ALAO Executive Board Meeting Minutes

Submitted by Alison  Ricker

Board Meeting Minutes (draft)

4/17/2009

ALAO Board Meeting
Friday, April 17, 2009
10:00 A.M.
OHIONET Building

Present: Karen Wilhoit, Ione Damasco, Christine Rigda, Jo Ann Calzonetti, Douglas Morrison, Ken Burhanna, Stephena Harmony, Kiffany Francis, Rocki Strader, Lindsay Miller, Joyce Wright, Judy Verdi, Carolyn Sanders, Deberah England, Peggy Rector, Rob Withers.

Officer reports/updates and Interest Group reports/updates
Rob announced that the deadline for proposals is today. There are currently 68 presentations and 17 posters. The number may be more at the end of today. He has penciled in June 22 and 23 for the board retreat at Cherry Valley and they anticipate that room rates will be the same as last year. Lindsay and Rob are working on a Facebook page to publicize events. Send info to Lindsay and she’ll pass it on to the list. Rob spoke with Frank about the webmaster position but isn’t sure what his intentions are. Rob is currently working on updates of board reports and elections.
Angel Jackson has a new e-mail address. She is now Angel Gondek – agondek@cscc.edu

Judy reported that the SSIG held its annual workshop at Washington State on March 20 with 32 participants. The overall rating was excellent or good. At the annual meeting at lunch Kathy Burns was presented as incoming chair. Bobbi Bishop is secretary/chair elect. There will be a meeting next Friday at Otterbein to discuss this meeting and next year’s. The registrations didn’t cover the event which ended at a loss of $47. The group will be discussing a change in officer arrangement from chair and secretary/chair-elect to co-chairs.

Carolyn announced that the CMCIG will host their spring meeting on May 15 at Ashland University. The theme is “Realigning the CMC.” They are anticipating about 35 attendees.

Joyce said that Kathy Wright officially retired March 31. On March 24 Ann Watson attended the presidents meeting to recognize Kathy on behalf of ALAO. It was nice for the board to see the other sectors of the OCA. OLSSI was represented as well as other groups. The board is investigating alternatives during this transitional period. Hopefully all will be in place at the end of this fiscal year. Joyce is the current fiscal officer.

Lindsay said that new newsletter is posted. The layout is slightly different because she is using the blog and it is linked from the main ALAO website thanks to Rob. She has begun doing some announcements through Facebook.

Rocki announced that the TEDSIG meeting is next Friday at OCLC and there are currently over 50 registrations. The featured speaker will be Regina Reynolds, Head, U.S. ISSN Center, National Serials Data Program, Library of Congress. She will be speaking on “Taming the E-Serials Beast.”Chris Thornton will be joining as new co-chair of TEDSIG. Rocki spoke with the NASIG representative regarding the grant. NASIG agreed to award the grant without any compensation.

Ken announced that the Diversity Committee has awarded the grant to Joshua Alvarez. They believe that the scholarship and mentoring will serve him well. Ken said that we need to revise the scholarship decision making in order to provide the grant for folks starting the program the following academic year. Diversity is preparing for their workshop on May 1 at Kent State. Beth Tucker, Purdue University is the facilitator. The registration deadline is today and there are currently 13 registrants. They hope to get 20 to reach the break-even point. There is a new committee member from Miami University. Kwabena Sekyere is filling a vacated term.

Doug gave the Election Update - He has 1 candidate for vice president/president elect, 1 for treasurer and all that are needed for board member at large. Doug recommends that we go ahead with the names we already have. If there are no additional candidates by next Thursday the election will proceed with the current candidate slate. The election process will begin 27, going live on April 29 with a closing date of May 8.

Doug has agreed to help the SSIG with a meeting in late April or May at OHIONET to discuss the structure of the interest group and will have a report for the board retreat.

Ann said that the OCA reception for Kathy Wright was very nice. It was good for their board to meet an ALAO representative. The Government Relations travel grant has been awarded to Joan Milligan from University of Dayton. She was selected from four applications. Ann posted flyers at all OhioLINK member libraries (with the exception of public libraries). She believes that this helped with the response and she will do the same next year. Ann and Joan will write up something for the newsletter on returning from their trip. Ann will write a newsletter article and has pictures from Kathy Wright’s retirement event. Karen sent a letter to the OCA board president about Kathy’s value to ALAO.

Jo Ann posted the treasurer’s report on the web site.

Member Database report

Ione reported that the task force is still recommending Wild Apricot as the vendor of choice. They are secure and are security best practices compliant. They have a lot of on-line self-service support for users. The integrated website issue was discussed. As part of the cost they could host our web site. This is only an option.

Frank said that we have many listservs and suggested that they should all be under one host. Wild Apricot doesn’t have the capability to host listservs but they allow for targeted e-mails. Frank said that it would take some planning to move the web presence over. Ione said that this might be a good time to revise the web pages and have it a membership tie-in. On-line payments can be done but it requires a Paypal account or other web-related accounting systems.

