CARL Board of Directors Meeting 

December 8, 2003

Chapman University, Orange

 

Attending: Judy Clarence (President); Ron Rodriguez (Vice President, South); Jean Purnell (Vice President, North); Vicki Rosen (Treasurer); Ann Hotta (Secretary); Liz Ginno (Membership Director); Fred Batt (Interest Group Coordinator, North); Suellen Cox (Interest Group Coordinator, South); Simone Yu (Campus Liaison Coordinator, North); David Rios (Campus Liaison Coordinator, South); Christina Woo (Newsletter Editor); Bonnie Petry (Web Site Coordinator); Lynne Reasoner (Archivist); Aline Soules (Legislative Liaison); Lynn Lampert (incoming Secretary); Carl Bengston (incoming ACRL Chapters Council Delegate); Brian Lym (incoming Campus Liaison Coordinator, North); John Dobbins (incoming Interest Group Coordinator, South); Cynthia Jahns (Chair, Committee on Organization)

 

Guests: Deborah Schaeffer (Committee on Organization. Conference Local Arrangements Chair); Kelly Janousek (Conference Program Chair); Gale Burrow (SCIL)

 

Absent: Bonnie Petry (Website Coordinator)

 

1.              Introductions

 

Incoming and current Board members introduced themselves to one another.

 

2.              Approval of Minutes

 

The minutes for the meeting of September 29, 2003 were approved.

 

3.              Approval of Agenda. Approved

 

4.              President's Report (Judy Clarence)

 

a)             Mondays still seem to be a good day for Board meetings. Tentatively, the next Board meeting will be Monday, March 8, 2004 at CSU Sacramento, but Ron and Fred will confirm the date and place.

 

b)              Regional meetings for CARL members should happen in February. CSU Los Angeles was offered as a site to hold the meeting again. Deborah will check on the possible dates: February 6 or February 13 (both are Fridays). The meeting in the North will follow the meeting in the South, at a time and place to be scheduled.

 

c)              Judy will write the ACRL Chapters Council Report for this year. Ron and Carl will work out between themselves who will write it next year.

                 

5.              Vice President, South Report (Ron Rodriquez)

 

a)             Fundraising is not going as well as hoped. Last yearıs biggest contributor cannot contribute anything this year. Ron emphasized that the plan still is to break even on the conference no matter what the fundraising situation is, and that the committee will still try to attain the high level of quality that conferees have come to expect.

 

b)              Various strategies for the future for raising additional funds were considered. Now that we are a 501(c)3 organization, donations are tax-deductible.

 

 

 

We are not short of funds at this time, so there is still time to think about this more thoroughly. Ron will put this on the agenda for the next meeting.

 

c)              Other conference planning information:

 

The conference packets have been assembled and will go out in the mail today. Printing and materials costs came to $905. Stamps and mailing will come to about $555.

 

Deborah Schaeffer talked about Local Arrangements for the conference. The preconference activities include a private tour of the Gamble House and a private tour of the Norton Simon Museum. The Huntington Library has been confirmed as the postconference site, and a tour will be included. Deborah is still looking for a venue for the Thursday night preconference reception.

 

Kelly Janousek talked about the programs for the conference. Twenty-four applications were received for the twelve program slots. Three plenary speakers are confirmed (see September minutes) but she is still looking for a ³fun² luncheon speaker.  The Poster Session deadline is in January.  A time slot is open for an Interest Group networking session.

 

Deborah and Kelly were commended for all their hard work.

 

Christina would like to have a newsletter centerfold highlight the conference. She already has the content in hand but would like approval for possible additional costs for colored paper. This was approved. She should use sand or beige as the color.

 

February 13 is the early bird registration deadline. This year, there will be a cancellation fee.

