Readers' Section Business Meeting

Wisconsin Association of Public Libraries April 29, 2004

Present: Gary Warren Niebuhr (chair), Desiree Bongers (chair elect), Trish Iaccarino Peterson (secretary), Helene Androski (member), Kathy Schmidt (Web master), Mary Dunn (member-at-large: newsletter).

Katie Schulz is at another conference this week.

Minutes from October 31, 2003 were approved.

Membership

Gary received a printout of our membership last week; we currently have 209 members. The names have been added to READ's email list. We assume WLA will use this list when they distribute the newsletter.

Budget review

We have $490 to use in 2004-05. This is all operating budget - it includes no carryover from previous years. Gary and Tom (Klement) aren't totally sure what all of it is supposed to be used for. Gary said at one time we drafted a planning document that included anticipated expenditures - for the newsletter, conference calls, programming budget, etc. We don't have precise figures on what it costs to produce/distribute the newsletter, but Mary estimated about $80. Gary doesn't have the carry-over figure but will try to find out what it is. He'll get it out to us as soon as he knows.

In addition to this funding (i.e., the $490), we generate funds from selling bibliographies at WLA. Printing expenses for the bibliographies have historically been donated, so most of what we bring in is profit.

Programming

Approximately 375 people attended WAPL this year. There were about 75 people at the genre program. Desiree's not sure about the number of people at the reader's advisory program, but it, too, seemed well attended. Kudos to Desiree on the programs - she did a terrific job!!

Programs for WLA (2004):

Notable Books Marathon
Nancy Pearl - readers' advisory
Larry Watson
Book discussion - "Orchard"

Our business meeting at WLA will be Thursday at 7:30 a.m.

The Wisconsin Book Festival is scheduled for Oct. 6-10, 2004. Helene will keep us posted on developments. If anyone asks for a contribution for this event, let Gary know…he'll let us know if we have funding available. Last year we donated $150. Helene will use the email list to ask for volunteers to help with the festival. Book discussion groups were a nice part of the festival; we hope the organizers will continue them this year.

We need to plan for WLA 2004, WAPL 2005, and WAAL 2005. We don't have a candidate for chair-elect yet, but Desiree will be working with him/her. We need to decide on genres to cover in future book marathons.

Helene coordinated a book talk at WAAL this year - she covered novels that feature librarians. Her list of books will be posted on our Web page. At past WAAL conferences, she's covered such genres as academic novels and travel literature. It's too early to decide what she'll do next year, but she does plan to coordinate another book talk.

We need to decide whether to continue the genre book marathon at WAPL next year. The only program we've consistently offered every year is the Notable Books Marathon at WLA. We've also developed a tradition of doing a book discussion at each conference in recent years. Gary enjoys doing the one at WLA, but if anyone else is interested in leading it, Gary will gladly just come and participate.

If we continue with the genre program at WAPL, we need to decide on 3 or 4 genres to cover next year. We thought it was a good idea to select different ones every year. We briefly discussed possible topics for a readers' advisory program. Gary suggested we try something with video advisory, and we all agreed this might be interesting.

WLA 2004 - Nancy Pearl normally covers contemporary fiction. We discussed finding an in-state writer to talk about his/her genre as well. Someone asked if Wisconsin had a romance writer. We thought we'd check with Maureen Welch. Maybe Maureen could do an overview…and then we could have the romance author speak. Someone else suggested Jon Hassler. We should probably talk with the Literary Awards Committee to see if they have any ideas.

Election of Officers

Trish is interested in serving as the secretary again.

Mary would like to continue with the newsletter.

Chair-elect - Liz Dannenbaum at Middleton PL teaches a readers' advisory course at UW-Madison - she may be interested in running. Helene thought she'd be great - she does a lot of programming at Middleton and she's very organized. Gary will contact her. Gary will also ask Katie and Laurie Freund.

