General Membership Meeting Minutes - 2009 Midwinter
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Western European Studies Section
General Membership Meeting, ALA Mid-Winter Meeting 2009
MEETING MINUTES
Meeting held on January 26, 2009, 8:00-10:00 am, Sheraton Denver, Beverly
ATTENDING
Gordon Anderson (Univ. of Minnesota), Laura Dale Bischof (Univ. of Minnesota), Margaret Brill (Duke Univ.), Kate Brooks (Univ. of Minnesota), Paula Carns (University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign), Michelle Emanuel (Univ. of Mississippi), Adán Griego (Stanford Univ.), Rowena Griem (Yale Univ.), Dick Hacken (Brigham Young), Sebastian Hierl (Harvard Univ.), Sarah How (Cornell Univ.), Gail Hueting (University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign) Tom Izbicki (Rutgers Univ.), Charlene Kellsey (Univ of Colorado-Boulder), Bill Kulp (Johns Hopkins Univ.), Birdie MacLennan (Univ. of Vermont), Colin McCaffrey (Washington Univ.), Heidi Madden (Duke Univ.), Rebecca R. Malek-Wiley (Tulane Univ.), Jon Marner (Texas A&M), Shawn Martin (Univ. of Pennsylvania), Anne Oechtering (Staatsbibliothek Berlin – SPK), Heleni Pedersoli (Univ. of Maryland), Deb Raftus (Univ. of Washington), Jim Niessen (Rutgers Univ.),Tim Shipe (Univ. of Iowa), Cason Snow (Northern Illinois Univ.), Brian Vetruba (Washington Univ.), Sarah G. Wenzel (Univ. of Chicago)
MINUTES
Anne Oechtering, WESS Member-at-Large, convened the meeting at 8:07am.
1. ANNOUNCEMENT (Wenzel, Stephen Pugh)
Andy Alferovs, Vice President of Global Sales for Coutts, was unable to make the meeting. Stephen Pugh, VP for North American/Asian Pacific Sales, spoke on his behalf. Coutts is pleased to continue to support the Coutts Nijhoff International West European Specialist Study Grant. A high number of stellar research proposals have been submitted in this round. The award recipient will be announced in February.
Wenzel noted that Ingram has bought Coutts Nijhoff.
2. GENERAL REPORTS
a. Introductions
WESS Officers: Laura Dale Bischof (Chair), Sarah How (Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect), Sarah Wenzel (Past Chair), Anne Oechtering (Member-at-Large), Brian Vetruba (Secretary).
Introductions of attendees.
b. Report from the Chair (Laura Dale Bischof)
Bischof thanked everyone for attending and chairing meetings at Midwinter. There have been lots of energy and hard work, and many new ideas of how to move WESS forward.
An ALA working group is devising a new compressed conference schedule that will be implemented beginning with Annual 2010. Suggestions put forward at ACRL Leadership Council include having sections’ executive committee meetings on the same day and time, and combining ACRL leadership meetings. Comments and suggestions about the conference schedule can be emailed to Bischof or directly to Mary Ellen Davis (ACRL staff; mdavis@ala.org).
ALA will be introducing ALA Connect, a Drupal-based online content management system which will allow committees and groups to work and meet virtually.
The ACRL President’s program at Annual 2009 will be on advocacy training.
ACRL is attempting to become a greener organizer and has added this goal to its strategic plan. Therefore, it is encouraging less use of paper and more virtual meetings.
ACRL has recently revised the program planning process for sections beginning in 2010. Programs will need to be approved by ACRL’s Professional Development Coordinating Committee. Proposals should also address ACRL’s strategic goals. For more information: Annual Conference Programs FAQ
3. DISCUSSION GROUP (DG) REPORTS
a. Cataloging (Marcus Richter)
Cataloging held a joint meeting with the Romance Languages. See Romance Languages for details.
Please submit suggest discussion topics for Annual.
b. Romance Languages (Birdie MacLennan)
Together with Cataloging, Romance Languages held its discussion group on Saturday morning, Jan. 24th with 47 attendees. The groups discussed vendor-supplied bibliographic records from European vendors. Touzot, Harrassowitz, Aux Amateurs de Livres, Casalini Libri, and Puvill Libros each gave a 10-15 minute presentation.
