President’s Report—Marc Meola

• Marc welcomed Chris Lee from Seton Hall. He has agreed to be the new Membership Chair.

• VALE/ACRLNJ User’s Conference—The conference planning committee met in late July. The theme of the conference will be “All Together Now: Taking the Lead in Collaboration and Innovation,” and will encompass such topics as digital scholarship, institutional repositories, information literacy, metadata, the Knowledge Initiative, etc. The format will be the same as last year, with programs in the morning followed by breakout sessions and poster sessions in the afternoon. Ruth Hamann and Fran Kaufmann are coordinating the poster sessions again. There were some concerns about construction on Rt. 18 and how this might affect attendance. Penny Page will email Marc with a web link for information on this. The planning committee submitted three recommendations for keynote speaker: Charles Lowry (Univ. of MD library director), Nancy Davenport (CLIR), and Joan Gallos (ACRL/Harvard Leadership Institute). The VALE executive board will make final selection and arrangements. Discussion followed on how we can promote our section/chapter at this conference; suggestions included our distributing our brochure, poster session on membership, and possibly giving away some small promotional item (we could ask NJLA for funding for this).

• NJLA Conference Planning—Mary Mallery attended the Sept. 7 meeting of the conference planning committee, which is chaired by Cindy Czesak. The proposal form must be submitted online, and this year there is only one deadline for all information—Nov. 4. This was done to allow more time to get information included in program brochure. We have to submit a proposal form for our luncheon speaker as well. Mary went over the proposal form with board members and noted that program descriptions should be only 2-3 sentences long and should not repeat the name of the speaker. Also, there is a new item (#10) on the proposal form which asks for titles of publications if the speaker is a published author. This was done to help identify more authors to participate at the authors’ table. NJLA will cover overnight accommodation and lunch for speakers (if needed) as well as travel expenses, except for NJ librarians. Speakers are responsible for supplying their own laptops, projectors, etc., and the proposal must specify if the speaker needs an Internet connection (this is discouraged, since NJLA can’t guarantee a connection; canned presentations are encouraged). The conference will be Mon.-Wed., Apr. 24-26, at Long Branch, and the theme is advocacy. Monday is reserved for pre-conference workshops, and NJLA is soliciting programs. We could offer our legislative advocacy workshop (which was cancelled last Oct.) for this; Marc will email Cindy Czesak about this and will check with our program presenters (Norma Blake, Julie Still, Luis Rodriguez, Pat Tumulty) for availability and willingness. Wednesday is scheduled for academic programs, and Pam Snelson will be our luncheon speaker. NJLA is still soliciting recommendations for a keynote speaker for that day. Mary Mallery is chairing the poster sessions in the afternoon. Some academic librarians have asked to have academic programs spread out over two days, so that more of them will have a chance to attend. Marc received an email from NJLA suggesting we collaborate on a program with the Information Technology Section; this might be a good idea for a Tuesday program. Nancy Madacsi said that the SCILS Alumni Association has funds to support a program and could collaborate with us. She suggested a program on bibliotherapy featuring a new faculty member at SCILS; she will contact this person to see if she is interested. This is a topic that might have broader appeal and could be offered on Tuesday.

Committee Reports:

User Education Committee—Karen Topham
The committee is presenting a program at Brookdale Community College on Oct. 21 entitled “Quarantine the Plagiarism Plague.” It is designed for high school and academic librarians. Speakers are authors from the recently published book The Plagiarism Plague. The program will run from 10:00 a.m.-3 p.m., and there will be space for about 240 people. The formal announcement should be going out next week and will be posted on the website. The committee’s next meeting is Friday, Sept. 16, at 10:00 a.m. at Brookdale, and they will be planning for the NJLA conference.

Technology Committee—Mary Mallery
The committee met Aug. 24 at Rutgers, and they attracted several new members. The presentations from the finalists for the Technology Innovation Award will be held at Monmouth University again next year, but the committee is considering trying a different site in the future (perhaps the new TCNJ library, when everything is up and running). They are also considering how to get more people to attend the presentation by the award winner at the NJLA conference; only five people attended this year, perhaps because it was the last session of the last day. Marc will be attending the Sept. 23 meeting of the Council of NJ Library Directors, and he will mention the Technology Innovation competition.

NJLA Liaison—Nancy Madacsi
Nancy, Marc, and Mary all attended the July 19 planning meeting of the NJLA executive board. The meeting focused on strategic planning—setting goals, identifying issues and what members expected to get from NJLA. The organization sees the College and University Section as a growth area and hopes to recruit new members from the academic community; however, the activities seem more focused toward public libraries. Marc will contact Pat Tumulty to talk about this (with Chris Lee, our new membership chair). Marc submitted a short article on advocacy for the upcoming NJLA newsletter. The next NJLA executive board meeting is Sept. 21 at Monroe. Mary Mallery will attend.

Newsletter—Nicole Cooke
Nicole sent out two calls for material for the fall newsletter. To date she has received only three brief news items and the president’s letter. The board brainstormed for other possible material: news from SCILS and Alumni Association activities, blurb about the new TCNJ library, announcements for the upcoming competitions for the Research Award and the Technology Innovation Award, something on effects of Hurricane Katrina on libraries. Nancy Madacsi will ask members of the Council of NJ Library Directors to send news from their libraries. The board also discussed the pros and cons of switching to an electronic format to save printing costs and decided to do the fall issue as a PDF file. It will be posted on the website, and the link will be emailed to the CUS and ACALIBS listservs. The ACALIBS email will include a notice that the listserv is closing, and it will include the address of a new listserv that we will create for CUS/ACRLNJ members. This is needed because not all our members are included on NJLA’s CUS listserv. Chris Lee will see about hosting this at Seton Hall; if not possible, Marc will see about hosting it at TCNJ. We need email addresses for ACRLNJ members who aren’t in NJLA. The current list we have from ACRL doesn’t include email, but Marc will ask about getting this information with our upcoming list.

Old Business:

Listserv for ACRLNJ members—Marc Meola
(see Newsletter above)

New Business:
Marc received a request from Myoung Wilson on behalf of ALA’s Library Research Roundtable. They would like to send out their brochure to our members via the listserv. The board gave permission.

Announcements:

• Next meeting is Oct. 7. Marc cannot attend; Nicole will chair in his absence. The November meeting was rescheduled for Nov. 4 due to conflict with library faculty meeting at Rutgers. We will not be teleconferencing with Montclair in October or November.

• The Information Technology Section is sponsoring a workshop on blogging on Sept. 14 at the Ocean County Library in Jackson.

• The New Jersey Academic Librarian Blog, created by Marc Meola, is now online at http://njacademiclibrarian.blogspot.com. It contains news stories relating to NJ academia (examples: RU consolidation, scandal at UMDNJ, rising textbook prices, etc.). Mary will put a link to this on our webpage, and Marc will send an announcement to the CUS and ACALIBS listservs.