2004 Business Meeting Minutes in PDF
Chair Sally Wise called the meeting to order at 7:15 a.m. and noted that handouts with the agenda and other items to be discussed during the business meeting were available on each table.
The Chair thanked the co-chairs of the 25th Anniversary celebration, Merle Slyhoff and Ellen Platt, and reviewed the plans for our celebration. She noted that anniversary badge ribbons would be distributed shortly.
The Chair called upon the membership to join her in thanking West, the sponsor of our breakfast, and introduced one of the academic representatives from Los Angeles from Thomson West to the applause of the membership. She also noted that LexisNexis was sponsoring the Middle Managers' Breakfast this year, and that BNA would be sponsoring the Harvard Reception and called upon the membership to thank those vendors as well.
The Secretary/Treasurer called for approval of the minutes from the 2003 Seattle business meeting, noting that they had been posted on the SIS website and copies were available in the room. The minutes were approved unanimously.
The Secretary/Treasurer reported that copies of the SIS financial statement from the end of April, 2004 were also available in the room. This is the latest statement available from headquarters. The statement shows a healthy balance of $ 31,048.35, not including election expenses and the expenses related to the Boston annual meeting.
The Secretary/Treasurer regretted that she'd failed to bring the information with the total number of ballots cast with her to Boston, but noted that the total was slightly over 300, so that approximately one-third of the membership voted in this year's election, as with the year before. The incoming Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect is Michael Slinger of Cleveland-Marshall School of Law Library at Cleveland State University; the incoming Secretary/Treasurer is Susan Lewis-Somers of American University Law Library. The Secretary/Treasurer requested and received unanimous approval from those present to destroy the ballots.
The Chair then reported briefly on SIS activities and accomplishments for the year, and reminded the members that copies of a summary of the annual committee reports were available for review on each table.
The Chair also asked for member feedback on the Boston ALL-SIS webpage that was done this year so the new board can decide if the concept should be continued next year. She then expressed thanks to the current Executive Board for their efforts during the past year.
Next, the Chair referred the members to a proposal to change the Bylaws to allow us to conduct electronic elections next year. Copies were distributed to the tables. The Bylaws Committee recommended, and the Board approved the following changes:
Article VI: NOMINATION AND ELECTION OF OFFICERS
Section 5. Election.
The Officers of the Section shall be elected by mail ballot. The Secretary shall mail distribute ballots to each member of the Section by April 1. Ballots shall be marked and returned to the Secretary by April 25. The candidates receiving the largest number of votes for each office shall be declared elected, and shall be reported by the Secretary at the annual meeting of the Section. All candidates shall be notified of the results of election by May 5.
Article VII: AMENDMENTS.
Section 1. Bylaws.
Bylaws of the Section may be adopted, amended or suspended at the annual meeting of the Section by a majority vote of the members present and voting. Or, bylaws may be adopted, amended, or suspended through a mail distributed ballot. Whenever the bylaws are to be changed by mail a distributed ballot vote, the Secretary shall mail distribute ballots to every member in good standing of the Section. Such ballots shall state the text of the proposed change, the purpose of the change, and the date by which ballots must be returned to the Secretary. Proposed changes in the bylaws by mail distributed ballot must receive a majority vote of the ballots returned to the Secretary in order to pass. Tie votes shall be considered failure to pass.
After some discussion, an amendment was proposed by Theodora Artz to reinstate an amended form of the first sentence in Article VI, Section 5, which would read:
The Officers of the Section shall be elected by mail ballot.
This amendment was approved. The entire Bylaw Proposal with the amendment was then approved.
The Chair noted that a summary of the annual committee reports was included in the handouts available on each table, and that selected committee chairs whose groups had significant activity this year had been asked to report to the members.
James Duggan, Chair of the Awards Committee this year, reported on this year's winners. The Frederick Charles Hicks Award for Outstanding Contributions to Academic Law Librarianship will go to Timothy Coggins, Director of the Law Library and Professor of Law at the University of Richmond. The Outstanding Article Award is going to two recipients this year. The first is Nancy Carol Carter, Director of the Legal Research Center and Professor of Law at the University of San Diego, for her article: The Special Case of Alaska: Native Law and Research, 22 Leg. Ref. Servs. Q. 11 (no. 4, 2003). The second goes to Matthew Condon, Reference Librarian & Associate Professor of Law at Baylor University, for his article: Beyond Mere Competency: Advanced Legal Research in a Practice-Oriented Curriculum, 55 Baylor L. Rev. 1 (2003).
