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North American Serials Interest Group
NASIG Newsletter Vol. 19, no. 3 September 2004 ISSN: 1542-3417 NASIG EXECUTIVE BOARD MINUTES Date, Time: June 16, 2004, 8:18 a.m.-5:25 p.m. Attending: Members-at-Large: Ex-Officio member: Guests: 1.0 Welcome (McKee) McKee called the meeting to order at 8:18 a.m., welcomed Board members and guests, and asked that each person introduce himself or herself. She added two items to the agenda under "new business," namely, the Town Hall Meeting and the Thursday morning brainstorming session, and then asked for other changes to the agenda. Caraway asked that the discussion of how to dispose of extra copies of the Proceedings be moved from agenda item 2.3 to item 4.1. McKee reminded those present of the ground rules for the meeting: Incoming members may not vote but are welcome to join in the discussions. Decisions will be made by formal motions and voting. As Board members have read all reports before the start of the meeting, only those reports requiring action will be discussed in the meeting. Bob Persing agreed to serve as timekeeper for discussions. 2.0 Secretary's report (Caraway) 2.1 Board actions taken since the Midwinter Board meeting, January 8, 2004: 2/4/04 Steve Savage moved (Eleanor Cook seconded) that we accept the minutes from the January 8, 2004, Board meeting. The motion carried. 2/17/04 Schmitt moved (Persing seconded) that the Board waive the membership cutoff date for conference fee purposes in 2004. If an individual's membership is established or renewed prior to the submission of online registration for the 2004 conference, the member conference fee will be accepted. There were seven affirmative votes, two negative votes, and one vote too late to count. The motion carried. 2/25/04 A majority of the Board members voted to approve a $500 honorarium for Mr. John Gurda, who will speak at the opening session of the Milwaukee conference.3/19/04 Novak moved (Persing seconded) that the Board approve the correction in the June Board meeting minutes of the date of the Minneapolis conference from 2004 to 2005. The motion carried. 3/19/04 Novak moved (Persing seconded) that the Board approve the correction in the June Board meeting minutes of the date of the Minneapolis conference from 2004 to 2005. The motion carried. 3/23/04 The Board unanimously accepted and approved the recommendation that Meg Mering and Pat French serve as the 2004 co-editors of the NASIG Conference Proceedings. 3/25/04 Page moved (Persing seconded) that the Board accept revisions to the policy regarding conference registrants' eligibility for the member rate. There were six votes in the affirmative, none in the negative, and five who were unable to vote for various reasons (away from work, out of the country, etc.). The motion carried. 4/5/04 Tenney moved (Schmitt seconded) that the Board accept the recommendation of the Awards & Recognition Committee regarding the 2004 winners of the student grant awards, the Fritz Schwartz Award, the Horizon Award, and the Marcia Tuttle Award. The motion carried. 4/14/04 Cook moved (Persing seconded) that the Board accept the executive session minutes of the conference call of April 13, 2004, as amended. The motion carried. 5/18/04 Savage moved (Randall seconded) that the Board appoint Marie Seymour-Green as NASIG Archivist for the standard term of three years (in this case, 2004/05-2006/07) to begin at the end of this year's conference. The motion carried. Other items of interest: 2/27/04 A laptop purchased for the use of the conference registrar arrived with all required software loaded and ready for use. 3/12/04 The Board determined that henceforward, the CPC (in consultation with the Board liaison) will determine the selling price of the conference souvenirs. They will keep in mind the break-even point and will notify the Board of the prices as a point of information. 3/23/04 Accepted Midwest Airlines offer to be an official airline of the 2004 conference. In return for a minimum number of bookings by conference participants, NASIG will receive discounted tickets for future travel, to be used to offset the travel cost of student grant winners, speakers, etc. 4/23/04 The Board accepted the recommendation of the Awards & Recognition Committee regarding the recipient of the Mexican Student Grant and thanked them for all their work on this. 5/14/04 Given that Denise Novak was able to negotiate substantially lower prices for the food budget at the Hilton, the Board considered and approved CPC's request that we add snack food and soft drinks to the afternoon breaks. Cook moved (Tenney seconded) that the action items be approved. The motion passed unanimously. 