General Membership Meeting Minutes - 2009 Annual

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WESS General Membership Meeting
ALA Annual Conference 2009
Monday, July 13, 2009, 8:00-10:00 am, Hyatt Regency McCormick Conf. Ctr. 20a

ATTENDING

Gordon Anderson (Univ. of Minnesota), Laura Dale Bischof (Univ. of Minnesota), Yvonne Boyer (Vanderbilt Univ.), Kate Brooks (Univ. of Minnesota), Brigitte Doellgast (Goethe Institut), Michelle Emanuel (Univ. of Mississippi), Mara Egherman (Univ. of Iowa SLIS), Adán Griego (Stanford Univ.), Julianne Haahr (Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison), Dick Hacken (Brigham Young), Sarah How (Cornell Univ.), Dennis Lambert (Villanova Univ.), Birdie MacLennan (Univ. of Vermont), Colin McCaffrey (Washington Univ.), Heidi Madden (Duke Univ.), Jon Marner (Texas A&M), Shawn Martin (Univ. of Pennsylvania), Anne Oechtering (Staatsbibliothek Berlin – SPK), Lis Pankl (Kansas State Univ.), Sue Roberts (Yale Univ.), Tim Shipe (Univ. of Iowa), Bryan Skib (Univ. of Michigan), Ann Snoeyenbos (Project MUSE), Brian Vetruba (Washington Univ.), Sarah G. Wenzel (Univ. of Chicago)

MINUTES

Anne Oechtering, WESS Member-at-Large, convened the meeting at 8:00am.

ANNOUNCEMENT – COUTTS-NIJHOFF AWARD

Wenzel noted the longstanding support of Coutts-Nijhoff for travel research grants to Western European specialists. Wenzel noted the high number and quality of applications this year. As past chair, Laura Dale Bischof will be chairing next year’s Coutts-Nijhoff Award committee.

Andy Alferovs announced that Gordon Anderson (Univ. of Minnesota) was this year’s recipient. Andy Alferovs and Stephen Pugh from Coutts, and Alisa Collins from Ingram presented him with a giant check for $3,000. Anderson will be visiting special libraries in Sweden to finish a bibliography on Swedish-language books published in the US. Anderson thanked the Selection Committee and Coutts-Nijhoff/Ingram.


GENERAL REPORTS

1. Introduction of incoming officers and farewell to "outgoing" officers (Anne Oechtering)

Oechtering named incoming and outgoing officers.


2. Report from the Chair (Laura Dale Bischof)

Bischof thanked everyone for their hard work during the conference. Despite the difficult economic times, there has been a lot of creative energy and ideas on ways of moving WESS forward.

The application deadline for the 2010 Coutts-Nijhoff Award is December 4th. Former recipients are willing to assist anyone interested in applying.

The WESS conference program “Situating Area Studies Librarianship in a Globalised World: New Directions, New Collections” will be held from 10:30-12noon today at McCormick Place West W-180.

ACRL News:

  • Beginning with Midwinter 2010, ALA conferences will be shortened by one day. There will be no ACRL meetings on Tuesday, and Monday will have no conflict times.
  • ACRL announced some of the results of its membership survey. Members want ACRL to provide professional development, assist them in keeping current, and in gaining leadership experience.
  • New strategic points announced include promoting how scholars work, how they manage information and how they publish. ACRL will continue promoting academic librarianship.
  • ACRL talked about the loss of revenue and the need of furloughing staff.
  • With the shortened conference schedule, it may be more difficult for WESS Exec to submit items to ACRL Board.
  • The Law and Political Science Section (LPSS) has funding for a booth at the American Political Science Association’s meeting held in Toronto in early September. WESS members can receive a free pass if they volunteer to help staff the booth.

Vetruba noted that at ACRL 101, ACRL was asking for volunteers to translate sections’ competency standards into other languages.

We’re encouraged to use ALA Connect.


DISCUSSION GROUP REPORTS

1. Cataloging (Jon Marner reported)

Thom Hickey from OCLC Research spoke about the Virtual International Authority File (http://www.viaf.org/), which is a project to match and link the authority records from authority files of national libraries. This won’t replace authority records in national authority files.


