Present: Nicole Cooke, Ruth Hamann, Sara Harrington, Christopher Lee, Julie Maginn, Mary Mallery, Penny Page, Steve Shapiro
Call to order: 10:05 a.m.
Minutes: The minutes of the Sept. 9 meeting were approved with one correction—the deadline for NJLA conference proposals is Nov. 4.

President’s Report—Nicole Cooke (chairing the meeting in Marc Meola’s absence)

• ACRL Chapter Allocation— We have 328 members for 2005/06, so our allocation this year is $328. This is an increase over recent years. We also received our new membership list and email addresses for all members.

• Conference Planning
  
  • NJLA Annual Conference—The deadline for completed program proposals is Nov. 4. Cindy Czesak, Conference Planning Committee chair, suggests that if a speaker needs to be paid, committees should get their proposals in as soon as possible, because funds are already being distributed. If committees are uncomfortable negotiating fees with speakers, the Conference Planning Committee will be glad to handle this.
    
  • VALE Users Conference—Joan Getaz has extended the deadline for submissions for breakout and poster sessions to October 10. Ruth Hamann said that there are only a few poster proposals, and she encouraged board members to submit (or recruit others).

• PALINET Conference—Will be held in Philadelphia Nov. 14-15. The keynote speaker will be Stephen Abrams from SirsiDynix.

• Section Awards—Our upcoming fall newsletter will feature information about our various awards: Research, Technology Innovation, and Distinguished Service. All deadlines for nominations will be in early February, and presentations will be made at the NJLA conference.

• TCNJ Library—The opening ceremony for the new TCNJ Library will be Friday, Oct. 28. All board members will be receiving invitations.

• ALA Midwinter—There are still hotel rooms available for the conference in San Antonio. Some members had been told that none were available, but according to a recent ACRL email, there are still rooms to be had for the conference dates. Problems may be arising when people ask for “shoulder dates” (before and after the conference dates) that may not be available. Call the travel desk if there is any problem.

Committee Reports:

Research Committee—Sara Harrington
The committee is meeting Oct. 21 at Seton Hall to finalize ideas and speakers for the NJLA conference. They will also be discussing adding more committee content to the website.

Membership Committee—Chris Lee
The new ACRL/NJ listserv has been created (hosted by Seton Hall), and announcements will be going out soon. Marc and Chris have been discussing ways to get members signed on to the list.

Technology Committee—Mary Mallery
The location for presentations by the nominees for the Technology Innovation Award has been changed from Monmouth University to the Rutgers’ Scholarly Communications Center in New Brunswick. Date is March 17. The guidelines for submissions have been updated on the website. The committee has invited three speakers for the NJLA conference, and all have accepted. Eric Lease Morgan will be coming from Notre Dame; he is the winner of the 2004 LITA/Library Hi Tech Award for Outstanding Communication in Library and Information Technology. The committee may partner with the Information Technology Section to sponsor this program. They may also offer a Technology Forum on Tuesday, which would feature presentations by the winner and other nominees for the Technology Innovation Award. Other conference speakers will be Grace Agnew from Rutgers, speaking on use of Fedora open-source software for the NJ Digital Highway, and David Lindahl from University of Rochester, speaking on web usability studies. The next meeting of the committee is scheduled for Oct. 16.

Nominations Committee—Steve Shapiro
Steve has begun working on nominations for officers for the next year. We will be electing one member-at-large, a secretary, and the vice president/president-elect. Send any suggestions to Steve.

User Education Committee—Ruth Hamann (for Karen Topham)
The Oct. 21 program at Brookdale on plagiarism is set to go, but registrations have been very slow (only 17 signed up so far). The program is directed at high school and college librarians, but many school librarians may not be able to get the time off during the school year.

NJLA Liaison—Mary Mallery (for Nancy Madacsi)
Mary attended the last NJLA board meeting, where the board named liaisons for all sections and roundtables. Nancy Madacsi will continue as our section liaison. The Verizon Literacy Walk will take place on Oct. 16. The board voted to donate $1000 to ALA’s relief fund for Hurricane Katrina; they also approved a statement on public employees’ pension benefits (posted on the NJLA website). The NJLA office is moving upstairs in their building, which has led to a closer look at the archives. As a result, the Constitution and Bylaws Committee is looking into developing a policy for retention of documents. NJLA’s 115th anniversary is coming soon, and the board is considering how to celebrate this at the conference. Norma Blake was honored for 25 years of membership and service to NJLA. The next board meeting is Oct. 18 at the NJ Library for the Blind and Handicapped.

Legislative Liaison—Luis Rodriguez
Luis gave a presentation as part of the NJEdge.net series on intellectual property. His presentation was entitlted “Copyright, Congress, and the Campus,” and it was broadcast from Montclair State to several other NJ campus locations on Sept. 28.

Newsletter—Nicole Cooke The fall issue is almost complete and should be ready in electronic format by the end of the month. It will be sent out via the CUS, VALE, and new NJ ACRL listservs. Pat Fazio will be updating the liaison list, which should contain liaisons from all college/university campuses in the state. These liaisons should be sources for obtaining material for the newsletter.

Old Business—None.

New Business:

• ACRL Conference—The next national conference is in Baltimore in 2006. Fran Kaufmann sent an email suggesting our chapter arrange bus transportation for NJ librarians who want to attend. After discussion the board decided not to pursue this idea; it has not proved successful in similar situations, and there is adequate train and bus transportation already available. We could also use our listservs to coordinate carpooling for those who want to drive.

• Possible Conference Speaker—Marc sent an email about recent programs done by Richard Sweeney from NJIT on millennial students. Sweeney also had a feature article in a recent issue of the Chronicle on this. Perhaps this would be a good program for NJLA. He uses 10-12 college students as a focus group in these presentations, and they get $50 each as an honorarium. The board discussed possible problems in recruiting students and paying them, and we agreed that it might be better if Sweeney could use videotaped sessions with students or if he could report on his findings without using a live focus group. We will ask Marc to follow-up on this. Marc has submitted the proposal for our luncheon speaker, Pam Snelson, President of ACRL. He is also exploring the possibility of offering an advocacy workshop for the pre-conference session; Norma Blake has agreed to participate, but he is still waiting to hear from other presenters.

  Next meeting is November 4, 2005 at Rutgers-New Brunswick. We will not be teleconferencing.

  Adjournment: 10:47 a.m.

  Respectfully submitted,

  Penny B. Page
  Secretary