2.2 Board roster updates Caraway asked Board members to verify the accuracy of the Board rosters. No changes were made. 2.3 (moved to 4.1) 2.4 Consideration to replace banners with posters Lisa Furubotten had suggested that NASIG consider replacing the NASIG banners with posters. These would be easier to transport or ship to the various CE events where they were needed. In addition, they could perhaps be left behind for display at the institution where the event had been held. Board members appreciated Lisa's creative thinking about this issue; however, since posters would, like banners, also have to be rolled and either carried or shipped, and since the expense of a color poster can be quite high, the Board decided to continue with the banners for the time being. In the future, if we decide to use posters instead, Gerald Printing, with whom we do considerable business, should be asked to submit a bid. 2.5 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 Elizabeth Parang (incoming Secretary) as they work with the calendar and discover inaccuracies. She added a reminder that all changes to the working calendar should come through the Board liaisons to the Secretary, who will inform the Webmaster and the entire Board of the changes. 3.0 Treasurer's report (Novak) Novak reported that as of June 16, 2004, memberships numbered 1,293. She provided a detailed financial report for the period January through May 2004, detailed and summary reports of 2004 conference expenses and income, and a detailed budget report. She noted that several committees have yet to spend any of their allocated funds but will certainly do so later in the year. She noted that as of May 31, 2004, NASIG had a total equity of $325,687.52 and liabilities of $0.00. However, most of the conference expenses will be paid after the conference, which will substantially reduce the equity. The Charles Schwab account has fluctuated with the stock market over the past six months. Regarding this account, Novak noted that the account has a trading function built in that cannot be turned off without our losing all Web access to the account. Therefore, the Board and especially the Treasurer need to be aware of the possibility of unauthorized trades and to monitor the account for unusual activity. Novak indicated that many NASIG mailings (over 100) had failed to be delivered to the addressee and had been delivered instead to the Decatur, Georgia, postal box. Because the printer had been careful to position the return address correctly, the problem is most likely being caused by improper placement of the mailing label, causing the postal scanners to read the return address as the mailing address. Liaisons will remind Database & Directory, Bylaws, Nominations & Elections, and CPC to position mailing labels farther to the right on the envelopes they mail out. ACTION ITEM: Novak to scan in some incorrectly labeled pieces of mail to be mounted on the website for committee chairs to view. Novak will also scan examples of correctly placed labels. Novak pointed out that during the transition from a two-year to a three-year term for treasurer, the new treasurer will not be elected a year in advance and therefore will not have a year in training. In order to provide adequate training to the new treasurer, she requested that the Board allow her to meet her successor in person for two to three days. The Board agreed with the wisdom of the suggestion. Cook added that Novak should write up and give to Nominations & Elections a list of skills the new treasurer would need. This will help them as they screen the treasurer nominees. The nominees should also be informed that they will need to set aside these two or three days before the beginning of their term of service in order to be trained in the work of the treasurer. McKee noted that the funds allocated for Board expenses for the year in question will need to reflect the cost of travel and lodging for this purpose. ACTION ITEM: Novak to provide Nominations & Elections with a list of skills needed in the candidates for Treasurer. ACTION ITEM: Novak to include estimated costs in her budget request for 2005 for the travel expenses for training the new treasurer. 4.0 Committee Reports 4.1 Archivist (Caraway) On January 30, 2004, Archivist Holley Lange shipped eight boxes of materials to the University of Illinois Archives. A description of the collection is now on their website. The archivist there retained only the hardbound copies of the NASIG Proceedings, leaving us with softbound and Serials Librarian versions of the same Proceedings. It was suggested that NASIG offer these copies to NASIG members whose libraries might like to have them, especially those members who live outside the United States. The Board could not come to a consensus about who will pay the postage, but instead decided to have the archivist announce the offer and see what the response might be. Once we know who might make use of the Proceedings, we can see how much the postage might be and figure out who might pay for it. ACTION ITEM: Archivist Maria Seymour-Green will announce the offer via NASIG-L. The Board thanks Holley Lange for her fine service during her term as NASIG Archivist. 