Getting the database up and running and cleaned up. She feels that the new system allows for more options in using the member lists. It’s only $100 a month with the webpage. We need members to look at their information and update their contact information, etc. One advantage for management of information is that all officers can act as account administrators for various pieces of the information. It is WYSIWYG – no code knowledge is needed. For our level of need Ione feels that this is a good vendor.

From the e-mail between Rob and Frank it seems that Frank is stepping down and willing to help with the transition. Brian is willing to continue on the task force even though he won’t be on the board anymore. Rob mentioned the need to plan a training session for all the IG chairs at some point. Ann asked if Wild Apricot has a webmaster plan. Ione said that it is all in the hands of the officers. They are a very basic, inexpensive vendor. Ione is willing to continue with the transition but she isn’t able to continue as chair of the task force after this year.

Rob made motion and Deberah seconded that we go forward with Wild Apricot as our membership management provider. Motion approved.

The Membership provider investigation task force consisted of Angel, Brian, Lindsay, Ione, Frank, Rob and Joyce (as consultant). We now need an implementation or transition team. Ione recommends Angel, Lindsay, new web person and Frank (to provide access to the existing content) and Brian. Ione would also be willing to consult with the group. We should go ahead and pay the membership fee in order to begin the process and then come back to the board retreat with an update.

The implementation team will make a suggestion on the need of a separate group to work on the current database clean up. Brian could share his trial account access with the team members. There will be a period of time while the site is suppressed.

Karen said that there is no pressure to meet a deadline on the expiring Blue Host contract. If we use the annual meeting as the target date to unveil the new site, Joyce feels that would be fine. Hopefully some of the focus of the board retreat will be on the new site. Angel will need to work on the membership records. Ione said that there is no contract – just pay the yearly fee of $100.00. Karen will ask Brian if he is willing to chair the transition and would he go ahead and initiate the payment. Ultimately the new webmaster would have full administrator rights. There is no limit on the number of administrators.

In the new format how many webmasters do we need? - especially during the transition phase. If Frank is not resigning it would be Frank and one other person. Karen will go back to the list of names she has. If none are interested she will then send out a call for volunteers. Lindsay said that maybe the communications person and membership person should become co-website administrators. There still needs to be at least one webmaster to oversee the entire project. The current feeling is that we need 2 webmasters during the transition to the new system.

Presenter grants

Deberah went over the draft of both the Support Staff Interest Group and Student presenter grants and explained some of the issues involved. Karen thanked Deberah for all the work she has done. Both grants are similar in eligibility limits and timelines. The student grant would be publicized to Indiana, University of Kentucky and Kent. The SSIG grant application would be advertised locally and posted to the SSIG listserv. Deberah went over the document. She said that the task force decided to provide the money up front.

The grant would be applicable to either a session or a poster. If you had a program that was given by a group the group would receive the grant. Acknowledgement would be done at the annual conference. The student grant would require a letter of recommendation from a faculty or current supervisor. The call for proposals would include a link to the grant request. After discussion of the eligibility it was decided to remove line 2 under eligibility requirement. “Eligible LIS programs are: Kent State University, University of Kentucky and Indiana University.”

The IG coordinator will chair the selection committee. The Chair of the professional development committee and chairs of SSIG would act as the decision-processing group. The only difference between the two grants is that the student grantee would be assigned a mentor. The impetus for the document creation is that there was really no documentation on deadlines, who made the selections, or who could apply. This year there is a link to the form from the Support staff presenter application. How do we address the possibility of a grantee receiving the money and then not attending or presenting. This will be discussed further.

Rocki made a motion to accept the grant policy as amended. Rob seconded. The motion was approved.

Mileage Reimbursement

The ALAO policies manual gives reimbursement at 25 cents per mile. Jo Ann said the IRS rate is 55 cents but the only guideline for ALAO is 25 cents. Usually reimbursements are given at the dollar amount requested by the speaker.

Karen feels that we should reimburse at the IRS rate for speakers. She thinks the policy Jo Ann presented was really to present reimbursement options to support board members who don’t get employer support. The idea is to pay for gas only.

Jo Ann asked that the board include a statement regarding travel expenses in the procedures manual for the speaker and workshop guidelines. Currently we only reimburse travel for invited speakers. The suggestion was to give the IRS rate for invited presenters and keep the current rate for board members as a separate item. Jo Ann said that recent reimbursements were made at 25 cents and asked if we should go back and allow for reimbursement up to 55 cents?

We will put this discussion on the board retreat agenda. We will keep the current numbers for the rest of the fiscal year. Discussion indicated that the IGs have used different practices. Alison will be asked to decide where this will fit into the policies and procedures manual.

Rob made a motion to adjourn and Doug seconded. The meeting adjourned at 12:30 p.m.

Respectfully submitted by Peggy Rector (in the absence of Alison Ricker).