WAAL Fall Business Meeting Minutes
October 20, 1999
Iowa Room, Radisson Hotel - La Crosse Center
La Crosse, WI

The meeting was called to order by Ed Van Gemert at 5:40 pm.

1. Approval of April 15, 1999 WAAL business meeting minutes.
   The Spring 1999 minutes were approved unanimously.
2. Changes or additions to the agenda.
   Van Gemert reported that Kathy Schneider would like to talk about the WLA PR survey.
3. Reports of the officers.

   Chair
   Van Gemert thanked the four candidates for running for office: James Gollata, Dina Kaye, Nancy McClements, and Maureen Powless. He congratulated Nancy and Maureen on their new offices (Vice Chair/Chair Elect and Secretary, respectively) and thanked the Nominations Committee for their work.

   Van Gemert said that the operating budget was doing fine. We began with an operations budget of $3250 and approximately $14,600 in project revenue. The Board decided that a $10,000 reserve was prudent, and earmarked $5,000 of project monies for: student/staff support for WAAL conferences ($2000), ACRL Liaison compensation ($500), a targeted newsletter for academic non-members ($600), and subsidy for the 2000 Conference ($1600). The remainder could be used for subsidized registrations at a professional development conference ($1500), more lobbying funds, and ALA Library Legislation Day. He is looking for other ideas from WAAL members.

   Van Gemert ended his portion by encouraging all to attend the many excellent WAAL-sponsored programs at the WLA conference.

   Vice Chair/Chair Elect
   Lee Ann Hansen thanked Ed for his contributions to WAAL this year. She has completed committee memberships, and is currently working on the WAAL 2000 budget. She confirmed that 2000 Board meetings will be January 21, April 11, July 21, and October 20.

   Past Chair
   The Heidel House in Green Lake will be the WAAL conference site in 2002.

   ACRL Liaison
   No report.

   Member-at-Large
   Mary Williamson reminded all that she'll be organizing our Leadership Conference. Let her know if you have issues for the Board.

   Agenda addition: Public Relations Perception
   Kathy Schneider reported that the recent WLA survey indicated that members think that Public Relations has a high importance, but rated their satisfaction with PR as low. She distributed a survey for members to complete on awareness of PR activities.

4. Reports of the Committee Chairs

   1999 Conference Chairs
   Ed thanked Irene Zimmerman and Mary Tipton for their work this year. Irene reported that we had 276 registrations, 243 which were paid. We made $3200 profit, and evaluations were very good. There were no concerns that should affect the 2000 conference.

   2000 Conference Chairs
   Mary Rieder and Julie O'Keeffe reported the new date of the Fond du Lac conference, April 12-14, 2000. The theme will be "Libraries: Guiding Lights on a Sea of Change." Carol Tenopir, Greg Leazer (cataloging research), and Judy Goldsmith (former NOW president and Dean at UW-Fond du Lac) will be speakers.

   Membership
   Evelyn Payson had an article in the fall WAAL Newsletter on membership issues, including the interesting fact that only half of Wisconsin academic librarians belong to WAAL.

   Nominations
   Jim Tobin again thanked all the candidates for running for office.

   Publications
   Ed thanked Kathy Schmidt, Michael Strahan, and temporary Web master Pete Gilbert for their work on the web site and Newsletter.

   Professional Development
   Leigh Ann Dorsey submitted a written report. They distributed three member scholarships to attend ACRL, seven scholarships to WAAL for students and support staff. The summer workshop on PowerPoint had a small attendance but a positive response.

   Directory
   The WAAL Directory is nearly completed.

   Information Literacy
   Cris Prucha talked about the Information Literacy brochure and the national attention that it has attracted. Now that they are a standing committee of WAAL, they will be changing their focus.

5. Old Business
   None.
6. New Business:

   Future of the WAAL ad hoc Legislative Committee
   Ed detailed the history of the WAAL Legislative Committee, which first existed in the 1980s, and was recreated with ad hoc status in 1995. This year the Committee suggested disbanding, but the Board thought that it was still useful, and suggests that it continue for at least another year with the ad hoc status. The WLA Survey indicated that legislative advocacy was important to members. What we need is to make the Committee more purposeful. Jim Tobin asked about this Committee's relationship with the WLA lobbyist, Tony Dresang. Although many of us are state or city employees, we are probably not doing as much legislative work as we are legally allowed. Ed suggested that we all attend the legislative programs at this conference, and the Dennis Miller program at our spring conference. We have three appointees on the WLA LD&L Committee: Pete Gilbert, Evelyn Payson, and Gloria Holtz. They will try to improve the legislative communication between WLA and WAAL.

   At this point we all admired the sunset and barges on the Mississippi. What a view!

   Membership and Leadership needs for WAAL
   We currently have 384 members, down 2% from last year at this time, 393. This is not terrible, but it is a drop, and other units also have been dropping. We had 41 non-renewals this year, for a variety of reasons. Ed suggested ways of increasing WAAL awareness at our local libraries, including hosting informal brownbag sessions, talking to colleagues about WAAL activities, and encouraging new staff to join. Suggestions from the floor included allowing installment plan registration payments. Other ideas should be submitted to a Board member. Ed and LeAnn attended a CoWL review where they talked on library leadership. Creating a "digital library" for the entire state (like Galileo in Georgia) is a possibility, sharing our unique digitized resources.

7. Announcements
   There were no announcements.
8. Adjournment
   The meeting was adjourned at 6:20 pm. Our next Business Meeting will be at the WAAL spring conference.

Respectfully submitted,
Nancy McClements
WAAL Secretary

URL: http://www.wla.lib.wi.us/waal/minutes/991020.html
Revised: 10/24/02