4.2 Awards & Recognition (Randall) In all, 48 applications for awards were received: 1 for the Marcia Tuttle (1 awarded), 22 for the student grant (3 awarded), 14 for the Horizon (1 awarded), and 11 for the Fritz Schwartz (1 awarded). There was one Mexico student grant awarded as well. The work went smoothly with the exception of a few communication and scheduling difficulties for the Mexico grant. The report requested Board discussion on two points: the size of the committee, and the appropriateness of committee members' writing letters of reference for applicants. Regarding committee size, the number of committee members is at the discretion of the Board. In the spring, Vice President Savage appointed two fewer members for 2004/05 than in the preceding year. Next spring, Vice President Page will again consider committee size when making appointments for 2005/06. McKee noted that screening and evaluating the applicants is much work but that the number of applicants has been falling in recent years. She requested that information on numbers of applicants in recent years be provided to the Board. ACTION ITEM: Savage to ask the History Task Force to track the numbers of applications received for the various grants over the last seven years. Randall expressed his hope that we can increase the number of student grants awarded next year. On the question of committee members serving as references for applicants, MacAdam moved (Tenney seconded) that no member of the Awards & Recognition Committee or of the Executive Board will write recommendations or serve as references for applicants of any NASIG-sponsored awards or grants. The motion passed unanimously. As a final point, the Board thanked the Awards & Recognition Committee for their hard work and especially for their innovation in making application review a blind process, and requested that blind review be continued for all awards, including student grants. 4.3 Bylaws (Tenney) The membership approved three bylaws changes, which are detailed on the NASIG website behind the "What's New" button on the homepage. More details on the bylaws changes are available on the Bylaws Committee's webpage. The Board commended and thanked the committee for their very hard work throughout this year, especially noting their effective collaboration with the Nominations & Elections Committee. 4.4. Continuing Education (MacAdam) During 2003/04, CEC sponsored ten events or projects in Canada, Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United States. The committee sent out a call on NASIG-L for programming proposals and ideas but received few responses; they will repeat the call. Ensuing Board discussion centered on ideas for generating NASIG-created workshops rather than NASIG sponsorship of other organizations' workshops. The PPC has forwarded to CEC the program proposals that were not used at the 2004 annual conference. The Board asked MacAdam to encourage the CEC members to consider developing some of these programming ideas into CE events or bringing back some particularly successful programs from earlier conferences. McKee commended CEC for trying to broaden the focus and include events that cover topics other than cataloging and encouraged them to continue in this effort. The Board congratulated the committee on its CE work for the year. 4.5 Database & Directory (Persing) The cost of printing and mailing the NASIG directory for 2003 was $6,400. The 2004 directory should be distributed shortly after the conference, and the cost should be comparable to last year's. Presently, one-third of the membership chooses not to receive the print directory. In addition to its normal activities, the committee piloted a print-on-demand, Web-accessible version of the directory. The PDF version of the directory is mounted twice monthly. The committee had recommended last year that the Board consider discontinuing the print version of the directory, but the Board decided that it was not yet time to eliminate the print. In response to MacAdam's question as to being able to know how many times the PDF version had been printed, Schmitt informed us that this cannot be tracked. Cook reminded the Board that the directory front matter is not included in the online version of the directory and that if and when the directory moves to an electronic-only format, that information must be included somewhere on the NASIG website. In the course of the discussion, questions arose about the "purge date" for dropping members who had not renewed for the new year, which led to the very important reminder that the membership renewal form must include the date by which one must renew in order to be eligible for the member rate for the 2005 conference. The Board expressed its gratitude for the efficiency, accuracy, and helpful attitude of the Database & Directory Committee. 