2. Classical, Mediaeval & Renaissance (Colin McCaffrey)

Topic of discussion: "ePhilology": A Discussion of Digital Technologies and Old Texts”. There were four presentations on the research possibilities of classical and medieval texts in digital form. Tina Feick from Harrassowitz discussed Parker on the Web (http://parkerweb.stanford.edu/), Helma Dik from the Univ. of Chicago Perseus Under Philologic (http://perseus.uchicago.edu/), Martin Mueller (Northwestern Univ.) Chicago Homer (http://wordhoard.northwestern.edu/userman/index.html) and WordHoard (http://wordhoard.northwestern.edu/userman/index.html), and Allen J. Frantzen Anglo-Saxon.net (http://www.anglo-saxon.net/) . Slides will be made available. Perseus may be a topic for Midwinter; an announcement will be sent out.


3. Germanists (Heidi Madden)

The incoming convener is Anna Shparberg.

There were three presentations: Marija Freeland from the University of Michigan discussed her institution’s use study of foreign newspapers: http://beta.lib.umich.edu/serials-and-microforms-services/newspaper-use-study . Gavy Divay from the University of Manitoba presented on collecting free scholarly resources for German Studies: http://www.umanitoba.ca/libraries/units/dafoe/subjects/internetres/german.html Dr. Sven Fund from DeGruyter spoke about their open access initiative with DeGruyter’s Reference Global platform: http://www.degruyter.de/cont/glob/openAccessEn.cfm

One topic for Midwinter 2010 is collecting media.


4. MLA Discussion Group and Liaisons (Shawn Martin)

The Modern Language Association has decided to postpone the decision on creating the Libraries and Academic discussion group within MLA until September. The MLA Board had some questions but no real issue. The discussion group would most likely not start until 2011.

Separate from the above discussion group, LES and WESS are working on creating an official liaison relationship with MLA. The petition to ALA/ACRL is due in November 2009.


5. Romance Languages (Sarah G. Wenzel reported)

The discussion theme was “Translating the Romance Languages: Methods, Meanings, Markets” Four speakers presented on translating from Catalan, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese into English. See the agenda at: http://www.uvm.edu/~bmaclenn/WESS/WESS-Rom-Agenda-ALA-Annual09-final.pdf


6. Social Sciences & History and Special Topics (Kate Brooks reported)

Discussion topic was primary sources for Colonial Studies. For details and links to resources, see the DGs’ minutes: http://wess.lib.byu.edu/index.php/SSH_Minutes_2009_Annual

Kate Brooks is the incoming convener for the Social Sciences and History DG.


COMMITTEE REPORTS

1. Coutts-Nijhoff Award Jury (Sarah G. Wenzel)

See above: ANNOUNCEMENT – COUTTS-NIJHOFF AWARD


2. Fundraising (Dennis Lambert reporting)

Tom Izbicki is the current chair of Fundraising. The Committee did very well in fundraising. There were one fewer contributors but the total amount of money raised was very close to last year’s. Contributors were Aux Amateurs, Bludeau Partners International, Casalini Libri, PraXess Associates, Proquest-Chadwyck-Healey, Puvill, and Touzot.

As WESS didn’t have a cruise this year, we have money left over.

Fundraising is soliciting ideas for vendors WESS should approach for fundraising. We don’t always get positive responses so having a large pool of possible sources of funds helps.


3. International Conference Planning (Adán Griego)

WESS was not successful in getting sufficient funding for Madrid. The Committee is investigating options for having the international conference in Berlin. There was email discussion about having the conference coinciding or around the same time as the German Libraries’ Conference in Berlin in June 2011. However, it was felt this was too close to ALA Annual and would be in the same year as the ACRL national conference which is discouraged. The Committee is now looking at 2012 as a possibility. Michael Seadle, chair of the Library and Information Science Department at Humboldt Universität, offered that his department could host the conference.

17 people attended the Committee’s meeting on Sunday. Sarah How thanked Adán for being a placeholder chair. She was impressed with the continued enthusiasm for the international conference. The ad hoc Planning Committee will be re-established; there will be a call on WESS-L for volunteers.

Griego offered to provide guidance on dealing with ACRL for conference planning.

A note of thanks to Michelle Emanuel for taking minutes.


