About NASIG

Date, Time: January 8, 2004, 8:33 A.M. - 3:46 P.M.
Place: University Club of San Diego Conference Room, San Diego State University Library, San Diego, CA

Attending:
Anne McKee, President
Eleanor Cook, Past-President
Steve Savage, Vice-President/President-Elect
Denise Novak, Treasurer
Bea Caraway, Secretary

Members-at-Large:
Carol MacAdam
Mary Page
Robert Persing
Kevin Randall
Stephanie Schmitt
Joyce Tenney

Ex-officio member:
Char Simser, NASIG Newsletter editor-in-chief

Guests:
Pam Cipkowski, co-chair (with Denise Novak), 2004 Conference Planning Committee
Marilyn Geller, co-chair, 2004 Program Planning Committee

1.0 Welcome (McKee)

McKee called the meeting to order at 8:33 A.M. and welcomed Board members and guests. She expressed her and the Board's gratitude to Steve Savage and his UCSD library director, Connie Vinita Dowell, for the meeting arrangements and hospitality. She then informed the Board members that PPC co-chair Emily McElroy was snowed in in Oregon and would not be able to attend the meeting.

2.0 Secretary's report (Caraway)

2.1 Board actions since fall Board meeting October 24-25, 2003:
11/12/03 Board approved the minutes of the June 2003 Board meeting.

11/25/03 Board approved the minutes of the October 2003 Board meeting.

12/11/03 Board passed and approved CPC's recommendation to go to an online PDF/HTML version of the conference brochure. Instead of mailing out the brochure, CPC will mail a postcard indicating that registration is now open and pointing recipients to the URL for the PDF/HTML formats. This falls logically in line with our electronic-only registration process. The Board extended its sincere appreciation to CPC for their "forward thinking outside the box!"

12/17/03 Board voted unanimously to approve the Site Selection Committee's recommendation of the Hilton, Minneapolis (downtown) as the site and lodging of the 2005 conference. The Board expressed its great appreciation to Mary Page and Joyce Tenney (as well as to Denise Novak, who visited the locale last year) for a great job well done!

12/19/03 Board approved the transfer of the NASIG archives to the University of Illinois and accepted the memorandum of understanding with its stipulations and requirements.

Additional items:

10/31/03 President McKee notified the Board of the following new policy: The treasurer will not accept reimbursements for CPC charges or PPC speaker reimbursements after September 30 of each year.

11/24/03 Board accepted, with thanks and congratulations, the PPC's report on the slate of programs for the 2004 conference.

Persing moved (Novak seconded) that the minutes be approved. The motion passed unanimously.

2.2 Board roster updates

Caraway asked Board members if there were any corrections to the Board rosters. She was reminded to add the Newsletter editor to the roster, since that position was designated an ex-officio member of the executive Board at the fall Board meeting.

2.3 Revisions to the executive working calendar

Caraway asked for changes needing to be made to the executive working calendar. None were noted. Caraway asked that Board members contact her as they work with the calendar and discover inaccuracies.

3.0 Treasurer's report (Novak)

3.1 2003 budget (expenditures, detailed, balance sheet)

Novak reported that after all conference-related invoices had been paid, income from conference registrations exceeded expenses by nearly $17,000. She noted that as of December 31, 2003, NASIG had a total equity of $156,716.77 and liabilities of $0.00. Thanks to the recent improvement in the stock market, the Charles Schwab investment has increase substantially in value. Nevertheless, there is perhaps a more fruitful way to invest this money, and Novak will discuss the possibilities with the Schwab investment counselor.

ACTION: Novak to explore other possibilities for the Charles Schwab investment account.
DATE: Report due at June Board meeting.

Novak provided to both the president and to the secretary a copy of the financial statements and accountant's review report for 2002. The secretary will send her copy to the archivist. Novak reported that she is required to send tax form 1099 to anyone who received payment from NASIG during 2003 in excess of $500.