4.6 Electronic Communications Committee (Persing) Sarah George (Co-Chair) and Ruth Scales served as Webspinner and back-up, Merle Steeves (Co-Chair) and Kitti Canepi served as list manager and back-up, David Burke and Jennifer Duncan served as job listings coordinator and back-up, Marina Oliver served as the liaison for online registration, Anna Creech worked with Char Simser to develop a prototype webpage for conference photos (http://www.nasig.org/conference/photos), and Sheila Tawney helped work on the planned conversion of the membership database to SQL. EEC added four new e-mail addresses this year for NASIG business and four new lists for PPC. NASIG has 33 listservs, and NASIG-L had 1180 subscribers as of April 29, 2004. Filtering software installed by Bee.net has greatly reduced the amount of spam sent to the list. Bee.net did away with the limit on the number of simultaneous users, so NASIGWeb users now have unlimited access. The Board discussed the shift in responsibility within the NASIG committee structure which provides for a Web liaison for each committee to work with the ECC. This change means that some of the ECC members have little to devote their energy to. Cook suggested that one member could be assigned to help the publicist in managing his or her list of e-mail lists. Page wondered if the position of webmaster should be analogous to the position of archivist. ACTION ITEM: President Savage, Vice President/President-Elect Page, and Randall (ECC Board liaison for 2004/05) to discuss the future shape of the ECC. The Board thanks the ECC for their excellent work. 4.7 Evaluation and Assessment (Schmitt) The EAC prepared and shipped the evaluation forms to the CPC the week of May 17, 2004. The questions on the form for this year's conference reflected the changes in program structure, in venue, and in the conference information (website and online registration information instead of a print brochure). Communication between EAC and the CPC and PPC is crucial each year in order to create a form that collects needed feedback on the conference. The committee expressed in its report a continued interest in the question of moving to an online evaluation form, noting, however, that there are some problems with an online form, notably that participants may not be able to access a form until several days after the conference closes. ACTION ITEM: Savage to appoint a task force to study the question of moving to an online evaluation form. The Board expresses its thanks to the committee for its important contribution to the organization. 4.8 Newsletter (Simser) Pam Cipkowski, who had taken a leave of absence as copy editor in order to serve as CPC Co-Chair for the Milwaukee conference, will be resuming her responsibilities with the Newsletter. Sharon Heminger, who took Pam's place, will stay on as column editor for "Calling All Serialists." Maggie Rioux became editor for the "Profiles" column. Simser and Anna Creech from ECC worked together to implement a conference photo archive. Simser is still compiling a Newsletter manual. Savage brought up the fact that the Newsletter is the official archival organ of the organization, but that despite its role as such, several things have been dropped from the Newsletter over the years. He expressed an interest in rethinking or reaffirming the Newsletter's purpose and identity. ACTION ITEM: Savage and Simser to open discussion on this topic. The Board thanks Simser for the wonderful tool that the Newsletter is for the organization. 4.9 Nominations & Elections (Cook) The N&E Committee received 115 nominations, or 36 percent more than last year. Of these, 111 were eligible for consideration. The rate of return of ballots was 48 percent. The committee began investigating various online voting services suitable for use by organizations such as ours and has offered to pass its findings on to the new Strategic Support Task Force for further consideration. The Board expressed deep gratitude to the N&E Committee for doing an outstanding job during an especially busy year for them. 4.10 Proceedings Proceedings editors Pat French and Rick Worthing successfully completed all the many steps required to organize recording volunteers, acquire papers and permissions from presenters, compile, edit, and proofread the papers, coordinate the indexing, convert and mount a version on the NASIG website, and send the proceedings off to Haworth for printing. The editors had notable success in getting papers from presenters on time. LadyJane Hickey served as indexer, and Mircea Stefancu was Web editor. Randall pointed out that the selection of Proceedings editors for the 2005 conference must begin earlier than usual this year due to the May conference date. The Board commended the editors for an important job well done. 4.11 Publications (Page) The committee's ongoing projects include, 1) improving the Human Resources page and perhaps making its contents searchable by means of a relational database, and 2) completing the NASIGuide to Serials Holdings. The committee has considered potential projects to work on, such as making both the proceedings and the handouts for a given conference searchable simultaneously through a single search-and-retrieval interface, or helping create and publish a NASIG history for the twentieth anniversary. The Board discussed at some length the change in the Publications Committee's role since the conference handouts have moved from print to online. The acquisition, duplication, and distribution of print handouts had previously been its largest responsibility. Possibilities of new roles could be investigation of other publishers for the proceedings, helping with the history project (as already mentioned in the committee's report), or coming up with substantial publications, perhaps for sale. Page pointed out that trying to publish revenue-producing works can be a difficult challenge. ACTION ITEM: The Publications Committee is to discuss how it might reinvent itself and then report its findings to the Board. 