Chair:
As Chair I convened and conducted four WAAL Board meetings. I wrote three articles for the WAAL Newsletter and proofread copy for the editor. At WAAL’s Leadership Day (Appleton, October) I was a mentor for one of the participants, plus I gave a presentation about the wonders of WAAL. I attended the ACRL National Conference (Denver, March), the WAAL Conference (La Crosse, April), and the WLA Conference (Appleton, October).
As a member of the WLA Board, I attended all six Board meetings and reported back to WAAL on the issues of concern to our unit. As a member of the WLA Finance Committee, I attended all four of their meetings and helped revise the organization’s budget. I represented WAAL at the WLA Membership Committee’s “Membership Moments” conference and LD&L’s “Library Legislation Day” in February.
I pulled together our “Designated Contacts” project--writing the list of duties, soliciting and confirming participants, preparing the list for the Web site, and contacting the Contacts about possible activities. I wrote and submitted a bylaws addition concerning our Legislative Liaison position, which was later voted in by our membership. Mid-year I resubmitted our budget and revised our copious objectives for the Long Range Planning Committee.
One of my favorite contributions was serving on the WAAL Conference Committee. Besides advising the co-chairs, I devised and compiled the paper and online conference evaluations, secured the wildly popular speaker Rob Robinson (National Public Radio library director), and hosted (hostessed?) a party for the Board and conference committee members.
--Nancy McClements
Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect:
Attended WLA Leadership Conference, December 2000.
Attended ACRL National Conference, March 2001.
Served on WLA Appointments Committee and filled or renewed sixteen WLA committee positions with WAAL members.
Appointed 2002 WAAL Committees and Chairs.
Serving on 2002 WAAL Conference Planning Committee.
Prepared and submitted 2002 WAAL budget to WLA.
Serving as a mentor for WAAL Leadership Day, October 2001.
Distributed handout of WAAL 2002 Board and Committees. Stacey Burkart (UW Baraboo/Sauk County) has been recruited to serve as Newsletter Co-Editor.
Distributed handout of Proposed Revisions and Amendments to WAAL Strategic Plan Objectives. Mary was required to add and revise objectives in WAAL’s strategic plan when she prepared the budget for next year. Every item listed in the budget needed to be linked to an objective. Five new objectives were added and two existing objectives were revised. The board approved these changes.
Will attend Leadership Day next week.
--Mary Rieder
Past-Chair:
The WAAL conference site for 2004 was secured. It will be at the Osthoff
Resort in Elkhart Lake on April 20-23, 2004. This will be the first time
WAAL tries a conference in a condominium setting.
Board members were reminded at the October meeting to turn over current files to their incoming counterparts and to turn in archival material to the WLA Office.
--Leanne Hansen
ACRL Chapter Liaison:
As the ACRL Chapter Liaison, I represented the Wisconsin Chapter at both the midwinter and annual ALA conferences at the ACRL Chapter Liaison meetings. In addition, I attended the ACRL conference in Denver in the Spring.
I submitted the ACRL Chapter Annual Report to ACRL outlining our activities in the state for the past year (see attachment) as well as a reimbursement request to ACRL for some printing charges for our newsletter. The amount received is based on the number of WAAL members who are also ACRL members. I also asked that we be considered for a new member initiative fund which was mentioned at the conference, especially in view of the work we did hosting the ACRL Information Literary Immersion Institute. Recent WAAL activities, i.e. conference, were submitted for the ACRL online report called Chapter Topics.
Finally, on behalf of WAAL, I submitted an ACRL Initiative Fund proposal titled: "UCITA and Advocacy: or how not to lose fair use and equitable access to information." Unfortunately, we were not funded.
--Ewa Barczyk
COMMITTEE CHAIRS
Conference 2001:
The 2001 WAAL Conference was held April 18-20 at the Radisson Hotel in La Crosse on the banks of the Mississippi despite the threat of a record-setting flood. The theme for the conference was “2001: A Library Odyessy.” The schedule included twenty-one programs, poster sessions, three lunch programs and a dinner with a speaker for each meal function, and an evening social event at the UW-La Crosse Planetarium.