We need to add one more member-at-large who will be designated to maintain the Web page. Gary will check with Bob Pfeiffer as adding this position will mean altering our by-laws. Essentially, we just send Kathy whatever content we want on the page, and she posts it from her computer at work using FrontPage. Paula has instituted some standards since she became the Web master for WLA. Whoever is designated to do our Web page should contact Barb Kelly at Appleton PL. She'll give them a password so they can update the page. Kathy will be glad to continue doing it until we get a new person. Jamie Burkett maintains the links page (Favorites for reader's advisory librarians). She originally developed the page as a class project. Gary will also check with her to see if she might be interested in running.

Our ballot is due July 16, so we'll have to have a decision on who's running for office by then.

Bibliographies

Katie emailed Gary with a couple of questions - she wondered what we're charging for bibliographies and if we're making any money. Most are 50 cents…some of the thicker ones are $1. If we want to continue doing it, we need to look at getting some fresh ones for WLA in the fall. Katie and Gary will look at what we've got and the pricing structure. We put something in the newsletter about needing fresh bibliographies - Gary will also get the word out via email. Mary wondered if people would buy bibliographies off the Web site…Gary said probably, but we'd have to charge about $2.50 to cover postage. Gary thought we should list the bibliographies on the Web site regardless of whether or not we sell them from there.

Desiree could put one together on Christian fiction. Gary could do one of PI's from the last five years. Helene said she'd rather have a short annotated list than a big comprehensive list of titles. One idea for a short list would be top 25 "chick lit" books.

Web page

If we beef up the page a bit, people may be more likely to go there. For starters, we should post a list of the bibliographies we have for sale. We also agreed to post book lists from our conference programs. We won't post the ones we're planning on turning into bibliographies (like Christian Lit), but we can post those from the current year's and past year's conference sessions. We should post handouts for just two years - otherwise they'll be dated. This year, we'll post Rebecca's reader's advisory Web site links and the chick lit list. We discussed how long we should keep meeting minutes on the Web site but really didn't come to a consensus. Helene once made a big looseleaf notebook of past programs, budgets, newsletters, and minutes and gave it to Janice. Gary will ask Janice about it. It was supposedly for chairs (Trish has one for secretaries). We agreed we should permanently keep lists of conference programs we've done.

Only a couple of libraries are using book discussion kits - we should make an effort to promote them more. We should write an article on what's available on our Web site. We can ask members to send a list of their book kits and bibliographies - the email list can be used for this as well. When we add things to the Web page, perhaps we should send out an email announcement about the update. Gary suggested Kathy write an article on Web content for the newsletter. We can list past programs and promote upcoming programs. When Desiree finishes her program planning, she should send information to the Web person to be posted.

Paula gave us some statistics last October on how many hits we've had. We might want to include this information in the article we want to write on what's available on our page.

Newsletter

At the planning conference, it was agreed newsletters could be sent via email. A few of us mentioned we prefer getting paper copies. We decided that after we send out a newsletter, we'll post it on the Web page. Mary will check with Brigitte at WLA to see what it would take to convert from paper copy to electronic copy.

Mary needs articles for the upcoming newsletter.

Someone suggested featuring a separate genre in each newsletter. We could include a short list of annotated titles. Mary could send an announcement out on our listserv asking people to submit these. We need to be careful we're not duplicating what's in our bibliographies. Bev is currently teaching, but she'd probably be willing to draft some annotated lists (or bibliographies) for us.

Listserv

The listserv works, but we don't use it a lot. We discussed posting information about programming needs, newsletter needs, and Web site updates. Any of us can utilize the listserv.

Brochure

There should be copies at the WLA office. WLA is now discouraging units from doing individual brochures. Gary was asking about them because he's speaking to a class at UW-M next week - he thought it would be nice to have brochures to hand out.

State-wide workshop

This is just an idea to keep in mind for the future. Dominican is sponsoring a readers' advisory workshop called "Fiction Symposium". Gary also heard about a group in Minnesota who met around a fire for a weekend to just talk about books. He was thinking it would be fun to try something like this in Wisconsin. We could find some resort-y place for a weekend and just do book discussions…perhaps on our 15th anniversary (we're currently 12 years old).

Old business

None

New business

None

Meeting adjourned at 5:40 p.m.