4. Membership (Ann P. Snoeyenbos, In-coming Chair)

Highlights from the ACRL Membership Committee which Snoeyenbos attended: There is a $ 600,000 shortfall in revenue for ACRL. Sections need to work on allowing members to participate virtually on committees, discussion groups, and at conferences. WESS committees need to think about how to do this.

Forty-nine people attended the WESS dinner on Sunday at Brasserie JO. Membership is asking for feedback on the event as well as ideas as what social event members want to do in DC at Annual 2010. Membership will be planning an event on Sunday. There will be a self-pay happy hour at Midwinter 2010 in Boston.

Membership is looking at ways of strengthening WESS’s presence on Facebook as well as getting information out to members and perspective members besides WESS-L. Membership would like the link to our Facebook account on WESSWeb more noticeable.

Membership is always happy to hear feedback or ideas from members.


5. Program Planning 2009 (Gordon Anderson)

“Situating Area Studies Librarianship in a Globalised World: New Directions, New Collections” will be held today from 10:30-12noon at McCormick Place West 180. Speakers will be Christopher Bush, Sabine Engel, and Christine Ingebritsen with Stephen Corrsin as moderator. SEES, along with LES, was a co-sponsor.

For presentation descriptions and powerpoints, see: http://wess.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Situating_Area_Studies_Librarianship_in_a_Globalised_World:_New_Directions,_New_Collections


6. Program Planning 2010 (Heidi Madden)

The title of the program is “Contemporary European Fiction in Translation.” The program is a joint LES-WESS program and the Committee includes members from both sections. It is also sponsored in name only by SEES. The Committee agreed on three topics:

  1. Publisher’s perspective and the market for translations. The Committee is also looking at approaching cultural offices.
  2. What is a good translation if you’re a selector? The Committee is looking at finding someone who reviews translations.
  3. Translation and Research, specifically translation and cultural studies. LES is taking the lead on finding someone from a translation institute or university.

There are ten people on the Committee. The Committee will have a webpage on WESSWeb.

Note: the program will be on a new day and time: Sunday, June 27, 2010, 3:30-5:30pm.


7. Publications + WESSweb Editors (Jonathan Marner, Brian Vetruba)

There were six people present at the Committee meeting on Saturday.

Jeff Staiger and Jerry Heverly were praised for their excellent work on the WESS newsletter. Sebastian Hierl, editor of “Bits and Bytes” will continue this column, as the newsletter is the publication of record. There were discussions previously about other avenues for reviews of new publications.

At Midwinter 2009, Membership Committee members recommended changing the title of the WESS Newsletter. Publications discussed a number of possible changes and will submit title suggestions to membership via WESS-L for input. The Committee is looking at names not specific to Western European Studies given the possible merger. It was suggested to include the name of the Section in the title so it is clear to new members.

For subsequent discussion on this, see Executive Committee minutes for Annual 2009: http://wess.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Executive_Committee_Minutes_-_2009_Annual


State of the Wiki – WESSWeb (Dick Hacken):

  • Reinhart Sonnenburg is stepping down as editor of the German Studies guide. Likewise, Laura Dale Bischof would like to step down as editor for Dutch Studies. So we need editors for the German Studies and Dutch Studies guides.It should be noted that any WESS member can edit the subject guides. We do not need to send content to the editor. The editor is more/less an overseer of the guides.
  • All past issues of the WESS Newsletter are now available either as pdf or html. Thanks to Bruce Swann for providing files for earliest issues of the newsletter.
  • Most of the pages on the wiki are accessible by anyone. However, any WESS group can have a password-protected site. For examples, the SEES-WESS Merger Exploration Committee, the Fundraising, and Newsletter committees all have “gated” sites.
  • A number of webpages still need to be converted into the wiki format. Many still reside at Dartmouth or Yale. Publications need one or two volunteers to help with this.

Given the merger talks, the Committee decided to table the discussion about registering a domain name.

The Committee discussed how to utilize Web 2.0 technologies more. Cason Snow is administrator for the WESS Facebook page although a number of officers have administrative privileges. There was a discussion about whether to have a blog instead of or in addition to the WESS Newsletter. How to use ALA Connect was also brought up.

Vetruba provided to the Committee a document listing the publications of other ACRL sections including format and frequency.

The request by ACRL to discontinue all print publications was discussed. This would impact the WESS newsletter one-page which is still printed and sent to members twice a year.


