Present: Andrea Kueter, Dal Symes, Gary Menges, Jane Shoop, Karen Oberst, Helene Williams, Marie Zimmermann
The Board Meeting Minutes of January 22, 1998 were approved as written.Incorporation/Affiliation - ACRL National has adopted the Report of the ACRL Chapters Relations Task Force (available at http://www.ala.org/acrl/chapttf.html). The report specifies that by the end of the year 2000 all Chapters must either incorporate or become part of an incorporated state association. Since the Washington Chapter/ACRL is neither, the Board will have to decide whether to incorporate independently or whether to attempt to affiliate with the Washington Library Association. A decision was made to further investigate all possibilities. So far we know that:
Incorporating entails submitting an application form to the state with a nominal fee. We don’t know if the fee is yearly or a one time charge? Additionally, the greatest cost of incorporating is that it requires the association carry liability insurance. Gary knows that incorporation was investigated by a previous Executive Committee, Carolyn Gaskell might have further information on this as well as on the insurance question. Marie will contact her. Gary also has information from another association that he’s affiliated with that just went through incorporating, and he’ll try to get further information from them about the process.
Affiliating with WLA has been discussed in the past. Currently there are 107 dues paying members of the Chapter, 23 of them also belong to WLA. We don’t know how many National ACRL members who don’t pay state chapter dues are also WLA members. Marie will try to ascertain whether there is any interest on the part of WLA in negotiating an “affiliate membership” similar to the agreement they have with WLMA.
The Board acknowledged that all options would probably force a slight increase in dues. The Board also decided that a concerted effort to increase membership in the Chapter should be made this year. A review of the by-laws of the Washington State Chapter confirms that National ACRL members are automatically members of the Chapter, our objective is to get more of them to also pay Chapter dues. Andrea has requested a list from ACRL National of all members residing in the state and she and Marie will target those members who are not registered with the Chapter. Gary and Helene will recruit at the U of W. Dal will work on WWU, and we’ll try to find current members to target CWU, EWU, and WSU.
Review of by-laws and “job descriptions” for Board members - Marie asked that we all review the current job descriptions and the current by-laws to see if they need to be changed/updated.
Conferences - The 1998 fall conference is coming up on October 22-23 at Menucha in Oregon. The second workshop in the “Librarian as Educator” series will also be sometime this fall. Pack Forest 1999 is set for October 28-29. Dal is responsible for that conference. Tentatively, Pack Forest will be the culmination of the “Librarian as Educator” series. Dal will look into the possibilities of having an individual from the ACRL speakers bureau come, and/or acquiring some funding from National to support the conference.
Legislative Network - Marie asked for a volunteer to serve on the National Legislative Network. Jane will be the new representative.
Archives - Gary and Helene volunteered to review/weed/organize the existing Chapter archives which are housed at the University of Washington. They will also write guidelines that specify exactly what material should be placed in the archives. Once they’ve completed their review Helene/Andrea/Marie will fill in the gaps and add to the archives.
1998-1999 Goals:
1. Make a decision about incorporation/affiliation.
2. Increase membership.
3. Plan for Pack Forest 1999.
4. Organize the archives and write archive guidelines.
5. Investigate developing a web page and/or an association e-mail distribution list
6. Encourage members to subscribe to the ACRL-NW listserv.
7. Look at methods, other than the U.S. mail, for distributing the newsletter.
Respectfully Submitted
Andrea Kueter
Secretary/Treasurer
WA Chapter/ACRL