The NASIG Executive Board traditionally holds its fall meeting at the site of the upcoming annual conference, so a few weeks ago, the Board met at the Marriott City Center in Denver. I am very glad to report that all indicators are good for the 2006 conference. The conference facilities are excellent, as are the hotel services. Another plus is the hotel’s layout, which makes it easy to move from room to room and between floors. For coffee lovers, there’s a Starbucks onsite, and the lower level bar is the perfect spot for late-night socials. There is also an outdoor courtyard, where we could have lunches and breaks (if the weather cooperates) and enjoy those gorgeous Colorado blue skies.

The Board also experienced some of what this wonderful city has to offer, and we all wished we had more time to explore. The free shuttle bus makes it easy to get around the downtown area. Many of us took advantage of the free ride to visit the legendary Tattered Cover Book Store and the stunning Denver Public Library. This year, we will again offer post-conference tours, and conference attendees will have a variety of options to sightsee Denver and surrounding Rocky Mountain destinations.

Not that we spent all our time as tourists (though that would have been fun). The Board, along with the CPC and PPC co-chairs, hunkered down to business during two days of meetings. I am very pleased to report that our wonderful program planners have great sessions in development for next May, and our conference planners have the logistics under control. Thanks to our amazing CPC chairs, Wendy Highby and Paul Moeller, the evening event for Thursday, May 4^th at Red Rocks is definitely on! Make sure your travel plans get you to Denver early in the day, because you do not want to miss this natural wonder. Check it out at: http://www.redrocksonline.com/.

The full minutes of the Board meeting are included in this issue of the Newsletter, so I won’t repeat what you will find there. I would like to mention that one of the highlights for me was learning that the 2005 conference was rated either a 4 or 5 by 96% of attendees. That makes Minneapolis one of our most highly regarded conferences ever! All the credit goes to the miracle workers who served as Conference Planning Co-Chairs, Linda Hulbert and Sue Zuriff, and to the creative geniuses who were our Program Planning Co-Chairs, Marilyn Geller and Emily McElroy, not to mention their hard-working CPC and PPC committee members. To make this good news about the conference even better, we earned some money, too. As a non-profit group, all earnings are plowed back into the organization in the form of programming, technical infrastructure, support for scholarships, etc. NASIG has always been fiscally responsible (cheap, some might say), and we have an excellent financial track record. Nonetheless, it is always good news to confirm that we are on the plus side of the ledger.

As you all know, NASIG dues have increased substantially for the coming renewal cycle. Many have questioned why we decided to increase dues so dramatically, from $25 to $75. The Board consulted widely on this issue, and we learned that for most non-profits, it is best to raise dues to what the organization really needs in one fell swoop. When organizations raise dues incrementally, according to the experts, it seems like dues increases are never-ending, and people tend to forget why their dues are being increased every year. NASIG’s annual operating expenses are roughly $85,000, and the new dues structure should cover this amount, which will allow us to invest any earnings from the conference in a contingency fund and in organizational development. Through the process of developing NASIG’s financial plan, we learned that a non-profit organization such as NASIG should have at least one year’s operating budget in a contingency fund. Instead of running the organization with what we earned at the conference each year, the new dues structure will allow us to invest all profits into our contingency fund. And ultimately, this plan will result in a solid financial future for NASIG.

With all that said, I am thrilled to report that renewals are pretty much on pace with previous years. This is a testament to the value of NASIG to its members, and I am grateful for your confidence in this wonderful community of serialists. If you have not yet renewed your membership, please take a moment to do so. Our incredible Database and Directory Committee, led by Jo McClamroch, has done an amazing job with the development of our online renewal services. (Step Schmitt gets a tip o’ the hat here as well.) To renew your NASIG membership right now, please go to http://www.nasig.org/forms/membership/.

I’ve been making Thanksgiving dishes today, which I love to do. This is my favorite holiday: food focused, with relatively minimal consumerism. While I was stirring the cranberries as they morphed from bitter to sweet, I thought about how much the subscription renewal process has changed since I began working with serials so many years ago. Remember twenty-pound renewal lists? (In triplicate, no less.) While eliminating the massive paper output has been a major change for many of us, the more transformative changes can be found in the fact that subject specialists are now more likely to evaluate journal packages than individual titles (some say they’ve lost control of their collections; others marvel at the vast number of titles they now have access to). Print/online bundles have made cancellation projects a different animal altogether. Licensing, for better or worse, has made us take a hard look at our organizational policies and practices.

Scholarly publishing was at one time the domain of academics and intellectuals; now, it’s a multi-billion dollar industry. In my library, it was not uncommon to make million dollar deals on a handshake. These days, an RFP and a formal process that involves our purchasing department are more typical. Vendors and publishers are often a subgroup of a larger corporate structure. A common theme for all of us – publishers, vendors, and librarians – is that our organizations have become more businesslike.

And so, we have all had to work through our discomfort zones in recent years. And it’s not over. Issues such as open access, digital rights, escalating prices, new service fees, and new service models will continue to challenge all of us who work with scholarly publications.

NASIG was founded with the idea of bringing all parts of the industry together to wrestle with the challenges we shared. And twenty years later, this is still what makes NASIG more relevant than ever. The only constant we can count on is change.

That said, I repeat, please do not forget to renew your NASIG membership today! http://www.nasig.org/forms/membership/.

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving, and here’s to a safe and happy winter holiday season!