NJLA College and University Section

ACRL/NJ Chapter

Executive Board Meeting

Minutes

Aug. 6, 2004

Alexander Library, Rutgers University Libraries-New Brunswick

Present: Nicole Cooke, Frances Kaufmann, Nancy Madacsi, Mary Mallery, Leslie Murtha, Carol Nurse, Penny Page

Call to order: The meeting was called to order at 10:20 a.m.

Minutes: Minutes of the June 4 meeting were approved.

President’s report – Fran Kaufmann

Fran attended the leadership training program which followed the NJLA business meeting on June 15. This program is for new NJLA officers, committee chairs, and section presidents; she found it very helpful.

The 2005 NJLA conference will be held Monday-Wednesday, Apr. 11-13, 2005, at Ocean Place in Long Branch. Because the ACRL national meeting is just before this, we will hold the College and University luncheon on Wednesday (to better suit members who will be attending both events). Fran spoke with Elizabeth Kirk from Johns Hopkins University Libraries Entrepreneurial Library Program, and she has agreed to be our luncheon speaker. Fran will include one night’s lodging (before the luncheon), travel and meals, plus $300 honorarium, in the budget request for the program. The deadline for preliminary proposals with budget requests is October 15; final proposals due December 1. Committees should start their program planning as soon as possible.

Dan O’Connor from SCILS suggested that our section co-sponsor (with SCILS Alumni Asso.) poster sessions at the conference. This would be a new experience for many public librarians. Nancy Madacsi suggested that we try to get a SCILS professor to champion this idea and make it part of their class. She will contact Jana Varlejs about this idea. Amy Job, president of the Technical Services Section, is very interesetd also; we might be able to co-sponsor with them. The board had some concerns about the timeframe for recruiting participants as well as possible costs for tables, boards, and space. Fran will contact Heidi Cramer on the Conference Committee about this. Mary Mallery volunteered to work on this project if we decide to proceed.

We will be a sponsor for the VALE Users Conference again next year. The theme is “Issues in Scholarly Information.” The program will be held on Thursday, January 6, at the Busch Campus Center at Rutgers-Piscataway. Vibiana Bowman is our chapter representative and is co-chairing the program with Joan Getaz. Joan suggested that our committees might want to sponsor some of the afternoon breakout sessions; Fran will contact her for more information on this. We will do a poster session elaborating on the structure of our organization. Committees can also do their own poster sessions if desired.

The special committee (Kaufmann, Cooke, Nurse, Murtha, Hamann, Rodriguez, Madacsi, and Randall) planning our membership event met on July 6. Caldwell College has agreed to host a program, tentatively scheduled for Oct. 15, which would run from 1:30-3:30 and would include a panel discussion plus wine and cheese reception. The theme of the program is “Academic Libraries and the Political Scene,” and there are a wide range of topics that could be used for the panel program. Members of the panel would potentially include Luis Rodriguez, Norma Blake (or her representative from the State Library), Pat Tumulty, and possibly some sponsors from the Knowledge Initiative. Since Luis has another commitment on Oct. 15, we would need to change the date if we want him to participate. Fran will check with Lynn Randall at Caldwell to see if Oct. 22 is available.

Our final budget allocation from NJLA was only $300, plus we should get around $300 from ACRL. That is not enough to cover costs of printing and distributing the newsletter. However, Connie Paul from the Central Library Regional Cooperative has offered to print for us if we send her the newsletter in electronic format. She can’t do a folded version; it will have to be stapled. She can then send via CD&L to Pat Fazio, who will handle the mailing and bill NJLA for the postage. That’s a workable solution for this year, but we don’t know how long this will continue.

Fran distributed copies of an article by Mary Mallery in the Infolink newsletter on the Visions 2014 program. Mary will remove Jim Neal’s Powerpoint presentation from our website, since he requested that it only be posted for one month.

Committee reports:

NJLA Liaison – Nancy Madacsi

There is a proposal to raise the recommended minimum salary for NJ librarians by 5% (to around $41,000), and some NJLA board members oppose this as being too high. The board deferred further discussion on librarian salary minimums until the next meeting, but they did approve a 5% increase in the minimum salary recommendation for library assistants (around $22,000).

User Education Committee – Leslie Murtha (for Annemarie Mascarenhas)

The committee’s program on “Crossing Borders/Making Transitions,” which was held July 12 at Brookdale Community College, had over 60 participants. Rutgers University Libraries paid for videotaping the plenary speakers and one breakout session. The committee will put the Powerpoint presentations on their website, and they hope to create a webcast to include the video, Powerpoints and handouts. Copies of the video will go to NJLA and to Rutgers. The committee is exploring ways to continue the dialog from this program. They have forwarded a suggestion to Pat Tumulty at the NJLA office to develop a listserv for all NJ librarians.

Leslie recently sent out to board members a Word file for the NJLA program proposal form.

Web Coordinator – Mary Mallery

Mary added the NJLA logo to our website. She passed out a draft for the Technology Committee’s new website; it will contain three sections—members, events, and resources.

Newsletter – Nicole Cooke

The call for material for the fall issue will be going out soon. Fran will send the President’s letter. Nicole will set up new timelines to include sending to Connie Paul for printing.

Membership – Carol Nurse

Carol has been busy with planning for the October membership program at Caldwell. We will need to print more section brochures. Montclair, Seton Hall, and Centenary may be able to help with printing. We will put the brochure on our website so members can print copies as needed. Nicole will send the file to Mary for posting (will need to convert from Publisher to PDF).

The board discussed ways to recruit new members for our committees. We should announce meetings in the newsletter. At our October membership program we can give committee chairs a few minutes to speak about their committees.

Old Business – Bylaws

Board members should review our bylaws (last revised in 1998), which Fran distributed earlier, to see if we need to update. We could use other ACRL chapters as guides [See Delaware Valley chapter bylaws online at http://www.acrldvc.org/bylaws.html). We will discuss at the September meeting.

Mary Mallery did some follow-up on the idea of a new librarian’s group. The first program for the 2004-05 Emerging Leaders (NJLA) is Oct. 28. Nicole participated in this program earlier, and she offered to contact Connie Paul to volunteer to speak about our section. Nancy Madacsi will bring information to the Council of Library Directors (including membership brochures and information about Emerging Leaders). Mary also investigated mentoring programs. SLA has a program called Dinner Buddies to match new librarians with “veterans” at their conference; we could do Lunch Buddies at VALE and other programs.

Meeting schedule and locations

Fran will check to see if we need to teleconference to Camden this year. Since Julie Still is on leave, the only possible attendees at Camden would be Pat Fazio and Marc Meola. Carol will look into parking procedures for Montclair, and Penny will handle parking permits for Rutgers-New Brunswick. Schedule for upcoming meetings (all will be videoconferenced between Rutgers and Montclair, except where noted):

Sept. 10

Oct. 1

Nov. 5 (no videoconferencing; meet at Rutgers SCILS faculty lounge)

Dec. 3

No Jan. meeting

Feb. 4

March 4

No Apr. meeting

May 6

June 3 (no videoconferencing; meet at Rutgers-New Brunswick)

Meeting adjourned 11:40 a.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Penny Page

Secretary