Deb Raftus agreed to serve as next convener for 2009-2010.
c. Classical, Mediaeval & Renaissance (Colin McCaffrey)
Brill Publishing conducted a brief presentation of its resources for Classics. An open discussion followed. McCaffrey is seeking names of possible speakers to discuss digital projects for Annual in Chicago.
d. College & Medium-sized Libraries (Michelle Emanuel)
At Annual 2008 Emanuel proposed to the general membership meeting and to Exec. Committee that the College & Medium-sized Libraries DG (CML) be dissolved. A subsequent email about this was sent to WESS-L with hardly any interest.
The wiki on WESSWeb and the listserv will be maintained so that if anyone has interest, the DG can be resurrected.
When this DG was first established, it seemed to fill a need since it was thought that ACRL was not supporting smaller institutions. The College Libraries Section of ACRL does have a medium-sized academic discussion group: http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/about/sections/cls/collprogdisc/discussiongroups.cfm
CML is not meeting at Annual 2009.
e. Germanists (Heidi Madden)
The Germanists met jointly with the Social Science and History DG on Sunday morning, Jan. 25th with 55 people in attendance. The topic was practical tips and suggestions for instruction and outreach for West European Studies.
There were five presentations: Peter Kraus (University of Utah): "Information Literacy for German Language and Literature at the Graduate Level: New Approaches and Models."; Sue Roberts (Yale University): “Introduction to Library Research for History Majors.”; Brian Vetruba (Washington University in St. Louis): "Demonstration of Libguides."; Chella Vaidyanathan (University of Miami): “Library Instruction and Services through Blackboard.”; Heidi Madden (Duke): "Practice-based Discussion of a Western European Studies Literacy Curriculum."
Madden is soliciting discussion topics for Annual in Chicago. Anna Shparberg will be serving as next convener.
Germanists' DG Minutes--Midwinter 2009
As this was the second time in recent history that instruction was a topic of discussion in a DG, there was a call from Madden and other WESS members to consider whether there should be a permanent group in WESS for instruction and outreach. A webpage for resources was also suggested.
f. MLA Task Force (Shawn Martin)
There was a meeting of a WESS and LES Task Force to create liaison between ALA and the Modern Language Association. There is still much interest but the process is going slower.
MLA International Bibliography in Academic Libraries ACRL Discussion Group with the help of LES and WESS members circulated a petition for MLA to form an interest group for academic librarians within MLA. More than enough signatures were obtained. The interest group will be formed in either 2010 or 2011.
g. Scandinavian (Anna Sveinbjornsson, convener; Gordon Anderson reported)
Gordon Anderson reported as Sveinbjornsson was unable to attend Midwinter. There was a presentation by the Head of the Colorado Genealogical Society on how to start a genealogical society to cultivate immigrant heritage.
Anderson reported on the status of the Google Book Digitization Project at the Univ. of Minnesota which will include Scandinavian collections. He also reported on the Swedish American Bibliography project -- a bibliography of Swedish-language imprints published in North America available through the Swedish Royal Library's LIBRIS catalog.
A library panel will be held at the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Studies’ meeting in Madison, Wisconsin on May 1, 2009, on a project to digitize Swedish-American newspapers. The Swedish-American Bibliography will also be discussed. There will also be the traditional historians and librarians luncheon. See: http://www.scandinavian.wisc.edu/sass/program.html
h. Social Science & History (Thea Lindquist)
Social Science & History held a joint meeting with the Germanists DG. See notes above under Germanists.
i. Special Topics (Alain Joseph St. Pierre, Jr., Louis Reith reported)
There was no actual meeting scheduled although Reith did show up just in case. No one showed up.
Bischof reported that Special Topics will be holding a joint meeting with Social Science & History DG in Chicago on European colonialism.
4. COMMITTEE REPORTS
a. Coutts-Nijhoff Award Jury (Sarah Wenzel)
The past chair always chairs this committee. This year the committee had eight submissions—all of high quality. ACRL will announce the awardee in February. The award is for $3,000 to support research in Europe. For details on the award, see: http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/awards/nijhoffstudy.cfm
Coutts will present a giant check to the recipient at the General Membership meeting at Annual in Chicago.
b. Fundraising (Tom Izbicki)
The Committee is improving documentation of Committee’s practices and procedures for fundraising. Members have been talking to current vendors and hopefully future ones in the exhibits during Midwinter. The Committee is also looking at updating fundraising goals in these tight economic times.