Committee Membership:
The WAAL 2001 Conference Planning Committte consisted of: Nancy McClements, Karen Dunn, Cheryl O’Connor, Dan Norstedt, Judy Wurtzler, Nancy Steinhoff, Brian Finnegan, and Jen Holman. Paul Beck and Patricia Herrling were the Committee co-chairs. Stefan Smith was not a formal member of the committee but did create and manage the Conference web site. We hired a graphic designer, Sheila Zillner, from Wils to help with both booklets and to design the logo. We also hired Mark Beatty from Wils to help with the internet connections during the conference.
Member Duties:
Co-chair responsibilities
Paul Beck and Patrica Herrling divided most of the co-chair responsibilities between themselves. Since Paul was in La Crosse it was a logical decision that he be the liaison with the hotel and also on the local arrangements committee. He also prepared the budget. Patricia did the call-to-conference and program booklets and arranged for their printing to be donated by Demco. She contracted with a graphic designer from Wils, Sheila Zillner, to help with both booklets and design the logo. Patricia also organized the programming proposals for WAAL sponsored sessions at the WLA 2001 conference.
Lesson #1 WAAL co-chairs should be sure to save some energy and ideas for WAAL sponsored conference programming proposals due in January to WLA.
Committee Meetings
A preliminary consultation of the conference co-chairs and the WAAL president was held at the WAAL 2000 conference in April. The full Conference Planning committee was formed by early May and held its first meeting on May 16 in La Crosse. Other Conference Planning Committee meetings were held August 1 in La Crosse and September 22 in Madison. At the May meeting in La Crosse, the committee toured the conference facilities, selected the conference theme, and assigned specific conference duties to individual members. The August and September meetings were dominated by programming – discussing various program ideas, assigning follow-up responsibilities, designing the program schedule and plugging programs into time slots.
Conference Schedule
Programming was complicated by the fact that the Voyager Users Group Meeting
(VUGM) was scheduled to begin the Thursday of the WAAL conference in Des Plaines, Illinois. To avoid that conflict, we investigated switching the dates of the conference but the hotel was either already booked for alternative weeks or other dates were not acceptable. Aware, then, that the VUGM conflict would siphon off from WAAL those librarians who had to attend VUGM, the committee scheduled as many “technical” sessions as possible for Wednesday. VUGM attendees could at least then attend the Wednesday sessions at WAAL before departing. Still, we know we lost some librarians from attending WAAL due to VUGM since they did not want to drive to La Crosse for one day and then turn around and drive to Des Plaines.
Lesson #2 Avoid a scheduling conflict with VUGM.
Aware that Friday’s attendance is usually lower than the first two days and might be even lower because of VUGM, the committee decided to schedule only two sessions per time slot rather than three. The committee was satisfied that the sessions we scheduled for Friday were appealing in their own right. We also decided to have a special libraries track on Friday culminating with the luncheon speaker, the rare books librarian from the University of Iowa. Attendance was still low on Friday, with only about 25 luncheon attendees.
Hotel Rooms
WLA had contracted with the Radisson Hotel for a block of rooms to be set aside each night of the WAAL conference. The number of rooms set aside versus actually used are as follows: Tuesday, 35 rooms reserved, 39 used; Wednesday, 75 rooms reserved, 66 used; and, Thursday, 75 reserved, 49 used.
Social Events
It was decided to offer only one planned social event – a trip to the Planetarium at UW-La Crosse on Wednesday night. This event fit in nicely with our theme of “2001-A Library Odyssey.” Thursday night we were having Rob Robinson from National Public Radio as our after-dinner speaker and we thought that would be a popular choice and could double as the “event” for the night. For those who did want alternatives, we let conference attendees know that the Radisson Hotel offered electronic trivia Wednesday night and a comedy club on Thursday night.
Speakers
We did make use of ACRL’s speaker bureau and had Mary Reichel, vice-president of ACRL, as one of our luncheon speakers. ACRL pays the first $750 of travel expenses so having Mary speak did not cost us anything. Our Wednesday luncheon speaker was a local speaker from the Mississippi Valley Archaeology Center at UW-La Crosse and also was “free.” On the other hand, we did pay an honorarium and full expenses for our Friday luncheon speaker for which we had low attendance.
Lesson #3 Be careful what you plan and try to keep costs down for your Friday luncheon program – people may not come regardless of how good a speaker you have but they certainly won’t attend if you don’t offer them a decent program.