 

Carl stated that now is the time to try to book Asilomar for 2006, if we wish to go there then. The Board agreed to try for that site again. Carl is willing to show someone the procedures for planning a conference at Asilomar. At this time we just need to choose five possible dates that will work for us and submit these dates on the Asilomar form. Asilomar wonıt actually confirm any of these dates until later on down the road, but the application needs to be submitted now. Ron, Carl, and Suellen will work on getting this request in to Asilomar.

 

5.              Vice President, North Report (Jean Purnell)

 

a)             The Fall northern get-together will happen this Friday, December 12. The goal of this event is to get Interest Groups together and provide an opportunity for them to network. Tyrone Cannon will give an opening address. We will have musical entertainment. Members are invited to bring along prospective members. So far 40 people have said that they will come.

 

b)              The Awards Committee will be sending out a request to all the members for nominees for Outstanding Member. As discussed at the December 2002 meeting, the committee will make it easier than it has been in the past to nominate people by just asking members to submit the name of the person with just a little information about them. The committee will do the rest of the research.

 

6.              Secretaryıs Report (Ann Hotta)

 

Ann reminded current Board members and informed new Board member about the shared file server. This yearıs minutes, along with other documents such as Treasurerıs reports, and a draft of the Program Planning manual are also posted there.

 

Ann passed out a 2004 roster and asked people to send her corrections if there are any. Christina will send out an email message to get the email addresses and addresses of the 2004 Board members. She will update the Roster.

 

7.              Treasurerıs Report (Vicki Rosen)

 

a)             Vicki reminded/informed Board members that the form for reimbursements is on the CARL website in the ³Forms² section. Including a self-addressed envelope with your form isnıt required but really helps. Any outstanding expense reports need to be in to Vicki by the end of December because December 31 is the close of the fiscal year.

 

b)              Ann and Suellen have given Vicki signed copies of the last two yearsı Board meeting minutes. Future secretaries must also submit a signed copy to Vicki, who passes them along to our attorney, who keeps them in the Minutes Book, as required by law.

 

c)              Copies of our Bylaws and Articles of Incorporation have been sent to ACRL.

 

d)             Now that Vicki has completed the process of incorporation and acquired our 501(c)3 status, she is now working again on getting us insurance.

 

e)              We are now eligible for a nonprofit standard mail permit. Cynthia said that we had a bulk mailing permit, but about three years ago let it go. This type of mailing has disadvantages, such as not getting back mail that could not be delivered, it was decided at that time that it wasnıt worth the cost. Since our situation hasnıt changed and we still send out the same types of things that we sent out back then, it was decided again that it wasnıt worth the cost. Moreover, we are doing less mailing of paper copies of the newsletter. Only 325 print copies go out in the mail (about half of the membership) and this number is likely to continue to decrease. A box on the membership renewal form asks people to state if they want a print copy; a web copy is available to all the members.

 

f)              Our net income for this year is $5,581.09. We have about $28,000 in savings.

 

g)              No interest groups have asked for seed money this year.

 

h)             Lynne Lampert is the registrar for the upcoming ACRL Immersion program being organized by SCIL. What should she do with checks that she receives for this? Vicki said that she should send the checks insured via FedEx or UPS. Liz also photocopies membership checks and keeps the photocopies until Vicki says that she has received the checks; then Liz shreds the photocopies.

 

8.              Membership Directorıs Report (Liz Ginno)

 

a)             Liz passed around copies of the completed membership brochure that she has been working on.  Liz will bring copies of the brochure plus membership applications to the December 12 event in Northern California.

 

b)              Currently we have 646 members for 2003 and 15 members for 2004. These 2004 members are new members who sent in their registration late in the fall. Liz made them into 2004 members since the 2003 membership year was almost over.

 

c)              The new CARL-IT Interest Group is now offered as a choice in the Membership database. No members are listed yet but Liz will announce the new group via CARLALL and encourage members to list themselves under CARL-IT in the database.  The list will also be a choice on the renewal forms.

 

d)             There are now 98 members of the new Technical Services Interest Group. Liz has to fix the report generator for the database to include this data, but the data is actually in the database already.

