Present: Nicole Cooke, Trevor Dawes, Eleonora Dubicki, Ruth Hamann, Richard Kearney, Julie Maginn, Mary Mallery, Penny Page, Karen Topham, Mark Thompson

Call to Order: The meeting was called to order at 10:05 a.m.

Minutes: The minutes of the May 4, 2007, meeting were approved as submitted

President’s Report — Nicole Cooke

• ACRL - Nicole submitted our annual chapter report to ACRL in early May. It highlighted activities and programs from the section as well as committees. We still do not know our current status as an official chapter of ACRL National. According to information from the NJLA archives (located by Mary Mallery), we are an official chapter, but ACRL says they have no verification. Nicole sent them the material Mary found but has gotten no response. Apparently ACRL wants tax documentation, which they have been unable to get from the NJLA office. Unless we have official status, we won’t receive any further funding from ACRL ($1/chapter member; around $300 last year). Nicole and Karen Topham will follow up on this.

• Relationship with NJASL - We are hoping to establish a relationship between our User Education Committee and the NJASL (school librarians’ association) to address K-12 information literacy. Their president, Mary Moyer, has identified 6-8 people to set up a task force on information literacy. Nicole and Karen will identify people from our section to serve on this task force. The task force will set its own agenda.

• NJLA - Michele Reutty, incoming president, still needs volunteers to serve on NJLA committees. For more information about committee activities, see the NJLA website http://www.njla.org. The NJLA Executive Board wants to develop best practices for meeting virtually. They are asking for suggestions/recommendations from sections and committees by December 2007. Nicole has shared feedback from our section regarding our virtual meeting experiences (using Blackboard) over the past year. The Professional Development Committee also had two virtual meetings using AOL’s Instant Messenger; they noted the benefits for preparing minutes, but also felt that having some in-person meetings greatly facilitated communication.

• NJLA Blog - All sections and committees now have access to the NJLA Blog; Nicole and Julie Maginn have been serving as our representatives for posting on the blog. We were asked to provide comments about our NJLA conference programs/experiences, but Nicole and Julie have received no items from our members. The board discussed how we will handle posting in the future; we will let the Membership Chair (Jessica Vanderhoff) and Newsletter Chair (Julie · Maginn) share this responsibility. Julie will put an announcement in the fall newsletter to solicit contributions for the blog. Examples of news that might get posted would be program reports, meeting dates, upcoming activities, and calls for our awards (Research, Technology, Distinguished Service). We should contact Maureen Wynkoop, co-chair of the Publications Committee, to see if there are any policies regarding what can be posted.

• Executive Board Meetings for Upcoming Year - The board discussed how and where to schedule meetings for the next academic year. Karen Topham offered to use the Angel course management system at Brookdale to set up an online community for board members to use for virtual meetings. Mary Mallery noted that course management systems were not really intended, or set up, to hold meetings. The User Ed Committee has tried using the Maritech software for video connections between members, but they have had some difficulties with this (must be loaded onto individual computers). The board also discussed the possibility of teleconferencing between sites. The consensus was to use videoconferencing between Montclair and Brookdale. Karen and Nicole will schedule the rooms and dates and will work with their IT people to arrange videoconferencing between the sites. Meetings will generally be held on the first Friday of the month (10:00 a.m.), with some exceptions.

• Thank-You to Outgoing Board Members - Nicole distributed letters to outgoing board members thanking them for their service to the section.

Research Committee--Sara Harrington and Triveni Kuchi
The co-chairs were unable to attend the board meeting. Sarah submitted a report via email:

The NJLA CUS ACRL NJ Research Committee had an active year. As in past years, the Committee presented the Research Award, and sponsored a Research Forum at the NJLA conference. This year the Committee also sponsored a panel at the NJLA conference entitled “Research in the Disciplines and the Librarian.”

The panel “Research and the Disciplines and the Librarian” examined the publication efforts of librarians who draw on their own subject backgrounds and/or partner with members of the teaching faculty to conduct and publish research in disciplinary journals. The speakers were:

• Sister Anita Talar, Librarian/Professor, Seton Hall University
  
• Dr. Tom Glynn, Anglo-American History and Political Science Librarian, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
  
• Penny Page, Director of Information Services, Center of Alcohol Studies, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

The 2006 Research Award was presented to Laura Bowering Mullen, Behavioral Sciences Librarian, and Karen A. Hartman, Social Sciences Librarian, at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, for their article entitled “Google Scholar and the Library Web Site: The Early Response by ARL Libraries,” published in the March 2006 issue of College & Research Libraries [67 no. 2 (March 2006): 106-122.]

This article has already been cited in the professional literature, has been used in a research forum at a Canadian university, and now appears in open access bibliographies on the web.

The Research Forum, held at the conference, included a presentation by the 2006 Research Award winners, followed by four Forum presentations. The Forum participants were:

• Terrence Epperson, Social Sciences Librarian, The College of New Jersey,
  
• Alan Zemmel, Department of Culture and Communication, Drexel University. “The Appropriation of Problems: Co-construction of Service Requests in Chat Reference.
  
• Judy Jeng, Head of Collection Services, New Jersey City University. “Metadata Usefulness Evaluation of the Moving Image Collections.”
  
• Davida Scharf, Director of Reference and Instruction, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Norbert Elliot, Professor, Department of Humanities, New Jersey Institute of Technology, and Irvin Katz, Educational Testing Service. “Information Literacy Assessment at the New Jersey Institute of Technology: Comparing ETS and NJIT Assessments.”
  
• Judit Ward, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. “Evaluating Electronic Resources in a Foreign Language: The Hungarian Example.”

Sara Harrington and Triveni Kuchi, co-chairs of the Research Committee, end their term on June 30, 2007. Mark Thompson, Bergen Community College, has kindly agreed to serve as chair for a two-year term beginning on July 1, 2007.