Web Page
Stefan Smith, UW-La Crosse, designed and managed the conference web page, located at http://www.uwlax.edu/murphylibrary/waal2001/ at the writing of this report. The web site listed the conference programs and events, gave driving directions, registration information, and listed WLA co-sponsors and vendors. The registration forms were available from the site to download and print. After the conference, a post conference resource page was posted which included electronic versions of talks from some sessions.
Call to Conference and Program Booklets
This year we contracted out the graphic design and layout of these booklets to WiLS. The cost was $750 but it was money well spent. Having this service saved a lot of the committee’s time and resulted in a very professional looking document. WiLS also coordinated with Demco on printing schedules and delivery formats. All documents were given to WiLS in Word format, which made sharing of materials among the committee very easy.
Lesson #4 Have several pairs of eyes look over these documents. It is amazing what one person can catch that another overlooked! Also, remember to call WLA and have them pull your mailing lists ahead of time to avoid last minute delays.
Budget: The 2001 conference had $15,336.85 in income and $13,736.34 in expenses, for a total profit of $1,600.51.
Conference 2002:
Planning Meetings: The committee met on August 1, 2001 at the conference site, the Heidel House in Green Lake, to tour the facilities and assign member duties (see below), and on September19 at Ripon College to approve program proposals. We will meet again on November 6. Much of the planning is done via the listserv hosted by Ripon College. In addition, the local arrangements committee (Michele Reid and Karen Dunn) met with Heidel House representatives on October 5 to develop a detailed meeting room schedule and to make the conference meal selections.
Vendors: As of October 17, Andi Van Groll reports that $750 in donations have been received (from Ebsco, ProQuest and SWITCH), and over $2,000 has been pledged, in addition to pledges of miscellaneous supplies and door prizes.
WiLS: Mark Beatty and Sheila Zillner were contacted to assist with, respectively, Internet connectivity during the conference, and with the program booklet design.
Members:
Member Duties:
Co-Chair Duties:
Lois O’Brien prepared the budget and has contacted some potential speakers, including the scheduled Wednesday luncheon speaker.
Michele Reid did the call-to-conference, is serving as the liaison with the hotel, and is on the local arrangements committee. She arranged for Mark Beatty of WiLS to assist with the Internet connections during the conference. She has also compiled the preliminary list of speakers and programs, solicited several proposals, sent the speaker acknowledgements and preliminary equipment request forms, and will send out the contracts.
--Michele Reid
Directory:
The Directory Committee compiled the 2001 WAAL Directory. 550 copies were printed and mailed to members. Duplicating costs were $850.00. UPS charges were $ 53.63. The total cost of the Directory was $ 878.63.
Research was done into other options for the updating, compilation and production of the Directory. It requires a complex workflow among persons with varying computer skills, hardware and software. Using an external vendor for the layout and production of the Directory would greatly increase the cost without doing much to decrease the extensive amount of work required to update and compile the information.
The expectation of a new database system at WLA might relieve some of the workload. However, not much is known about the potential of the new system. Changing the format of the Directory from print to electronic, first requires the ability to make the site accessible only to WAAL members.
--Mary Jo Koranda
Information Literacy: General
The culmination of our two year application and planning process came in June 2001 when the Committee hosted a regional ACRL Institute for Information Literacy Immersion program at Edgewood College in Madison. All the Committee members did an outstanding job planning and preparing for “Wisconsin Immersion”, especially Edgewood’s Mary Jane Scherdin and her staff. I also wish to acknowledge and thank the 1999 and 2000 Information Literacy committee members who were instrumental in the beginning phases of this process. A separate report on the program appears on page two of this document.
The Committee also participated in the annual WAAL Conference with a poster session, “Information Literacy”, featuring the Wisconsin Immersion program and a variety of information literacy resources.
Consent was granted by the Board to Peter Hernon, faculty member at Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science in Boston, to reprint the WAAL “Information Literacy Competencies and Criteria for Academic Libraries in Wisconsin” in his book "An Action Plan for Outcomes Assessment in Your Library” (November 2001, ALA)
The committee is sponsoring a program at the WLA conference on October 24th titled, “Information Literacy Planning: the ACRL and Wisconsin Academic Library Link”. Speakers will be Jean Ruenger-Hanson and Marsha Forys, librarian from University of Iowa libraries, and member of the ACRL task force that drafted the “ACRL Objectives for Information Literacy Instruction: A Model Statement for Academic Libraries”.
