| 3:15pm |
ASLI
Business Meeting
All conference attendees are encouraged to participate
Present: Anita Colby (Outgoing Chair), Linda Musser (Incoming Chair), Jinny Nathans, Jean Phillips, Amy Butros (Secretary), Brian Voss, Madeleine Needles, Gene Major, Lisa Fish, Chris Sherratt, Eileen Chandhoke, Kari Kozak, Judie Triplehorn, Stephanie Wright, Doria Grimes, Gloria Aversano, Donna Crommer, Bob Tolliver, Maria Latyszewskyj.
Chair Report – Anita Colby
Anita reported that the Strategic Plan developed by Jean Phillips outlines 3 goals, part of the initiatives adopted by ASLI. These 3 goals are: 1) Increasing ASLI membership and international members, 2) showcasing the expertise of ASLI members and mentoring new members, and 3) refining the conference planning process.
Anita reported on the proposal to the Elsevier Foundation. They got a huge number of proposals, so it is taking time for them to review all applications. The Student Conference this past Saturday night, at MGA Scholarship booth, went well. The students were very excited to win flash drives, and they were also excited about the scavenger hunt. Anita stated that overall it was a very positive experience; an ideal way to showcase ASLI member expertise, and that there was a lot of student interest at that Saturday workshop. The closer integration of our ASLI conference with the AMS conference, especially the online registration, worked well for all. Anita remarked that it was an excellent program that was well designed and organized. Jinny commented that Springer’s mention of International support for developing countries may be a place we could try for support and cooperation in reaching international members.
Treasurer's Report - Brian Voss
Total balance experienced a slight increase in 2009. This included the corporate memberships of CSA/ProQuest and AGU. Brian reported that an e-card submission was allowed for tax filing last February. Brian contacted the credit union to find out the procedures for signing over the account to the new treasurer. Our current credit union is part of a credit union network, and Brian’s advice was to use the credit union and ATM network because setting up an account with a bank is very difficult. Brian stated that his final task will be to perform an audit before turning over the position to the next treasurer, but he is not sure of the procedures for an audit, so he will be checking with IAMSLIC treasurers to see what procedures they followed. Brian will need volunteers to help work on the audit. A question was posed on the timeline for AMS’ transferring of the registration money, Jinny responded that it would be a few weeks, it should be transferred pretty quickly, and she had already given Brian a report of the meeting attendance. There are several bills pending for conference expenses. Jinny proposed that we discontinue having meeting refreshments to save money as they to increase in cost.
Website Report - Brian Voss
The web domain registration is due in March, and Brian will complete the registration then, he is just waiting for the notice of the 2 year renewal. The commercial host of our website is “Go Daddy”, and Brian is concerned that it does not support some of the features we use, such as form mailers and member access only sections. Our current web forms function, but are “kluged” together. He is searching for a host that will better support the functions we need. There was a suggestion to try “Crystal Tech” as a possible domain.
Membership Report – Evelyn Poole-Kober
Evelyn was not able to make the meeting, so Brian reported for her. Evelyn “beat the bushes” this past year to get 22 dues paying members and one corporate member to renew for 2009. They believe that more members will probably renew or join after the conference, since last year we had 45 members. Evelyn contacted our international members, and some are in the process of renewing. The librarian (Graham Bartlett) at the United Kingdom Meteorological Office has retired, but the new librarian there may renew their membership. Evelyn got a contact list from Judie of library schools and exhibitors so she is looking to increase membership by contacting those on the lists.
ASLI Choice Report - Maria Latyszewskyj
Maria reported that the Fourth Annual ASLI’s Choice Awards presentation took place on Wednesday afternoon in the AMS Exhibit Hall, Publishers’ Row area, near the ASLI booth. This year the committee had a very difficult time making decisions from the many nominations that came from 23 publishers, a record number so far. Maria reported that the committee communicated via email and telephone, and held several teleconference calls, (she thanked Doria & NOAA for hosting the calls). Two main awards: Scientific & Technical and History, as well as honorable mentions for each category, were selected by the committee according to the criteria and approved by the board. The selection and contacting of authors was difficult because a large number of books have been coming out in December, and the majority of the copies of nominations were obtained by committee members in December, which makes selecting the winners and contacting the authors in time for the January AMS meeting a challenge. Maria remarked that this year had the best representation of Choice authors being present in person to get their awards. Maria extended many thanks to Doria for the creation of the plaques and certificates.
