please promote the grant to others.

Ann noted that Kent Oliver, Director of Start County Public Library is running for ALA President.

5. IG workshops

TEDSIG: April 24 at OCLC.
Panel of three people from Ohio State, following Regina Romano Reynolds, head of the National Serials Data Program. TEDSIG applied for NASIG Continuing Education grant to cover Regina’s and other speakers’ travel. NASIG has requested co-sponsorship and any proceeds from the workshop. None of the NASIG grant application materials stipulate sharing revenue, if there is any, for the workshop. Discussion: this is unprecedented request from another organization, and we have no mechanism in our procedures for sharing revenue from a IG workshop (should there be any, but none is expected). The board does not support this request. This is an ALAO TEDSIG workshop and we want to retain that identity foremost, rather than have it identified primarily as a NASIG workshop.

CMCIG: May 15, Ashland Univ
Vendors will discuss Discovery Mathematics and Science in schools. Other possible topics: Discussion of Governor’s State of the state address and what it means for education; also video production for teachers in training, to tape how they teach for portfolio.

Instruction and Distance Learning: joint workshop – March 20, Ohio Dominican
Speakers are all ALAO members in Ohio. Theme: “Trends in Innovation”

Support Staff IG: March 27, Washington State, Marietta
“Keeping libraries afloat”. Keynote speaker will address the seven habits of highly effective people. Other topics: teamwork; work flow, electronic resources, special collections/archives at Marietta College. Speakers are all in Ohio. As registrations come in, each person will receive a packet from the Marietta tourism board. Catering arrangements are challenging. No one new is joining the SSIG planning group. SSIG Chair Judy Verdi asks: how reasonable is it for this small group to continue to plan annual workshops, given other training offerings around the state? Registration for SSIG workshop is not enough yet to cover costs. Advice from board members: many registrations are likely to be received right at the deadline. Annual workshops are not required. SSIG is free to rewrite their goals and mission to reflect less frequent meetings.

Joyce reminded all IG chairs to use the spreadsheet developed by OCA to report all registrations, costs and revenue. All payment requests need to be cleared through Joanne before payment is made by OCA.

6. Member services task force report. Ione reporting. Report was sent electronically on Feb. 19.

Services have been investigated by reviewing their web sites. Viable options (see separate report) all cover everything we need.
Cost for services vary dramatically.

$20,000 for Arcstone, + $200 /month

Wild Apricot is Self-service. No initial fee, $100 / month to host up to 2000 membership records.

The task force feels confident that Wild Apricot should be investigated more closely, seems to offer everything we want (as listed in Leadership Retreat minutes) as well as ongoing tech support and upgrades. Other organizations using Wild Apricot include some that are similar in size and mission to ALAO.

Data migration may be a question; Rob noted that current data could be exported in tab-delimited file, which will work for Wild Apricot. The entire ALAO web site could migrate to Wild Apricot server and different levels of access would permit more people to update web pages.

Task force recommends Wild Apricot. Joyce cautioned that OCA would not be able to offer any extra staff time in the process of cleaning up and migrating records. Kathy agreed that Wild Apricot seems best for ALAO at this time, but is a little concerned about Wild Apricot’s lack of response to RFP – does that indicate a lack of ability to respond to concerns in the future. Other questions asked by OCA: How do they maintain privacy? How will they sustain themselves with such low fees? Who will be responsible for ongoing contact with Wild Apricot?

Ann Raney noted that retired members may be a source of assistance in data migration.

Questions regarding data migration are for an Implementation Team to consider.

Peggy – moved that we accept the task force recommendation to go with Wild Apricot, with further investigation of implementation.
Seconded by Rob, passed unanimously.
Goal: report at April 17 Board meeting on feasibility of implementation. Data conversion and migration of web site to Wild Apricot are both to be explored.

Ione recommended that the Membership Services Task Force be expanded to include Rob Withers. Christine Rigda and Karen Plummer can also be on call for assistance or information, as former co-webmasters.

7. Other task force reports

Member Benefits TF: Angel distributed a revised membership form to all board members, showing the Retiree member rate (same as student rate)

Archives TF: Karen Wilhoit and Peggy Rector both gathered information regarding retention policies for association records. A fuller report will be given at the April board meeting.

Support staff and student presenter grants – Karen Wilhoit, Judy Verdi, Deberah England, and Christine Rigda are developing procedures for applications for support staff presenter award. Still to determine: who chooses the grant recipient and criteria for selecting the recipient. The grant is intended to cover registration and some travel expenses.

8. Webmaster discussion.

The board recommends that Karen respond to the co-webmaster volunteers and let them know that we are in a state of flux, as we consider migrating site to Wild Apricot. If Frank is not able to continue as Webmaster, Karen will ask him to work with the volunteers so they can take over and prepare for the migration. Karen will also invite the new people to join the Membership Services Task Force as we evaluate the implementation process.

9. 2009 Conference report. Rob reported.

Call for proposals is out; still working on the keynote. Webcasting is being considered for a few presentations, to gain experience with the process. Planning proposal for webcasting was distributed to board. Discussion: unless extra funding is required, board approval is not necessary to begin webcasting. If webcasting is successful, it may impact conference attendance. It could also increase interest in ALAO if people who cannot attend are able to view the webcast of at least one or more sessions.

10. Old business: display board. Judy Verdi.
Judy presented a proposal for purchasing a display board for use of interest groups; two different types of display boards were described. Proposal accepted as a motion from Judy, seconded by Alison. Alison suggested that we buy one of each type of board, which was accepted by consensus. Peggy will take care of purchasing them.

11. Other items

Monday March 9: Kent State will host library careers night at the State Library, Columbus. Angel volunteered to staff the ALAO table and will put a call out on the ALAO list for other volunteers. Karen will inquire if ALAO can be represented at the on-campus event on March 4.

Credit card payment for conferences and workshops: discussion deferred, pending selection of the content management system.

CMIG had a workshop in 2008, but now there are no co-chairs. The last co-chairs said it was becoming more difficult to generate interest in workshop topics. OhioLINK CIRM seems to be serving the needs and interests of collection development/management personnel. Karen will work on a newsletter article about CMIG, call for interested people to help redefine the interest group.

OELMA/ALAO cooperation in future conference planning, as suggested by recent OCLIS minutes. Alison will be in touch with OELMA rep Cynthia DuChane of INFOhio for more information.

The meeting concluded at 1:30 p.m.
Next meeting: April 17, 2008. 10:00 a.m. OHIONET.