8. Recruitment to the Profession (Elisabeth Pankl reported)

Current chair was unable to attend ALA Annual.

The Committee was visited by Kevin Cherry from IMLS who spoke about federal funding opportunities available via the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program. New guidelines for the next round of funding will be posted by September 15, 2009 and the deadline is December 15, 2009.

Job Shadowing: As geographical/logistical issues seem to be the major issue for the lack of success in matching shadowing candidates with potential mentors, alternative methods of mentoring were discussed, including Skype.

There was also discussion of establishing a presence in Second Life. The question came up as to whether anyone from WESS has experience with Second Life.

The Committee intends to build a stronger relationship with the Science and Technology Section.

The Committee decided to go ahead with Brian Vetruba’s recruitment video idea. Michelle Emanuel will form a subcommittee with him to develop this.

The Committee suggests linking to the Recruitment to the Profession’s website on any libguide a WESS librarian creates.

The lack of applications for funding to conduct recruitment presentations at learned societies was discussed. The early nature of deadlines was felt to be the major obstacle.

Minutes of Recruitment’s meeting: http://wess.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Recruitment_Committee_Minutes_-_2009_Annual


9. Research & Planning (Tim Shipe)

Topic in European Studies: Mara Egherman from the Univ. of Iowa SLIS program, presented “Kristina of Sweden and 17th Century European Reading.” A copy of the presentation will be posted on WESSWeb.

ACRL Action Plans: At Midwinter 2009 it was decided that one of Research and Planning’s duties is to assist incoming vice-chair/chair-elects with formulating ideas for action plans. A subcommittee came up with two proposals. The first is to resubmit Sarah How’s plan for funding early career librarians to attend the next WESS International Conference. However, it now appears that the conference will take place after Vetruba’s year as chair. This plan can be tabled and resurrected when the conference is realized. The second plan is to fund LIS students or newer librarians who are from underrepresented groups to attend ALA Midwinter or ALA Annual. Vetruba and the Subcommittee decided to meet after the meeting to develop this further.

Committee Webpages: Shipe asked for volunteers in creating a section listing the “Topic in European Studies” presentations since 2006 with links to content.

The Committee will continue to coordinate book fair attendance.

The Committee will review its charge which is out-of-date.

Minutes of Research and Planning’s meeting: http://wess.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Research_and_Planning_Committee_Minutes_-_2009_Annual


OTHER BUSINESS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

1. Report from the SEES-WESS Merger Exploration Committee (Sarah G. Wenzel, Task Force co-chair)

SEES representatives approached WESS Executive Committee at Midwinter 2009 about combining the two sections. This had been proposed before and at the time both sections had concluded to remain separate. However, it’s always good to reexamine. An ad hoc committee of SEES and WESS members was formed after Midwinter 2009 to explore a possible merger.

The ad hoc Committee held a discussion at Annual focusing on what an ideal section would look like. Members were asked to brainstorm. Some ideas or concerns brought up include: the need of a committee-level group for cataloging, more members to fill committee slots, discussion groups should focus around technologies and collection development and not necessarily around language groups, wider scope for conference programming, two publications necessary: a newsletter and journal. The next mission of the ad hoc Committee is to create a description of what an ideal section would be and to disseminate this to the membership via WESS-L.

Timelines of the possible merger were discussed. The earliest timeline of the merger would be:

  1. Proposal to both executive committees at MW 2010.
  2. Refine proposal during Spring 2010.
  3. Sentiment of SEES and WESS members gauged via survey during Spring 2010.
  4. Combined Executive Committee meeting endorses or rejects merger proposal at Annual 2010.
  5. If approved by both executive committees, referendum on merger by SEES and WESS members during ALA election in Spring 2011.
  6. 2011-2012 SEES and WESS still separate sections.
  7. Election of officers of the merged section—ALA election in Spring 2012.
  8. Newly formed merged SEES-WESS section comes into being-after Annual 2012.

Some concerns noted: We can’t put the work of WESS on hold until the merger decision. How manageable is a joint-section given likely separate committees? How far East can we go? Would this be fiscally advantageous?

A question was raised about advertisements in the newsletter. This is not allowed per ACRL.


Meeting adjourned at 10:03am.

Respectfully submitted,

Brian Vetruba WESS Secretary

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