As for current expenditures, they totaled slightly less than the budgeted figures, although she still awaits a few more invoices from the Continuing Education Committee. As is always the case, our revenue does not cover our operating expenses. Related to this comment, MacAdam recommended that the treasurer prepare a report for the membership outlining NASIG's revenues line by line and comparing it to our expenditures.

Novak anticipates an increase in the officers' liability insurance and will know the exact figure by the end of February 2004. This expenditure is budgeted for in the "financial fees" line of the administrative budget category. She also reported that FedEx is going to increase some rates and decrease others. McKee recommended that Novak look at other companies if the increases seem unreasonable.

As her last item, Novak reported that membership renewals are about 200 lower than this time last year.

4.0 Conference Planning Committee - CPC (Cipkowski, Novak)

Cipkowski reported that the conference website is up and that it is a work in progress. A new website feature this year is a page for the Program Planning Committee (PPC)) to use to post information for conference presenters. The linked photos of Milwaukee are courtesy of the Milwaukee Convention and Visitors Bureau (MCVB). NASIG was able to use them because of going through the MCVB to schedule the conference. This option has not been available in past years when booking conferences at universities. The CPC would like to continue the question and answer bulletin board that the Portland CPC instituted and hope to have technical support from the Electronic Communications Committee (ECC) for the application.

CPC has begun drafting the conference brochure, which is to be posted to the website but not mailed out. The conference registration form will also be posted to the website but not mailed out. When the registration form is available and registration is open, every member will receive a postcard notification to that effect. Board discussion about some members' institutions requiring a printed registration form led the Board to request that the confirmation screen include the NASIG logo and a statement similar to "This is your official conference registration" so that registrants can print it to send forward with their funding request.

Regarding registration details, McKee urged CPC, PPC, ECC, and the treasurer to work together closely on details of speaker registrations in particular, and the formatting of the registration form in general.

Pending confirmation that the Hilton will take online and toll-free phone reservations, the Board decided not to go through Passkey (a third-party booking firm) for room reservations, which will save about $4.00 per night per room on the room charge.

ACTION: Novak to confirm that the Hilton can take online and toll-free phone reservations from NASIG Conference participants.
DATE: Immediately after this Board meeting.

The three planned preconferences are to be held at Raynor Library at nearby Marquette University (7-8 blocks from the conference hotel). A shuttle for disabled attendees requiring transportation will be provided; for all others, the library is within walking distance and is also on a city bus route.

CPC will begin arranging for AV support as soon as PPC submits its list of AV needs. PPC is encouraging speakers to limit use of AV as much as possible. Numerous comments from past conference evaluations have pointed out that poor use of presentation technology has detracted from, rather than added to, many sessions. In addition, Internet connections will be quite expensive, and CPC is asking speakers to think carefully about their need for such. Speakers must submit their handout originals to the CPC for reproduction by the stated deadline. No handouts will be reproduced by NASIG for speakers at the conference itself.

The CPC has asked a prominent Milwaukee historian to speak at the conference opening and is waiting to hear back from him. The CPC also hopes to have a representative from the mayor's office or the county executive's office to welcome participants.

Souvenirs will include a complimentary canvas tote bag for each participant. In addition, souvenirs for purchase will include t-shirts with the 2004 logo as well as pens and notepads.

The CPC described several possible local and regional tours, and Board members suggested others for the CPC to look into.

After lengthy discussion, Cook moved (Tenney seconded) that the full registration rate be set at $375 for members and $450 for non-members. The motion passed unanimously. Novak moved (Tenney seconded) that the full-day preconference rate be set at $120 for members and $145 for non-members, and that the half-day preconference rate be set at $60 for members and $75 for non-members. The motion passed unanimously. Page moved (Novak seconded) the rate for one day's attendance be set at $150 regardless of membership status, and that a person wishing to attend more than one day must pay the full registration. There were nine affirmative votes and one abstention. The motion passed.

The Board expresses its gratitude to the CPC for all the work they have done up until now.

5.0 Program Planning Committee - PPC (Geller)

Geller noted that the PPC had received a wealth of excellent programming proposals, perhaps more than ever before. In addition, the PPC was more proactive this year in establishing topics and identifying appropriate speakers to address them. When the work of PPC has been completed this year, the co-chairs will try to analyze the value of extending the proposal submission date and of employing more than one call for program ideas. They hope that such an analysis will provide some guidance for procedures to apply to next year's conference call.