Dr. K. Mohanakumar came from India in person to accept his award, Dr. Somerville accepted for Catherine Gautier, Dr. Kristine Harper accepted the award for her book, and Sharon Ray accepted for Erik Conway. Also accepting awards were Dr. Robert Doe, from Springer, and Dr. Matt Lloyd from Cambridge University Press. John Hopkins University Press and MIT press donated copies to display at the booth and for the ASLI raffle. The donated copies generated some revenue, $70, for our treasury. The ASLI webpage will be updated to list the Choice Award winners for 2008, and Maria will be submitting the awards information for publication in the May BAMS issue. Jinny commented that since next year is the 5th Choice award it would be nice to have a poster highlighting that.
ASLI Booth - Maria Latyszewskyj
Maria reported that this was the first time that ASLI had their booth in the main exhibit hall, it used to be in a separate publishers room. Maria acknowledged and thanked AMS for their support and for providing the booth at no cost to us. The blue magnetic clips as booth giveaways were a great hit, we ran out of the mugs and thanks to Linda for donating them. Thanks to Chris for the autographed copy of Divine Wind as raffle give-away. The Choice books were displayed at our booth; the booth location and traffic were good. The booth was staffed by a number of ASLI members. Since Evelyn was not able to come we were missing ASLI membership information to hand out. The “mood” pencils were very popular, but it would be good to have a giveaway with our website URL. It would also be good to have a handout for librarians interested in a career in science librarianship. Anita commented that it would be great to have a poster promoting the key note speaker with their talk topic and the date, time, and location of the session. Kari suggested that it would be good to display a poster with all ASLI member institutions listed at the booth. Chris asked if we have booths at SLA, or ALA, to advertise ASLI to our own profession. Jenny remarked that our booth would cost around $3,000. NOAA Libraries have a booth at SLA and Doria will send some ASLI information/brochures for display at that booth.
AMS Liaison - Jinny Nathans
Jinny reported that she had ASLI folded into the AMS conference stream with online registration and the program in an effort to have us equal with other conferences taking place at the AMS meeting. We’ll be adhering to the AMS program deadlines also next year. Publishers seemed satisfied with being in the same exhibit hall, so we will probably follow the same format and organization next year. There are many costs with setting up booths, so having AMS take care of our booth is a great advantage, and we hope it continues. Next year is the 90th anniversary of AMS, and Jinny will be doing things to celebrate the 90th, such as creating a website. Let Jinny know if you have any comments or suggestions about meeting logistics and organization. Anita asked if we could have conference rooms for our 101 course. Jinny will have to check with meeting organizers. The student conference is different from regular programs since it focuses on careers and not the students’ academic experience. Doing something on Tuesday would be very difficult logistically due to the way the conference is run, but Jinny will check on it. It would be very good to find ways of telling the graduate students about libraries in the different institutions and about MGA, so we need to find opportunities to do that. Linda thanked Jinny for her help and support throughout the year and also for the meeting planning.
MGA Advisory Board – Judie Triplehorn
Judie commented on the statistics of MGA usage, we need more publicity for MGA, and we should continue to have a presence at the AMS student conference, such as the scavenger hunt where we got 20 responses returned from around 100 questionnaires. MGA wants to continue to have a presence at our 101 course. They will have a brochure for their new look. The MGA Advisory Board representatives will be Maria Latyszewskyj and Jean Phillips.
Reporting on the 101 Workshop – 5 librarians participated as presenters, plus there was a nice MGA presentation. The presenters will put together the PowerPoint slides of all of their presentations. The presenters met after the workshop and decided that it would be good to have this repeated in Atlanta. Kari and Eileen will be working on the 101 presentation for next year. We were not charged for the facility use in the Phoenix public library, and the treats were courtesy of MGA, so we incurred no cost for this workshop. Maria developed a list of core journals and will post it to the website. They will combine the evaluations and the presenters will look at their own sections and make adjustments accordingly, the evaluations were very positive.
Judie reported on the Field Trip plans. The first stop will be the Arizona State Library, their new Archives, as a replacement for Dial Library, since Dial will now be running their operation out of Dusseldorf, Germany, the second stop will be the Salt River Project Library, and last stop will be Taliesin West. Judie asked all who were joining the Field Trip to meet at the conference center, 3rd and Monroe, for the bus on Friday morning.