A new award was proposed by the committee for outstanding service to the section, and has been approved by the Board. The award will be designated the Outstanding Service to ALL-SIS Award, which will honor a member who has made outstanding contributions to the SIS in areas of section activity and professional service. Copies of the award description and criteria are available on the tables.
Marian Parker reported on the group's efforts this year. There were 40 persons wishing to be mentees, and 57 members who volunteered to be mentors. The CONALL Program will be held at Harvard prior to the Reception from 5:15-6:15 p.m. and there will be a specially designated bus for the CONALL group that will leave at 4:30 p.m.
Margie Axtmann noted that committee member Doug Lind has prepared a training outline for new collection development librarians which has been posted on the ALL-SIS website. Doug will co-chair the group next year with Connie Lenz, and the expectation is that further work on collection development resources for academic law librarians will continue.
The committee is presenting a Workshop on Teaching Legal Research on Tuesday morning and encourages members to attend. They continue to develop a Legal Research web sourcebook on the ALL-SIS website that will provide sample syllabi, lecture outlines, exercises and the like for teaching Legal Research subjects. The new co-chairs for next year will be Wendy Scott and Jennifer Murray.
Terry Martin reported that there's going to be 'a lotta food and drink' at the Harvard Reception on Tuesday evening and encourages everyone to come. Tours of the library will be offered starting at 2:00 p.m.
Erika Wayne reported that the committee worked on a new membership brochure for the section, which will be available as a PDF file for easy printing on the website. The committee also developed and ran a membership survey this year using Zoomerang; there were 139 participants. There will be time to discuss the survey results later in the meeting.
The committee sponsored a listserv discussion of the changes to the ABA statistics form in September, 2003. Counting titles and alternative measures of library quality were the main areas of discussion. The committee is presenting one of the section's programs this year and will address these issues (Program D-5: ABA Statistics: Tackling Topical Questions - 2004 Update). Members are encouraged to attend.
Barbara Bintliff reported that the task force has developed a resource for all academic law libraries to use that contains substantive materials to help us promote our libraries. All sorts of 'how tos' are included, with examples of annual reports and public relations materials. All members of the task force made contributions, and Bintliff noted that the members from SCALL received a SCALL service award for their efforts. The toolkit is now available on the ALL-SIS website.
The Chair noted that copies of the summary results and some of the question comments from the recent Membership Survey were available for review on the tables, and called for comments from the members regarding the survey. There were none.
The Chair introduced Judith Wright, current chair of the ABA Section on Legal Education Committee on Libraries, to lead a discussion of the proposed changes in the ABA Accreditation Standards affecting libraries. Copies of the standards, and the unattributed comments from the Directors, TS-SIS and ALL-SIS listservs on the topic, were posted for member convenience on the ALL-SIS Boston webpage. Judith Wright explained some of the background behind the proposed changes, and responded to some comments from the members. Further discussions will be held at the Directors' Breakfast on Tuesday morning.
The Chair introduced Hope Breeze, representing the Legal Information Preservation Alliance. This is a partnership of approximately 20 law libraries paying membership fees to advance the preservation of legal materials. Hope has been hired part-time by the Alliance to develop a database of past and present preservation projects. She will be doing a survey of academic law libraries in two parts. The first will ask about general preservation activities, the second will focus on sponsored preservation activities. She seeks as much participation from our members as possible and solicits our support.
Prior to passing the gavel, the Chair noted that it had been a productive year, thanked the members of this year's board, and presented each with a small gift. She then presented the gavel to incoming Chair, Carole Hinchcliff.
Carole Hinchcliff thanked Sally for all of her hard work over the past year. She noted that she had made most of the committee appointments for the next year, but that there were still volunteer opportunities for anyone interested; those persons should contact her. Carole reported that AALL would be engaged in strategic planning in the year to come and encouraged any and all suggestions for ways the section can make a contribution to the membership.
Carole then introduced the new Newsletter editor, Leah Sandwell-Weiss. A meeting of the Newsletter committee will be held at 10:15 following this meeting, and anyone interested in contributing ideas for the newsletter is welcome to attend.
Next, Carole introduced Ajaye Bloomstone and Lee Peoples, who will co-chair the Program Committee next year. Program proposals will be due to the committee on August 1; they are due to AALL on August 15. Proposals are encouraged!
The meeting was adjourned at 8:40 a.m.
Respectfully Submitted,
Kit Kreilick, Secretary/Treasurer