Each PPC member has been assigned several speakers to "shepherd" through the process, identifying their AV and other needs.

Geller reported that having the conference brochure online only was a boon to the PPC, giving them the leeway they needed to finalize the program after the later-than-usual proposal deadline for the 2004 conference and still provide programming copy for the brochure in time for preparation for posting.

ACTION ITEM: PPC co-chairs to submit final program copy to CPC.
DATE: February 6, 2004.

As PPC members discussed the reimbursement policy with potential speakers, they discovered some ambiguities in the policy. The reimbursement policy has undergone recent revisions for clarity, and in an effort to avoid too frequent revisions, Novak agreed to identify and remove from the reimbursement policy all reference to conference speaker reimbursement, resulting in two policies: one for conference speakers and the other a general policy for all other reimbursement scenarios (for CEC events, etc.) In this way, the conference speakers reimbursement policy can be revised as needed without having to make revisions to the general reimbursement policy. McKee appointed a task force to revise the conference speaker reimbursement policy (Board members Novak, Persing, Savage, Tenney, and PPC co-chair McElroy as consultant from the PPC).

ACTION: Task force to revise speaker reimbursement policy.
DATE: Report to be submitted at the June Board meeting.

On a related topic, Geller reported that the PPC has developed a spreadsheet to use in tracking expenses that will be incurred either through partial or full waivers of registration fees, or through reimbursements, or both.

Because one of the program proposals received was identical to a program planned for the UKSG meeting this spring, there was Board discussion about NASIG's requirement that any presentation at NASIG must be original. Besides wanting to offer fresh programming material, another consideration lies in the problem of copyright issues for publication in the NASIG Proceedings and in the proceedings of the UKSG or other program where the paper is subsequently published. Because the PPC recommended, and the Board accepted the recommendation, that the proposal in question not be accepted, the problem is not immediate for this year. However, for the future, McKee asked that the PPC study the question of our conference programming and its relationship with the UKSG Conference programming and submit recommendations to the Board.

ACTION: PPC to explore the ways, if any, in which NASIG and UKSG in particular could cooperate to eliminate problems of duplication and copyright with regard to programming and publication of conference papers.
DATE: Fall 2004 Board meeting.

The Board approved the guidelines suggested by the PPC with regard to the vendor demonstrations scheduled for the 2004 conference. They are as follows:

NASIG will not charge vendors for their participation, but the vendors will have to register for the full conference. Vendors will have to bring their own equipment (NASIG will provide a table and chairs as needed). NASIG will not provide Internet connections. Vendors needing this will have to cover the cost themselves. No marketing materials shall be distributed by the vendors.

Further Board discussion about the vendor demonstrations resulted in the decision to assign a NASIG member to serve as moderator during the demonstration time and to assemble ahead of time an even-handed information sheet about each vendor's product. The sheet will include a disclaimer that NASIG endorses no vendor and received no payment from the vendors.

PPC would like to see poster sessions arranged so that each presenter will have a few minutes to give a short talk about his or her topic.

The Board accepted the PPC's program recommendations with "high praise to the 2003-4 committee members for their creativity, industriousness, and dedication to their committee responsibilities" (quoted from the PPC co-chairs' printed report to the Board).

6.0 Committee reports

6.1 Archivist's report (Caraway)

Caraway reported that McKee had signed the memorandum of understanding with the University of Illinois Archives and had returned it to the assistant archivist there, thereby clearing the way for archivist Holley Lange to begin transfer of materials. Highlights from the written report: Lange completed folder listings in advance of shipping materials to the University of Illinois. She also received and filed materials into the collection, including conference evaluation reports and newsletters.

The Board members thanked Lange for her extensive work on behalf of NASIG in identifying and negotiating for a permanent home for the archives, an accomplishment which has been discussed and desired for several years.