c. International Conference Planning, 2010 (Adán Griego)
Griego noted that WESS was unable to come to sufficient funds for the planned international conference in Madrid in 2010 while maintaining an affordable registration fee with the main reason being the $40,000 ACRL/ALA overhead costs. Griego passed out copies of the proposed budget. The Committee discussed the possibility of pushing the conference back to 2011 or 2012. A subcommittee will look at holding the conference in Berlin. If we do pursue an international conference, WESS would most likely need to do this without the financial support from ACRL. Some academic entity would be needed for local arrangements. The Center for Research Libraries was noted as one possibility; however, Wenzel queried them and was told funding such an endeavor would not be possible. ACRL staff was acknowledged as being helpful with the planning. Larson also noted that ACRL was willing to undertake risks and absorb possible losses at the Paris Conference.
d. Membership (Paula Carns, chair; Michelle Emanuel reported)
Membership met Saturday morning, Jan. 24, 2009.
Section’s membership: Membership in WESS is down to 576 personal members as of Nov. 2008 compared to 620 in 2007 which is a loss of 7%. Overall, ACRL is down 4% with membership so the decrease in membership in WESS is consistent with ACRL and other ACRL sections. In some cases WESS members were dropped by mistake when they renewed. The Membership Chair receives notification when a member drops WESS and does follow up with him/her.
A question from the floor was raised whether there are librarians who are still in the field but nevertheless dropped WESS.
Committee members are looking at ways of attracting new members and promoting WESS, including scripting a promotional “elevator talk”, asking Publications to create WESS business cards which can be easily carried around and handed out to potential members. In addition, Committee members discussed venues for promoting WESS at ALA sessions (e.g. NMRT’s orientation).
Mentoring program: The Committee continues with its buddy program in which new WESS members to WESS are paired up with a Membership Committee member. These new members are emailed and offered advice on WESS sessions to attend and how to get involved. Often mentors and mentees will meet at Annual or Midwinter. There has been a varying degree of success with the program but it’s viewed to be worthwhile.
A question was raised from the floor about a mentoring program for new librarians. This was discussed a few years ago but was felt there wasn’t sufficient interest.
Socials Events:
About 40 people attended the WESS Happy Hour at Midwinter held from 4-6pm on Friday, Jan. 23, 2009 at the Strata Bar at the Hyatt Regency in Denver. This event will continue at Midwinter in Boston.
Carns did investigate possible cruise options for Annual in Chicago but to keep costs low, as well as some members’ reservations for a cruise, Membership Committee members decided to look into holding a buffet dinner at a restaurant. A survey of restaurant options will be sent to the membership. The Skyline Restaurant and the restaurant at Loyola University were suggested as possibilities. Looking back at the reception in Anaheim, there was not enough food and it was difficult to organize with Disney.
Members were strongly encouraged to visit the vendors on the Exhibits floor which sponsor WESS socials and other events.
No one from Membership is attending ACRL National in Seattle. If those attending wish to organize a social event, please do so over email.
e. Program Planning 2009 (Gordon Anderson)
The WESS Program at Annual 2009 “Situating Area Studies Librarianship in a Globalised World: New Directions, New Collections” will be held on Monday, July 13, 2009 from 12:00-1:30pm. The program is co-sponsored by LES and SEES.
The panel includes Christopher Bush, Prof. of French, Northwestern University, Sabine Engel, Director of the Center for German & European Studies, University of Minnesota, and Christine Ingebritsen, Prof. of Political Sciences & Scandinavian Studies, University of Washington. Stephen Corrisin, Head of Acquisitions at the New York Public Library—The Research Libraries will be the moderator.
Program Planning 2009 Committee Minutes--Midwinter 2009
There are also 23 programs from other sections which may be of interest to WESS members.
f. Program Planning 2010 (Sarah How)
How came up with a draft title and working theme for the 2010 conference: “Contemporary European Fiction in Translation”. Three speakers and a moderator are planned. One speaker will focus on Translation Studies, the second on translation from a publishing perspective, and the third will be a practicing literary translator. This will be joint program between LES and WESS. Heidi Madden has agreed to chair the 2010 Planning Committee with Deb Raftus, Anna Shparberg, Brian Vetruba, and Sarah Wenzel as members. How is looking into securing an extra 30 minutes of time which would give us two hours for the program.
g. Publications + WESSWeb Editor (Jonathan Marner, Dick Hacken)
There were ten people at the Committee’s meeting including a number of guests. Newsletter Editor, Jeff Staiger, and Features Editor, Jerry Heverly, were unable to attend.