 

e)              Kelly wishes to analyze membership data to see what kind of outreach is most effective in gathering new members. Suellen will give Liz the name of student scholarship applicants and Liz will determine when these people became members. Kelly will see if there is any correlation.

 

f)              When should Liz send out forms for membership renewal, in light of the fact that people have an opportunity to join or renew at the time that they register for the conference? A conference packet is being sent to everyone in the database listed as a 2002, 2003, or 2004 member. Since some people will not be interested in the conference but still wish to become a member or renew, she should go ahead and send the forms out now. The renewal form should indicate that the conference registration form also has this opportunity so that people donıt renew twice.  Liz demonstrated the member database and searched for the renewal status of a member.

 

8.              Committee on Organization (Cynthia Jahns, Deborah Schaeffer)

 

The Committee on Organization met this summer. A copy of the committeeıs report, with its recommendations was distributed to Board members prior to the meeting.

 

a)             Motion: Create a ³Standing Rules² document to codify policy.

 

Discussion: Current CARL bylaws could be simplified by pulling out procedural details and make them into ³Standing Rules.² The problem with having this kind of information in the bylaws is that bylaw changes require a vote of the entire membership, plus filing changes with the Secretary of the State of California (which involves attorney fees). Carl Bengston said the ACRL bylaws document were used as a boilerplate for the CARL bylaws, although another organization that he is in used a very different boilerplate for its bylaws. Aline was on an ACRL committee during the time that ACRL was writing its bylaws; she was of the opinion back then that the ACRL bylaws were too detailed.

 

How are Standing Rules different from the Administrative Manual? First of all, the Administrative Manual as such does not exist anymore. Both Cynthia and Ann have each gone through the old binder and determined that there was no currently useful information in there. The website contains all relevant documents and is the defacto ³Administrative Manual.² Having said this, Standing Rules are things that help the Board do its work, whereas ³Policies and Procedures² are things that help members do things.

 

Motion passed. The Committee on Organization should write the Standing Rules document.

 

b)              Article VIII, Section 7 states, ³No elected officer or director-at-large shall receive any compensation for his or her service on the Board of Directors.²  The IRS has seen this statement in our bylaws and it has already passed muster, so we should just leave it as is. See the March 10, 2003 Board Minutes (Section 8.3. Compensation for Work) for earlier discussion.

 

c)              Motion: Add material to the CARL website: a) Election procedures for the Board and for Interest Groups; b) List of Board member duties; c) ³Quick Guide to CARL Appointments² document; d) Standing Rules.

 

Discussion: When John McGinnis was president, each Board member wrote up a list of his or her duties. Someone needs to see if John still has this information, or if it could be gathered from Board Members from that time.

 

Motion passed.

 

d)             Motion: Add material to the CARL website when completed: a) CARL Conference Planning Manual; b) CARL Program Manual; c) Guidelines for Interest Group operations (elections, succession, formation of a new group, etc.)

 

Motion passed.

 

e)              Motion: Create a 2004 Communications Task Force to make a recommendation to the Board regarding the creation of a CARL Communications Committee.

 

Discussion: This idea started out as a Website Task Force but Board members felt that it would be better to look at the bigger picture of communications. First of all, the website and the newsletter should work together as tools for communicating with members. Second, we donıt know what the future will look like, so better not to use a name that could someday become dated and that we would have to change in the bylaws again, should the committee become a standing committee. Conceivably this work could be done by the Committee on Organization, but in practical terms the Committee on Organization already has a lot to do with limited time to meet. It would be better to create a separate committee that can focus on the growing task of communications.

 

The Task Force should figure out who should be members of this committee (perhaps the Secretary and the Treasurer should be ex officio members, as well as the newsletter editor?) It should also figure out if this committee should be an ad hoc committee or a standing committee.

 

Motion passed.

 

f) Motion: Recognize the excellent work that Bonnie Petry has done as CARL Web Coordinator for the last several years.

 

Motion passed.