6.2 Awards and Recognition Committee - A&R (Randall)

Randall reported that committee member Smita Parkhe had contacted fifty-six ALA-accredited LIS programs and compiled the contact information from the forty-four who responded. This project was initiated because of the importance of publicizing the student grant and the Schwartz scholarship to students from these schools. MacAdam asked that the PR/Outreach Task Force have access to this list also. Highlights from the written report: In response to a previous request from the Board, the Awards and Recognition Committee (A&R) will establish procedures to ensure that application for all awards except the Mexico student grant be processed under blind review. A&R continues to explore ways to reduce the number of members assigned to this committee and will have a recommendation for the Board sometime during spring 2003.

ACTION: A&R to write procedures for blind review of applications for all awards except for the Mexico student grant.
DATE: January 30, 2004.

ACTION: A&R to recommend reductions to the number of members appointed to A&R.
DATE: Spring 2004.

Randall thanks the committee for their diligent work on behalf of the NASIG membership.

6.3 Bylaws Committee (Tenney)

Tenney presented the text of the proposed bylaws changes and asked for discussion. Discussion centered on and resulted in clarification of the wording of the proposed change to section 4: terms of office. The notification of the upcoming vote on changes to the bylaws will be sent out to the membership over NASIG-L shortly after this Board meeting. The bylaws ballot will be mailed out together with the Nominations and Elections Committee's ballot for the election of Board members. Tenney thanked the Bylaws Committee for their work on the three proposed revisions to the bylaws.

6.4 Database and Directory Committee - D&D (Persing)

Highlights of the written report: As of December 16, 2003, there were 1,343 members in the NASIG database. Of these, twenty are new members who joined after October 15, 2002. Renewal notices were sent out October 3, 2003. As of December 16, 2003, 877 renewals (65%) had been returned and processed. Final renewal reminders are to be mailed out January 12, 2004. At the Board's request, The Database and Directory Committee (D&D) piloted a PDF version of the print-on-demand NASIG Membership Directory, available on NASIGWeb.

6.5 Electronic Communications Committee - EEC (Persing)

Highlights from the written report: ECC removed the password requirement for gaining access to the NASIG Newsletter as requested by the Board at the fall Board meeting. They also created links to the 2004 conference pages. Committee member Marina Oliver will serve as the ECC liaison for online conference registration.

Simser asked if ECC had removed the password requirement from the events calendar as the Board had requested at the fall Board meeting.

ACTION: Persing to ask ECC to be sure no password is required to access the events calendar.
DATE: Immediately after this Board meeting.

The ECC having presented statistics for hits on NASIGWeb, including the Newsletter, Simser wondered if it were possible to have statistics for hits on individual Newsletters, not for the main index to the Newsletters.

ACTION: Persing to ask ECC about the possibility of tracking hits on individual Newsletters.
DATE: Immediately after this Board meeting.

In a final inquiry, Simser asked for clarification on who would be in charge of maintaining the online gallery of conference photographs. McKee said that the ECC would be responsible for maintaining the photo collection.

6.6 Evaluation and Assessment Committee - EAC (Schmitt)

Highlights from the written report: The Evaluation and Assessment Committee (EAC) has competed its work for 2003. An article summarizing the results of the 2003 conference evaluation forms was written for the December 2003 issue of the NASIG Newsletter. Over thirty requests for speaker reports have been received and distributed. Outgoing committee chair Beth Holley is updating the committee documentation in preparation for transferring to the incoming chair, Wendy Baia.

6.7 Nominations and Elections Committee - N&E (Cook)

Highlights from the written report: Members submitted 115 nominations, of which 111 were eligible. Of these, fifty-four nominees agreed to be reviewed by the committee for possible placement on the ballot. Of the fifty-four nominees, four agreed to be considered for vice-president/president-elect, six for secretary, and forty-seven for member-at-large. Two member-at-large nominees were also being considered for secretary. From this group the ballot was constructed. Ballots are to be mailed by February 15, with a postmark deadline of March 15 for ballot returns. The mailing will include ballots both for election of Board members and for the bylaws proposals.