New Business
Several items were sent to Linda:
Susan Tarbell, who was not able to attend, asked Linda to report that her library (Air Force Weather Technical Library) is being phased out and will probably be gone by the end of the year. Concern was expressed by many members hearing about the potential closing of the library. Judie reported that Susan had discouraged any letter writing campaigns, but the Air Force Weather publicity person, who was staffing their booth, thought that letters from ASLI may be of some help to preserve the collection. Judie recommended that ASLI write a letter of support for that collection. Doria mentioned that many of the items in their collection are unique, so a letter of support is the least that we can do. Jean commented that our website had the BAMS article and some letters posted. Discussion on ways to help or support Susan’s library followed. Linda volunteered to draft the official letter from ASLI in support of keeping the collection.
OCLC’s task force on small libraries and WorldCat, asked ASLI for input, since they are becoming aware that their new operation strategy may be a disincentive for smaller libraries to join. Linda will put the information on our listserv.
An idea was proposed to have a joint symposium on history. Gene will be planning the ASLI program for next year. Jinny reported that she was at the history program’s meeting and that they were discussing digitization and preservation. This led to the idea to have a joint session on keeping history, which could be open ended and could be held either during the history session or during our meeting. If anyone is interested in participating they should contact Gene or Jinny. Participants in the joint meeting won’t have to pay the presenter fee ($75).
Members were invited to share any program ideas they had with Gene. Brian commented that he liked having the technical updates, and that it would be good to have them again next year. Gloria suggested inviting the IEDR, non-profit organization that had a booth on our row, to present at our meeting.
Jinny asked for group consensus on having no food at next year’s conference, since it cost around $600 for our refreshments. Discussion followed on having coffee only, or getting sponsors for food, or nothing at all. Decision was to defer to Gene to look into logistics and food costs, etc. for next year’s meeting.
Jinny commented on the MGA presentations that brought up peer reviewed literature and the MGA community, and mentioned that it would be appropriate for us to issue a policy statement on the different grades of literature, even if that was more of a definition of types of literature. She stated that Keith would be willing to write a column as a follow up to his presentation. Stephanie thought this would be a great idea, but asked who would we be trying to reach, would students be our main target? Jinny responded that this could be an opportunity to get the word out, and have it on our website. Madeleine stated that we would reach not just students but the general public, because BAMS does get read by many. Linda commented that there were 2 different issues here, the focus on types of literature, like grey literature, and the concern about our students not being able to determine quality information from bad information. It would be good to have ASLI describe the types of good information, but we need to be careful of what we put our stamp on, and not to insult institutions who put out the grey literature. We should discuss what is legitimate and what is not before going on record with our opinion. Linda asked for more focus to determine which direction to go and to narrow this down to have a clearer vision of what we want to do.
Jinny brought up Gerry’s proposal of the MGA Community, and how he is anxious and motivated to do this, and ProQuest wants to be the first one to do this and they feel that we are good candidates to be involved with this. Gerry asked Jinny to bring this up and see if anyone wants to be involved with this committee. Judie, Chris, and Gene volunteered, and there will also be a call for volunteers put out on our listserv. Identifying the seminal pre-prints for this MGA Community and the forum for this identification process could all be on the MGA Community.
Recognition of Outgoing Officers:
Jean Phillips, Past Chair
Brian Voss, Treasurer
Linda recognized and thanked Jean and Brian for their effort and work. Special thanks to Doria Grimes for helping organize meetings, and phone conferences. Linda also thanked Anita for her help and support, and for preparing the Elsevier project application.
Election of 2009 ASLI Executive Board and Officers:
The current ASLI Officers:
Chair: Linda Musser, Fletcher L. Byrom Earth and Mineral Sciences Library, Pennsylvania State University
Past Chair: Anita Colby, Science and Engineering Library, University of California, Los Angeles, CA
Secretary: Amy Butros, Scripps Institution of Oceanography Library, La Jolla, CA
Chair-elect Nominee: Gene Major, NASA/Goddard
Treasurer Nominee: Gloria Aversano, NOAA Miami Regional Library at the National Hurricane Center.
Linda asked if there were any nominations from the floor, there were none. Members present all voted in favor of Gene Major for Chair-Elect and Gloria Aversano for Treasurer.
Maria thanked Linda for this year’s great program, and presented her with a gift amidst warm applause.
Meeting was adjourned at 4:30 p.m. |
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