 

g)              Motion: Conduct a survey of members to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the CARL website.

 

Discussion: The Committee on Organization felt that the upcoming conference would be a great time to conduct such a survey and originally proposed doing so there, but adding this to the evaluation form for the conference seems out of scope for the evaluation form. There wonıt be Internet access at the conference so it might be difficult for conferees to really evaluate the website there. The Board decided that the Website Task Force should figure out the best way to administer a survey.

 

Motion passed.

 

h)             Motion: form an ad hoc committee to add an updated and streamlined Conference Manual to the website.

 

Discussion: Kelly, Deborah, and Ann are among the people who could and would be willing to do this, but this is best done after the conference is over. Ron can appoint a committee at that time.

 

Motion passed.

 

i)              The election of the Directors-at-Large is out of sync; the elections of UC and CSU directors are supposed to happen in different years, according to the bylaws, but according to current practice it is happening in the same year. What is the easiest way to fix this?

 

Rather than change the bylaws, it is better for the Nominations Committee to figure out a way to get elections back in sync. This may mean that for one or two years, one or two directors have shorter or longer terms than usual. Next yearıs Nominations Committee should take note, create a plan, and carry it out to make elections conform to the bylaws.

 

Carl pointed out that the election is just for Directors-at-Large, not for Interest Group Coordinator and Campus Liaison per se. These positions are appointed by the Board from the newly elected Directors-at-Large. Ron was aware of this when the Nominations Committee put together this yearıs ballot, but potential candidates really want to know what their jobs are going to be before they commit themselves to being candidates. This is a problem that the Nominations Committee should also look at.

 

j)               Motion: Change the title of the CARL Member of the Year Award to Outstanding CARL Member Award. Also change the committee to be both vice-presidents and 3 at-large members, who may be chosen from previous award recipients.

 

Motion passed.

 

k)             Should the CARL Membership Committee members have a term of two years, staggered? It is nice to have this committee since it is another opportunity for members to get involved, and sometimes candidates for Membership Director come out of it. But one year seems like an appropriate term of office; members can always be reappointed for a second year. The Bylaws can be left as is.

 

l)              Motion: Add Section 3f to the Bylaws to explain the position of Legislative Liaison, and amend Article VII Section 2 to add the Legislative Liaison as an appointed Board member.

 

Discussion: The Legislative Liaison was not originally included in the bylaws because at the time no one was sure that we would be able to always fill this position. However, it seems fine to add it at this time.

 

Motion passed. Aline will provide text for Section 3f.

 

m)            There is no need to add a sentence in the bylaws that Directors-at-Large receive no compensation. This sentence is already in the bylaws.

 

n)              Motion: Include the Scholarship Committee in the bylaws as a Standing Committee.

 

Motion passed. The Standing Rules can describe criteria for the award and other procedural information.

 

o)              The Committee on Organization recommends further discussion about these two issues:

1)  How to encourage Interest Groups to hold elections;

2)  Now that the conference is every two years, it always falls in the term of the Southern President and never in the term of the Northern President. This is a workload issue that needs to be addressed.

 

p)             A vote by the members on bylaws changes should wait until the Communications Task Force finishes its work. We will go ahead with changing the name of the award to Outstanding CARL Member at this time anyway.

 

q)              Figuring out a time frame for bylaws voting will be an agenda item for the next Board meeting. Ron said that 2004 Board members will hold a mock election to test out electronic voting using the membership database.

 

r)              The Committee on Organization was thanked for all its hard work.

 

9.              ACRL Immersion program (Gale Burrow)

 

SCIL is hosting the ACRL Immersion on July 22-27, 2004 at Claremont Colleges. Work is underway. Deborah Moore is the incoming chair of SCIL and chair of this project. Gale herself is the person who answers questions about the program. A Sponsors Committee is raising additional funds, including funds for scholarships. $3,300 is still set aside in the CARL treasury for this event (this was SCILıs treasury when it became a CARL Interest Group) and will be used for scholarships unless there is a revenue shortfall. A Special Events Committee is working on events, including a reception. An Applications Review Committee has been assembled.