The Board thanked N&E for putting together an excellent ballot for 2004/2005.

6.8 Publications Committee (Page)

Highlights from the written report: Betty Landesman and Lillian DeBlois continue to work with Frieda Rosenberg on the NASIGuide to Serials Holdings Format. The Human Resources Directory continues to be fine-tuned by Marit Taylor.

6.9 Publicist (Cook)

Highlights from the written report: The last call for proposals for the 2004 conference went out in October; since then, there have been no requests for outside postings. There have been no additional requests for brochures since the fall 2003 Board meeting.

Cook notified the Board that she will send out the announcement of conference rates for 2004 shortly after ALA.

6.10 Proceedings (Randall)

Highlights from the written report: The manuscript for the 2003 Proceedings was submitted to Haworth Press at the beginning of November. The editors hope to have the final version to the indexer sometime in February.

McKee reported that she had requested the check for the 2002 Proceedings from Haworth.

6.11 Professional Liaisons/Peer Organizations (MacAdam)

No written report: MacAdam reported that Frank Richardson has agreed to serve as the professional liaison for the American Association of Law Librarians.

6.12 Continuing Education Committee - CEC (MacAdam)

No written report. MacAdam reported that the Continuing Education Committee (CEC) had received very few replies to their request for CE proposals. She suggested as an alternative source of CE ideas that highly rated sessions at the 2004 conference be referred to CEC for consideration as CE programs during the subsequent year. In addition, Geller and McElroy (PPC co-chairs) will send CEC some of the programming ideas that were not incorporated into the 2004 program.

6.13 Site Selection (Page, Tenney)

Highlights from the written report: On December 22, 2003, Page received the contract from the Hilton in Minneapolis. The guaranteed room rate is $110 per night. The contract requires a "fill rate" of 75% of the room block. If NASIG meets the $35,000 minimum expenditure on food and drink, the hotel will charge no rental for meeting rooms and will give a 10% discount on AV. The hotel booking dates for the conference are May 17-May 23, 2005. Once the contract is signed, a formal announcement will go out over NASIG-L. For the 2006 conference, materials are being collected for various sites, including Denver, Memphis, Charlotte, and Hofstra University in New York. Other suggestions from the Board for consideration are Phoenix, Tampa Bay area, Birmingham, Alabama, and sites in Canada. Additional locations will be reviewed if complete preliminary site selection forms are received this spring. This form is located at http://www.nasig.org/public/forms/siteselection.html. [Ed. note: The dates for the conference are May 19-22. Just as this issue was being announced, a savvy reader noticed that the date was noted as May 17-23, 2004. We have corrected that date in this copy but the pdf version has the incorrect year.]

6.14 Newsletter (Simser)

Highlights from the written report: The December 2003 issue of the Newsletter was published on schedule. The Newsletter is now accessible to the public rather than to members only as was the case previously. No feedback from the membership has been received concerning this change. Simser is reviewing photos from past issues of the Newsletter for transfer to a digital photo gallery from conferences past.

Simser asked what sort of conference photos would be appropriate for the gallery, photos of participants and activities only, or also photos of scenery. The Board consensus was that they should depict participants and activities, not merely scenery.

For other Newsletter-related items, see agenda item 6.5 (Electronic Communications Committee).

7.0 Old Business

7.1 Waiver of conference registration fee for PPC co-chairs

Because the PPC co-chairs spend virtually all their time at the conference solving problems, escorting speakers, and so forth, they are able to attend almost no sessions. Since this is the rationale for waiving the conference registration fee for the CPC, it was put forward for discussion whether or not a similar waiver were reasonable for the PPC co-chairs. After considerable discussion, Tenney moved (Savage seconded) that for the 2004 conference, the conference registration fee (not including the hotel room) be waived for the PPC co-chairs and that the policy be reviewed at the June Board meeting for both the CPC and the PPC. The motion passed unanimously.