The committee will be sponsoring and participating in a panel presentation and discussion session at the 2002 WAAL Conference titled “Emerging from Immersion : Information Literacy in Action”.
--Jean Ruenger-Hanson, 2001 Chair
Information Literacy: Report on Wisconsin Immersion Program
The ACRL Institute for Information Literacy Wisconsin Immersion program was held June 3-8, 2001 at Edgewood College in Madison. The WAAL Information Literacy Committee worked diligently for approximately two years to bring the Institute to Wisconsin and then to host the one-week event. Members of the Committee include:
Attendance was comprised of 90 participants: 58 in Track I and 32 in Track II. Track I (Librarian as Teacher) focused on individual development of library instruction skills emphasizing presentation techniques, learning styles, and assessment tools, and Track II (Librarian as Program Manager) focused on developing and administering information literacy programs and incorporating information literacy into the curriculum.
One registrant cancelled close to the beginning of the Immersion program, but the Committee was able to fill the spot with someone on the waiting list. Out of the total number of participants, forty-nine were from Wisconsin. Several came from Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, and California; some even came from Alaska and Hawaii. Several people were on the waiting list, including one from Jamaica, West Indies.
The Institute was intensive, beginning on Sunday evening and continuing from morning to evening until Friday noon. A social reception was held Thursday evening at Olbrich Gardens.
Five faculty taught at the Institute:
Craig Gibson, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
- Deb Gilchrist, Pierce College, Lakewood, WA
- Randy Hensley, University of Hawaii, Honolulu
- Beth Woodard, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- Anne Zald, University of Washington, Seattle
In addition to being invaluable resources to participants, these individuals were very accommodating.
WAAL generously provided three scholarships. Other sponsors were: UW-Madison General Library System, UW-Milwaukee Golda Meir Library, UW-Madison School of Library and Information Studies, UW-Milwaukee School of Information Studies, and Edgewood College. These contributions helped greatly to reduce the price of registration for participants.
The Immersion program was a success! Participants were quite pleased with the content of the program as well as the work of the WAAL Information Literacy Committee. Results of the evaluations showed that the questions about local arrangements were almost unanimously rated “5" on a scale of 1-5. The Committee would like to thank all who contributed to the success of the Information Literacy Institute.
Legislative Liaisons:
Ed Van Gemert and Evelyn Payson served as legislative liaisons in 2001. We both attended a number of the meetings of the WLA Library Development and Legislation Committee and actively promoted the interests of academic librarians.
As of Oct. 16 we have 12 mentors, 12 mentees, and me attending. Guest speakers are Jim Morrison, Green Bay area motivational speaker, and Mary Jane Scherdin, who administered the MBTI to all WAAL participants. It looks like we will stay within budget, and everyone is pretty excited about the program.
--Patti Becker
Membership:
I am delighted to report that as of October 1, 2001 WAAL had 394 members, with only 35 nonrenewals. Three new members for 2002 had already joined.
The 394 was an increase of 14 members over October 1, 2000. The 9% non-renewal rate was tied with WLTA (Trustees) for the lowest among WLA divisions. It is unusual to have such a low percentage of nonrenewals since librarians who move out of state, retire, or die are included in this number.
This year’s efforts could not have been successful without the help of the other dedicated members of the committee. I would like to thank Susan Bushouse Foran, Karen Jander, Lelah Lugo and Charles Morris for all their hard work.
During the year the committee contacted all present and non-renewing members in various ways. Present members have been contacted several times during the year with information about WLA and WAAL conferences and state legislative and budget issues. New members have been welcomed, and non-renewing members have been contacted if it was possible to reach them. Most of the people who did not renew had moved away, retired or left the profession.
Even though this has been a successful year for WAAL, only about half the academic librarians in the state belong. One method for increasing membership in the future would be to make more use of colleague contacts at individual institutions. One of the best ways of recruiting members is to have people they know and like urge them to join and attend conferences. Increasing these person-to-person contacts is one of my primary goals for the Membership Committee in 2002.