 

The registration fee is $1,200. There is not a reduced fee for commuters because this is supposed to be an immersion program. Gale believes that participants canıt get the full experience unless they stay at the site, and asks that Board members help others understand this if asked about it. Registrants will be offered the opportunity to bring their families and lodge together.

 

ACRL offers a package deal where they take care of things like speaker expenses for one set fee. SCIL feels that it is a good deal since it couldnıt be done piecemeal for less. Judy needs to sign the licensing agreement. Registration fees are supposed to cover all costs. Judy asked what happened if at the last minute the program had to be cancelled? Gale will inquire right away. It seems unlikely that ACRL would demand this sum since most of the expenses would not even be necessary if the program was to be cancelled, but Gale will check.

 

Claremont requires liability insurance for the event. Gale believes that the coverage required is $1,000,000 for the event plus $2,000,000 aggregate insurance. She will clarify the amounts and tell Vicki when we need to show proof of having insurance.

 

 

10.            Scholarship Committee Report (Suellen Cox)

 

The Awards Committee received five applications for the scholarship, four from students at San Jose State and one from UCLA. Committee members are: Suellen, Tracy Mayfield (CSU Long Beach), and Kathleen Hansen (CSU Monterey Bay). They will decide on the winners tomorrow by phone conference. The Board does not need to certify the winner, so the committee can just go ahead and notify applicants of the results. 

 

An article in the next newsletter will introduce the winners. Last yearıs winner wrote a  follow-up article on her experience at the conference; it was a nice feature and would be good to repeat this year. Christina asked for a digital copy of a photograph of the winners.

 

11.            Website Coordinator (Bonnie Petry)

 

Bonnie could not attend the meeting but sent this report via email on 12/5/2003:

 

a)             The CARL Web site has not yet migrated to Digital Forest.  You may remember I discovered that John McGinness had to authorize me with the Digital Forest folks and that took a while.  However, this has been taken care of and I should be able to proceed.  If possible, I will try to accomplish this during the Christmas break.  If not, as soon thereafter as I can.  If all goes well, there should be minimal disruption to the site.

 

b)              Regarding the Report from the Committee on Organization: First of all, let me say thanks for all the work that went into this report. Regarding the future of the Web site, I think the recommendations are good ones.  Certainly the flow of information to the Web Coordinator has at times been problematic.  The Web site has survived its infancy, childhood, and adolescence and is now ready to go to the next level.  I look forward to assisting in this process.

 

The Board asked if the ³selected link² color could be changed to something other than white. When one clicks on a link the text disappears. Changing the color will probably fix this.

 

12.            Newletter Editorıs Report (Christina Woo)

 

a)             Board members discussed the idea of including informal member polls in the newsletter. This could be especially useful as a way to gather ideas for Interest Group programs. Board members like the idea. The poll could be part of the newsletter, with an interactive link on the website where people can post their vote. The Communications Committee can look into this further and decide who would get the results of surveys. Profiles of CARL members chosen from the members at large is another idea for a regular feature.

 

b)              Christina thanked outgoing Board members for their contributions to the newsletter.

 

c)              Christina reminded the conference planners that reporters should be assigned to each session to write an article for the newsletter.

 

d)             Organizers of the Dec. 12 mini conference in the North can print out copies of the newsletter from the website and distribute these at the conference.

 

13.            Interest Group Coordinator, North (Fred Batt)

 

a)             Northern Interest Groups reported the following activities:

 

CDIG and DIAL: co-sponsoring a preconference for the CARL conference

 

GPIG: Ben Amata (CSU Sacramento) is considering a copyright workshop, possibly with Larry Lessig as speaker.

 

CARLDIG: has started a listserv. Southern CARLDIG members are invited to participate.