4.12 Program Planning (Savage) All PPC members reviewed and categorized all proposals this year, which resulted in an overall program with a broader committee consensus. The PPC members also worked in subcommittees as follows: Informal Group Meetings (Sandy Folsom, Marilyn Geller, Emily McElroy, Rose Robischon), Poster Sessions Subcommittee (Jill Emery, June Garner, Marilyn Geller, Emily McElroy, Dana Walker), Focused Vendor Demo (Marilyn Geller, Emily McElroy, Steve Oberg, Dana Walker), and Streamlining Paperwork Subcommittee (Pat Loghry, Erika Ripley, Emily McElroy, Marilyn Geller). Sandy Folsom and Connie Roberts worked with Mark Jacobs to arrange and coordinate a joint session with Susan Kane of the National Women's Studies Association. Total number of proposals or ideas received for programs was 167, much higher than in recent years. Some difficulties were noted in the course of the committee's work (see related action items below): 1) The reimbursement policy caused some confusion. 2) What was allowable with regard to AV equipment was not always clear. 3) Some miscommunication between the secretary and the PPC co-chairs resulted from the fact that both the secretary and the PPC co-chairs received program proposals. 4) There was some miscommunication between the Proceedings editors and the PPC co-chairs about submission deadlines for papers. 5) General communications with speakers seemed confusing. The PPC report included a suggestion to drop the requirement that program proposals include brief biographical information. The Board decided, however, that this information should continue to be required from the beginning of the proposal process. The Board noted that we had been in a trial period for poster sessions for a few years now and that we needed to decide whether to continue them or not. ACTION ITEM: Novak and Savage to revise the reimbursement policy, including a limit on the number of nights of paid lodging offered to vision and strategy speakers. ACTION ITEM: PPC co-chairs and Board to work together to create more specific guidelines for AV use. ACTION ITEM: PPC to incorporate AV restrictions in the call for proposals and to require that speakers specify their AV needs in their proposals. ACTION ITEM: PPC co-chairs to work with ECC to create an online program proposal form for submission of 2005 proposals. ACTION ITEM: The Board and PPC to decide whether or not to offer poster sessions at the 2005 conference. The Board expressed its sincerest congratulations and thanks to the entire PPC and especially to Co-Chairs Marilyn Geller and Emily McElroy for their dedication and hard work in reinventing the programming. 4.13. Publicist (Cook) Cook distributed 480 English membership brochures, 100 in Spanish, and 65 in French during the year. She posted messages as appropriate to 16 electronic lists. She canvassed owners of these lists and found that most believed their list was relevant for NASIG outreach. At the publicist's request, ECC set up a generic e-mail address to be used to subscribe to these lists, eliminating the need to unsubscribe and resubscribe each year when a new publicist takes over. Cook also updated the procedural document, which will be useful to the next publicist. The Board thanks Cook for her good work as publicist. 4.14. Site Selection (Page and Tenney) 2005 Conference: The Minneapolis Hilton will be the site of the 2005 conference. Contracts with the hotel have been signed. The main contract provides for free meeting space and microphones if we fill our room block and spend $35,000 on food. 2006 Conference: Denver and Birmingham have sent proposals, as has Hofstra University. The Board thanks NASIG members at Hofstra University for the proposal they submitted for the 2006 conference. The Board engaged in substantial discussion of all the pros and cons. They noted several needs of NASIG members that must be considered, including convenient ground transportation from airports to the site, lodging that is easily accessible from the meeting rooms, convenient or nearby venues for evening events and for entertainment, and flexibility of dates to allow us to avoid conflict with other library meetings. In light of these considerations, Randall moved (MacAdam seconded) that we decline Hofstra's offer to host the conference for 2006. The motion passed unanimously. Given that preliminary information from Denver and Birmingham appears to meet the criteria for a venue, Novak moved (Persing seconded) that the Board approve travel to these two cities by the site selection team (Tenney, Page, and Luther). The motion carried. Savage suggested that it might be helpful to post the assessment document for each site proposal on NASIGWeb. 