In past years the membership chair maintained e-mail lists of both member and non-member academic librarians. The member list is now being WAAL-maintained, and the non-member list needs to be revised and updated so that it can serve as a tool for telling non-members about WAAL, for keeping them informed of important developments in Wisconsin academic librarianship, and for showing them how valuable WAAL membership could be for them. Revising and using the non-member list is my second goal for the Committee in 2002.
Evelyn Payson
Nominations:
The results of the election (winner in bold):
Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect: Patricia Herrling 112 Maureen Garrison Powless 95
Secretary: Julia Trojanowski 132 Marc Boucher 70
The committee missed the deadline for the Librarian of the Year award. They will try again next year.
--Jim Tobin
Professional Development:
The WAAL Professional Development Committee again advertised and selected individuals to award scholarships to attend the WAAL conference in La Crosse, Wisconsin in April 2001.
The PDC committee awarded a paraprofessional scholarship to Patricia Kuntz, Project Assistant/Integrated Technology Project, Center for Instructional Materials and Computing, UW-Madison and her mentors were Janice Rice and Sue Riehl.
Four scholarships were awarded to student workers: Andrew Frigo, UW-Platteville (Colleen Angel) ; Lyndsay Heal, UW-Stevens Point (Leanne Hansen) ; Geri Mulholand, Northern Michigan University (Leigh Ann Dorsey) ; Roxanne Schultz, Carroll College (Patti Becker).
Total cost of all scholarships was $1125.48.
All of the scholarship winners reported that they enjoyed the conference overall. They indicated that it was helpful to meet library staff from other libraries as well as talking with other librarians about the profession, and that they learned a great deal from the presentations.
One of the scholarship winners, Andrew Frigo, is enrolled in the School of Library and Information Studies at UW-Madison. He is currently taking the course “Information and its Use in Cultural Context” while working forty hours per week at Land’s End.
The last I heard Geri Mulholand intended to register for the distance education program provided by the School of Information Studies at UW-Milwaukee. I tried to contact her without luck.
The WAAL PDC also selected the scholarship winners for the Wisconsin Institute for Literacy Program. The WAAL Board provided three $600.00 scholarships for the Program. Those individuals applying for the scholarship were asked to write a brief paragraph concerning why they wanted to attend the Program, and how they intended to distribute or use the information that they learned from the program. We received 6 application forms and the following individuals were awarded a scholarship: Amy Mussel, UW‑Sheboygan, Thomas Krenzke, Concordia University, and Paula Ganyard, UW-Green Bay.
Currently the PDC is coordinating the planning of the Leadership Program in conjunction with Patti Becker, the Member-At-Large. The Leadership Conference is scheduled for Tuesday, October 23, 2001 in Appleton at the Radisson Paper Valley Conference Center. There will be two guest speakers for the program. Jim Morrison will be speaking on the characteristics of effective leadership and Mary Jane Scherdin, Edgewood College, will be speaking on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Test and aspects of personality types in libraries.
Here is a list of the mentees who will be attending the Leadership Conference.
Here is a list of the individuals who volunteered to be mentors at the Leadership Conference.
I would like to thank the following WAAL members for serving on the Professional Development Committee with me and for all of their hard work
--Sue Riehl
Publications:
1. Paula Ganyard redesigned the WAAL web site. The site has a new look and feel, and it now includes features like the What's New & Important? section, which is very useful. The site also moved to the WLA web server in Appleton, which has made life much easier for Paula.
2. We continue to work toward a mostly electronic version of the newsletter. Assuming the WAAL email list becomes more stable we would like to post the newsletter on the WAAL web site and then notify people by email that it is available. For people who don't have email, and we assume that there aren't many, we could print copies and mail it to them. We are currently printing and mailing 650 copies per issue, so this should be a considerable savings.
3. Stacey Burkart from UW-Baraboo will join Rose Trupiano as co-editor of the newsletter next year.
4. Paula and Rose deserve a great deal of thanks and appreciation for their hard work on the web site and the newsletter.
--David Null, who just reports for the people who actually do the work
URL: http://www.wla.lib.wi.us/waal/board/annualreport2001.html
Revised:
December 17, 2002
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