Newsletter: Hierl wondered about the timeliness of his Bits & Bytes column given that the newsletter is published only twice a year. Consensus was that it was still useful to have this column in the newsletter; however, shorter and timelier reviews could be done via Facebook. The request to consider providing the newsletter in pdf was discussed but thought not feasible. Some members of the Membership Committee suggest that the title of the newsletter be changed to reflect the more substantive articles; a subcommittee of Publication will look into this.
WESS presence on Facebook: Snow created a group page for WESS. As of this meeting, there were 19 members of the group. The Facebook group is a good way to recruit new members, publicize event, and interest, especially for Y-generation folks. Snow is currently the only administrator and will put a call out on WESS-L for additional administrators. WESS Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/group.php?sid=e4d901312fafec265d2dcfa4100e5eeb&gid=5520965977
WESSWiki: Hacken wants to thank coordinators of the subject guides (located on the left side of the wiki). Just a reminder that any WESS member can add links to these guides. Coordinators will be alerted of any changes. Statistics are available at the bottom for each page. Members were reminded to update their own entry in the WESS directory. Bischof and Vetruba note that there is a proposed change to the Governance Procedures making WESS Secretary responsible for maintaining committee and discussion group rosters on WESSWiki. [Subsequently passed by Exec]. There are a number of Dartmouth pages that still need to be wikified; committee members will assist Hacken with this.
WESS domain name: Still investigating registration of a domain name to ensure easy redirects if WESSWeb’s institutional host changes from BYU.
Revision of WESS by-laws: All of WESS’s by-laws have been changed to governance procedures which means that amendments only need to be passed by WESS Executive. WESS Governance Procedures
Membership Committee suggests the creation of WESS business cards to assist with recruiting. Publications will look into printing and design options.
Marner and Vetruba are going to see what sorts of publications and formats other ACRL sections produce.
h. Recruitment to the Profession (George I. Paganelis, chair; Brian Vetruba reported)
Paganelis was unable to attend Midwinter. Recruitment holds a virtual meeting via email the week prior to Midwinter. For this meeting, seven Recruitment Committee members and six guests participated.
Updating the Recruitment public wiki page was discussed. A number of links to ALA webpages need to be changed. See: Academic Librarianship & Foreign Languages Recruitment Page
There were nine people who completed the job shadowing interest form but only two shadowed WESS librarians. Geographical distance was thought to be a reason the others could not participate. Members felt that email/IM/phone contact with a WESS librarian should be offered to those who couldn’t participate in an actual shadowing event. Advertising of the job-shadowing program will be expanded to job placement centers and library schools.
WESS members were reminded of the $600 funding opportunity from ACRL/WESS for making recruitment presentations at learned societies. As of yet, no one has applied. If the money is not spent by the end of Aug. 2009, the money will revert back to ACRL. ACRL Funding Opportunities for Recruitment Presentations
Recruitment to the Profession Committee Mintutes--Midwinter 2009 (Virtual)
i. Research & Planning (Tim Shipe)
There were three presentations on European Studies: “Russian Federation Academic Libraries and Infrastructure” (Liladhar Pendse, UCLA)”; “The Suppressed First Edition of Margaret of Navarre’s Heptameron” (Christopher Walker, Penn State University); and “Foreign Languages and Academic Librarianship” (Brian Vetruba, Washington Univ., and Laura Dale Bischof, Univ. of MN). Abstracts are on the wiki and the Committee will try to post the presenters’ powerpoints as well.
To assist the incoming Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect, Research and Planning will provide suggestions of Action Plans to be submitted to ACRL. Everyone is reminded that each Action Plan must provide outcomes assessment.
5. OTHER BUSINESS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS
a. Gordon Anderson noted that often our programs and discussion groups cover a broad range of topics which would be of interest to librarians outside of Western European Studies. Members should encourage their non-WESS colleagues to attend our events.
b. Jim Niessen reported that the German North American Resources Partnership (GNARP: http://www.crl.edu/grn/gnarp/index.asp ) will have a prominent presence at the Bibliothekartag (Librarians’ Conference) in Erfurt: http://www.bibliothekartag2009.de/ . Six to eight GNARP members are attending. There will be a presentation “Bridges across the Atlantic”. Registration for the conference is less expensive than ALA and there are travel grants for American librarians.
The meeting was adjourned at 10:04am.
Respectfully submitted,
Brian Vetruba, WESS Secretary.
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