5.0 Conference Planning (Cipkowski, Novak) Pam Cipkowski reported that registration was set to begin at 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday (today), on the fourth floor of the hotel. As of June 16, 2004, 600 people had registered. Cipkowski reported that she had cancelled the brewery tour because it did not attract the minimum number of registrants. The souvenirs-pens, notepads, and t-shirts-are ready for sale. Pam mentioned how helpful Board member Stephanie Schmitt and ECC member Marina Oliver had been with online registration. Before Pam left the meeting to resume her responsibilities as CPC Co-Chair, the Board thanked her enthusiastically for her and her committee's wonderful work in organizing the conference. 6.0 New Business 6.1 Awards and Recognition (Randall) 6.1.1 Mexico Student Grant The Board engaged in a long discussion about both the original reasons for and the administration of a grant for a Mexican student in a library science program. The logistics have almost always been difficult, requiring as they do a completely separate process and timeline. To eliminate these difficulties while continuing to offer a grant to a Mexican student, the Board decided that for the 2005 conference, all applications for the Mexico Student Grant must be in English and will be submitted directly to the Awards & Recognition Committee. The committee will set aside one award for a Mexican student. ACTION ITEM: To accommodate the earlier conference date for 2005, A&R must provide a revised timeline for grants and awards. ACTION ITEM: Savage to ask the Strategic Support Task Force to explore additional methods for involving Mexican serialists in NASIG. 6.1.2 Other awards procedures McKee took the opportunity to reiterate that NASIG pays for three nights' lodging for award winners. Each winner will either share a room with another or will pick up the difference in cost if a single room is chosen. Because logistics are different when dealing with a hotel than when working with a campus conference center, it is best to have one contact person designated to make reservations for speakers and award winners. That contact person will be a member of the CPC. ACTION ITEM: A&R to provide a list of grant and award winners to the CPC liaison, who will attend to their hotel reservations. 6.2 Newsletter (Simser) 6.2.1 Privacy issues and the "Title Changes" column Because the Newsletter is no longer password protected, the personal information in "Title Changes" is now accessible to anyone. McKee asked that the column editor include a reminder in her return e-mail to those submitting information about job changes, pointing out that any information they provide can be seen by anyone- not only NASIG members. 6.2.2 Board minutes from the Board webpage Simser suggested that we establish a procedure for keeping the list of Board minutes up-to-date. The following procedure was agreed upon: When the current minutes are approved by the Board, the Newsletter HTML editor will convert them from Word to HTML and will update the list of minutes on the Newsletter page. ECC will move the HTML files listing links to files of Board minutes into the Newsletter space, so it will reside in the area for which the Newsletter staff have editing authorization. ECC will also make the link to the minutes appear more prominently on the Board webpage and will make an announcement under the "What's New" button on the homepage when each new set of minutes is approved. 6.3 Appointment of Proceedings editors (Randall and Savage) In order to coordinate information sent to speakers, especially dates for receipt of papers for the 2005 conference, we need to appoint the editors earlier in the year. The revised dates follow: November 1, 2004 - issue the call for Proceedings editors ACTION ITEM: Caraway to update the working calendar to reflect these dates. 6.4 Public Relations Task Force - next step (McKee) McKee had planned to appoint a task force to flesh out the PR recommendations made by the Strategic Planning Task Force. In the end, she did not manage to do so, but will rely on Savage to provide for follow-up to the SPTF recommendations. Savage's idea was to appoint members to a Strategic Support Task Force, which will devote its energies to investigating issues and working on projects that the Board passes on to it. Savage has completed his appointments to this task force and will assign work for them soon. 6.5 Survey and Evaluations Task Force (Schmitt and McKee) Schmitt has written a charge for such a task force. ACTION ITEM: Savage will appoint members to the task force. 6.6 Future of the Mentoring Program (Cook) The mentoring program will continue independently for another year, reporting directly to Tenney as Board liaison. Student grant award winners (including the grant winner from Mexico) will automatically be assigned a mentor. 