Technology Committee--Mary Mallery
Mary will continue as chair for another term. She will send out a call on the listservs and the NJLA blog for new members.

User Education Committee--Theo Haynes
Theo could not be present at the board meeting. She will continue as chair for another year, although due to conflicts she may not be able to attend most board meetings. Caroline Geck from Kean University will serve as her representative at board meetings.

The committee will be meeting June 7 at NJIT, following the ETS Information Literacy Test. The test will begin at 8:30, for those who want to take it (takes 90 minutes); meeting will follow. According to Devita Scharf from NJIT it will be possible to get results from the test.

Membership Committee--Jessica Vanderhoff
Jessica was not present at the board meeting. Nicole reported that Bill Walker has taken a position at the Levy Institute of Economics at Bard College in upstate NY; Jessica Vanderhoff from Essex County College-West Caldwell campus is the new membership chair. The ACRL/NJ listserv needs to be moved from Seton Hall to Brookdale Community College; Karen Topham will help with this. We need to get information out to potential members about the different ways they can join our section/chapter (through NJLA or ACRL) and the benefits of membership. Fran Kaufmann had put some information together on this a few years ago, which we could update.

Newsletter Committee--Julie Maginn
The call for submissions for the fall issue of our newsletter will go out in late July or early August.

Incoming President’s Report—Karen Topham

• Meetings for 2007/2008 - Karen will work with Nicole and Trevor on meeting dates and locations; she will email board members with the final information. We will plan to videoconference between Montclair and Brookdale. She is teaching at Brookdale on Friday mornings, so having Brookdale as a meeting site will work best for her.

• VALE Conference Committee - The conference planning for 2008 is already underway; conference date is January 9. Joan Getaz and Karen will co-chair; the theme is “Mission Possible: Partnering for Change.” Proposals that deal with partnering activities between libraries and groups such as faculty, administrators, student services or organizations, and distance educators will be especially encouraged. Per feedback from last year’s conference, three breakout sessions will be scheduled. The tentative schedule is :
  • Registration and poster session, 9-10 a.m.
    
  • Keynote speaker, 10-11 a.m.
    
  • Breakout session, 11 a.m.-12:05 p.m.
    
  • Lunch with table discussions, 12:15-1:15 p.m.
    
  • Poster session, 1:15-1:45
    
  • Breakout sessions (2), 1:45-2:45 p.m., 2:45-3:45 p.m.

  Richard Kearney will be in charge of breakout sessions. Ruth Hamann will handle the poster sessions, and Eleonora Dubicki will coordinate the lunchtable discussions. VALE is hoping to have a website for virtual proceedings; presenters will be asked to submit their materials prior to the conference for posting. There are two VALE reports (Impact Evaluation and Open Source Library Systems) that should be available in time for the conference.

  Three people have been suggested as possible keynote speakers: James Hughes, Dean, Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy (Rutgers); John Lombardi, Chancellor, University of Massachusetts; and David Lewis, Dean of the University Library at Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis. Nicole and Trevor shared feedback on Hughes and Lewis. Additional feedback on any of the candidates should be sent to Joan Getaz or to Karen. There was a suggestion that selecting someone from outside the libraries would fit better with the conference theme of partnering.

• ACRL Chapter meeting - Mary Mallery noted that someone should represent our chapter (to give a brief report of our activities) at the ACRL chapter meetings during the ALA conference. Eleonora will be at the conference but is not sure of her schedule. Nicole will send information to her and to Karen about the meeting schedule and our annual report.

New Business:

Webpage Updates—Mary Mallery
Mary reviewed our webpages at a href="http://www.njla.org/njacrl/">http://www.njla.org/njacrl/ and the updates that are needed. New board members should give their contact information to her. Incoming officers are Karen Topham as President, Richard Kearney as VP/Pres.-Elect, Trevor Dawes as Secretary, Eleonora Dubicki as Member-at-Large, and Ruth Hamnn, Member-at-Large. Nicole Cooke will take over as the new liaison to NJLA. Luis Rodriguez will continue as legislative liaison, Steve Shapiro will remain as nominations chair, and Julie Maginn will continue the newsletter. There is one new committee chair—Mark Thompson for the Research Committee. The status of the Job Shadowing program is uncertain. Luis had handed this over to Julie Still last year; Karen will contact her.

The board reviewed the timeline of activities that is posted on our webpage and suggested a few changes. Karen will update our chapter roster with ACRL. Mary will move the VALE conference planning to June and the annual report submission to ACRL to May. The NJLA orientation for section officers will be in July (date not yet set). The orientation includes how to get reimbursement for speakers and activities. Send any additional updates for the timeline or committee pages to Mary. She is also creating a page for all our conference activities; it includes photos taken by Ruth Hamann at the conference. Send any PowerPoint presentations from the conference to her for posting; if presentations are already posted on the NJLA conference page, send her the link. Mark Thompson will forward the PowerPoint presentation from the winners of the Research Award.

Good of the Order:

NJLA Conference - Nicole Cooke
The dates for the 2008 NJLA conference will be Apr. 29-May 1 (Tues.-Thurs.) at the Ocean Place Resort in Long Branch.

VALE Shared Information Literacy Committee - Richard Kearney
This committee would like to establish a complimentary working relationship with our User Education Committee . The VALE committee is compiling a database of materials used in library instruction, which they feel would be a unique and useful contribution.

PR for our Section/Chapter - Nicole Cooke There have been several mentions of our section/chapter in recent months in both the NJLA Newsletter and ACRL’s Chapter Topics.

Next meeting:
:September 14, 2007, 10:00 a.m., at Montclair and Brookdale.

Meeting Adjourned: 11:25 a.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Penny B. Page
Secretary