7.2 UKSG Serials E-News proposal (McKee)

As a follow-up to discussion at the fall 2003 Board meeting, the Board considered further the potential value to NASIG members of receiving the UKSG Serials e-News at a cost of $1500 annually. Novak moved (Page seconded) that McKee be authorized to ask for an agreement that would lock in the cost at $1500 annually for a period of three years and that NASIG be allowed to evaluate the publication and cancel the subscription if desired at the end of one year. There were nine affirmative votes and one negative vote. The motion passed.

7.3 Purchasing a NASIG-owned laptop for CPC

As a follow-up to a proposal made by Tenney and Schmitt at the fall 2003 Board meeting, Novak said that for several reasons, she believed we could now afford to buy a laptop for the registrar to use. First, revenue exceeded expenses at the 2003 conference. Second, the value of the Charles Schwab investment account has risen with the strengthening stock market. Finally, NASIG has not tapped the money in its savings account for several years. Schmitt noted that while the purchase would come too late to be as beneficial this year as she would like, she would welcome a laptop for the use of the registrar, and foresaw that next year the ECC would have sufficient time in which to set up the laptop with the required software and files and mail it to the registrar, who can bring it to the conference in order to conduct on-site registration. Savage moved (MacAdam seconded) that NASIG allocate up to $2,000 for a laptop with CD-RW. The motion passed unanimously. Novak will look into purchasing the laptop through Carnegie Mellon (her home institution) at a discount.

7.4 Synergies between ALCTS and NASIG (McKee, Page)

Page presented a draft charge to a task force designed to explore synergies between NASIG and the Serials Section of ALCTS. McKee noted that ALCTS sees NASIG as having good content for serials programming ready to go as CE programs and that ALCTS has the established office staff and infrastructure to deliver such programs. She also noted that mutual task forces looked at this relationship in 1997/1998, and she volunteered to copy those reports to this Board for information purposes. Cook noted that in any explorations by this task force, ALCTS and NASIG must be flexible and willing to try new ways of doing things. McKee will appoint NASIG members to the task force, and Page will appoint Serials Section members by the fall 2004 Board meeting.

ACTION: McKee and Page to appoint members to a joint task force to explore synergies between NASIG and the ALCTS Serials Section.
DATE: By the June 2004 Board meeting; report due by the midwinter 2005 meeting.

7.5 Online evaluations task force

An issue that the Board considered at its fall 2003 meeting but has not yet acted on is whether or not to move to a web-based evaluation form. McKee will appoint a task force to study the issue, including reviewing current options and resources available for web-based surveys and related electronic data analysis tools. The task force will explore the feasibility of moving to an online evaluation tool.

ACTION: McKee to appoint a task force to study the issue of moving to an online (web-based) evaluation form.
DATE: February 1, 2004.

7.6 PR/Outreach recommendations

Following the Board's review of the recommendations of the PR/Outreach Task Force at the fall 2003 Board meeting, the Board agreed that the next logical step would be the appointment of a new task force to investigate how the recommendations could be carried out and how much it would cost. McKee noted that Betty Kjellberg could give us some starting points for such an investigation. The new task force could be made up of some of the PR/Outreach Task Force members with some new ones added. Page would like to see the proposal fleshed out with several different scenarios.

ACTION: McKee to appoint a task force to determine various options and their costs for implementing the recommendations of the PR/Outreach Task Force.
DATE: Following this Board meeting.

8.0 For the Good of the Order

The Board discussed at some length how best to inform the membership of NASIG's financial situation. Novak asked for ten minutes on the agenda at the 2004 conference to address the membership on this subject.

ACTION: Novak and president-elect Savage to include this on the business meeting agenda for the 2004 conference.
DATE: Before the 2004 conference.

Another suggestion was to include the same information in an upcoming Newsletter.

The Board asked the Finance Committee to report on ways to increase our operating reserve. Ideally, the annual budget would include a line with an allocation for operating reserves.

ACTION: Finance Committee to report on its ideas for increasing NASIG's operating reserves.
DATE: By the fall 2004 Board meeting.

The Board agreed to have a brainstorming session on this topic open to the membership on Thursday morning of the conference in Milwaukee, from 10 a.m. until noon.

McKee adjourned the meeting at 3:46 p.m