6.7 Strategic Thinking (All) Cook spent several minutes describing the American Society of Association Executives and leading the Board in a discussion about its possible value to us as a resource. The Strategic Support Task Force may be asked to look into this possibility. McKee stated that the Board would do well to review the strategic plan carefully once a year, beginning at the fall 2004 Board meeting. 6.8 New liaison responsibilities, how Savage plans to operate as president Savage briefly discussed his plans for his presidential year and his manner of working. As part of this, he indicated that he plans to delegate as much as possible. ACTION ITEM: All Board members and committee chairs to list the issues that are pending. Committee chairs to submit their lists to Board liaisons; Board members to submit their lists and their committee chairs' lists to Savage. Savage wants committee members and chairs to feel that they are an integral part of the organization, because they are indeed so. Therefore, he encouraged Board liaisons not to micromanage committees, but rather to rely on committees to do their committee work and to devote their own energy instead to thinking further ahead and more globally than the chairs are perhaps able to do. 6.9 Online registration (Schmitt) Online registration in its second year was successful. Schmitt expressed thanks to consultant Paul Seeman (Maxwell-Street.net), Alice Gormley, Darwin Sanders, Pam Cipkowski, Marina Oliver, and the team participants at Marquette University. Schmitt advised the Board that the Online Registration Implementation Project needs to be integrated into organizational routines and processes according to a standardized calendar, now that initial development and implementation are complete. She presented a draft working calendar, suggested that committee responsibilities and inter-committee dependencies be formalized, and advised that an enhancements budget line be added to the annual conference budget. In addition, she recommended that the Board establish a standing online registration team composed of the NASIG treasurer, the conference registrar, and liaisons from ECC, PPC, and CPC. Finally, Schmitt listed five enhancement projects that would improve online registration, some of which would require financial resources and others of which would require only organizational work. After much Board discussion about enhancements to the system, four alternatives were identified: 1) switch to a turnkey system, 2) continue with our existing system more or less as it is, 3) continue with our existing system, making selected enhancements to it, or 4) continue with our existing system, making extensive enhancements to it. Savage moved (Novak seconded) that we continue with our existing system and that we budget for $3500 worth of enhancements, addressing them in priority order until the budget is exhausted. The motion carried. Tenney reminded the Board that all conference-related decisions must be made by December 1, 2004, including finalized programming and conference fees. Therefore, recommendations for programming should be submitted to the Board no later than November 15, 2004. In a different vein, Schmitt requested again that training time be set aside at the annual conference for committee Web liaisons and also for whoever will be working with online registration. ACTION ITEM: Page to direct the 2005 PPC to include this training time in the 2005 conference schedule. 6.10 Other new business/discussion McKee reminded Savage, Novak, Page, Cook, Emery, Parang, and Luther of the new Board member orientation to be held on Thursday at 8 a.m. The brainstorming session is scheduled for 10 a.m.-12 noon in the Mitchell Room, which seats 40. MacAdam will make a brief report of the session at the business meeting Sunday under "new business." McKee pointed out the guidelines for the Town Hall Meeting: The purpose of the meeting is for members to talk. Board members may respond but must keep comments very brief and certainly no longer than two minutes. On the topic of member and non-member rates, for the 2005 conference, the January 31, 2005, deadline for membership renewal is firm. This date will be announced in every committee meeting, at the conference, and over NASIG-L every two weeks during the last two months of the year. It will also appear prominently on the membership renewal form. Savage is finishing his appointments to the Twentieth Anniversary Task Force. Novak mentioned that Bank of America still does not deal efficiently with checks in Canadian currency. McKee announced that the invoice for our institutional subscription to the UKSG's E-Serials News has arrived. We have been invited to have someone from our organization contribute an article twice a year on serials trends in North America. McKee proposed having a fourth Board meeting sometime in mid-spring each year via conference call or Web conferencing. ACTION ITEM: Novak to investigate possibilities for Web conferencing. [Later noted: CEC is also investigating Web conferencing. Novak will consult with CEC.] No other business being brought to the table, McKee adjourned the meeting at 5:25 p.m. Minutes approved July 30, 2004. |
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