 

CCIG: doing a preconference on the ³Information Competency Challenge Test.² This came out of Bonnie Gratch Lindauerıs research, for which she and her colleagues received a CARL Research Award.

 

CALM: Kathy Ray (U of Pacific) is hoping to revive this group.

 

b)              The December 12 mini-conference in the North will give current and new Interest Group members a chance to connect.

 

14.            Interest Group Coordinator, South (Suellen Cox)

 

a)             Southern Interest Groups report the following activities:

 

ABLE and SCIL: Co-sponsored a program at Northridge. The topic was Designing and Assessing Student Business Research Assignments. Thirty-nine attended including nine Business faculty. Four Business faculty were among the presenters.

 

SEAL:  LA River Tour held on 9/20. The spring 2004 program will be "Library Usage Statistics: Politics, Promise & Pitfalls; A Look at Citation Analysis, Data Warehousing and the Counter Project."

 

TSIG: Will soon be approving their by-laws and conducting an election via email.  The next southern meeting will be in February.  The current plan is for a round-robin of topics that individual members want to present. Louise Ratliff has created an email list using Yahoo! Groups. She  plans to invite the northern group very soon.  Currently there are 24 people signed up. TSIG will be presenting a program at the upcoming CARL Conference entitled "FRBR, Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records, a new conceptual model for access and display of bibliographic records;" this will be of interest to catalogers and public service staff.  Presenters will be Ed Jones (National University) and John Espley (VTLS).

 

TSIG asked for clarification on what John Espley needs to pay for.  He and his company are willing to absorb the expense of his travel and housing in exchange for corporate sponsorship.  Must he also register for the conference? The Board agreed to waive his registration.

 

b)              Suellen and Fred have completed another draft of the Program Planning Manual. Board members should review the document and send comments via email.

 

c)              The Board noted that programs are not always announced on the CARL website, and sometimes only appear on the Interest Groupıs own website. The Communications Committee should look at this issue.

 

15.            Campus Liaison Coordinator, North (Simone Yu)

 

Simone still hopes to see the ³Treasures of the CSU² website actually mounted on the CARL web server, with a link to it from the home page. This would encourage other campuses to follow suit. This is Simoneıs last meeting as a Board member, so she will be passing the baton for this effort to Fred and Kathleen Hansen. Fred said that he would try to shape this into a formal proposal.

 

16.            Campus Liaison Coordinator, South (David Rios)

 

a)             David is perfecting his timing for asking people for items for the newsletter. There were slightly fewer items in this newsletter, but he is working on getting more next time.

 

b)              As further feedback to the Nominations Committtee regarding the issue of Directors-at-Large (Section 8 I, above) David stated that it was important to him to know ahead of time whether he was going to be Interest Group Coordinator or Campus Liaison Coordinator.

 

17.            Legislative Liaison (Aline Soules)

 

a)             A CARL member who is also a member of the SLA Sierra Nevada chapter asked if it would be all right to forward Alineıs legislative news emails to members of that group. Aline has given this permission.

 

b)              Aline is still struggling to make contacts with legislators. She has sent them all letters and has gotten no response so far, but it typically takes a while to establish this contact. She is waiting for them to return from this current session.

 

c)              Aline has been considering ways to further evolve this position.

 

18.            Archivist (Lynne Reasoner)

 

Lynne reminded outgoing Board members to forward things to her for the archive. She will send out an email that lists things that people have sent in the past.

 

 

19.            Old Business:  Hosting Listservs

 

Digital Forest will host listservs, but the cost is $30 per month for each group. Board members felt that CARL could not afford this. Interest Groups will still need to find an institution to host their lists.

 

20.            Other

 

a)             Past presidents of CARL do not have any role once their term of office is over. All that great experience could still be put to use somehow for the organization. Discussion of this should be an agenda item for a future meeting.

 

b)              Official thanks were given to all members going off the Board.

 

The meeting was adjourned at 3:30 p.m.

 

Respectfully Submitted,

 

 

Ann Hotta

CARL Secretary