BRASS EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE



BRASS EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

ALA Annual Meeting

Washington, DC

Tuesday, June 26, 2007, 8-10 am

WCC (Convention Center) Room 144 B/C

Attendance: Ryan Womack (Chair), Mark Anderson, Jennifer Boettcher, Bobray Bordelon, Wendy Diamond, Christy Donaldson, Mary Gilles, Judith Faust, Greg Fleming, Gene Hayworth, Patricia Kenly, Lydia LaFaro, Chris LeBeau, Stacey Marien, Michael Oppenheim, Julia Martin, Stephanie Maatta, Rita Moss, Susan Neuman, Sylvia Ortiz, Celia Ross, Ann Fiegen (recording)

1. Call to order

2. Welcome

Ryan Womack, Chair, welcomed the committee members and asked members to only report action items or issues for discussion. Brief committee reports are to be submitted to the Ann Fiegen, Secretary for the minutes.

3. Approval of agenda

4. Announcements -- Womack

a. Executive planning committee report

Visitor, Gillian Etienne, from Emerald expressed interest in a continuation of the Emerald Research Award after next year. A way to provide something tangible in return for major BRASS sponsors could be a vendor panel review of10 minute reports from BRASS’ major sponsors. BRASS will submit a formal proposal to RUSA board for a vendor panel.

b. RUSA board

Did not get to legal medical and business guidelines.

There will be 120 emerging leaders were selected. Next year the process will differ. Emerging leader applications will be submitted directly to the emerging leaders program, and RUSA will get one pick. Forms will be available July 1, and the deadline for submission is August 15. Ryan encouraged applicants to solicit letters from BRASS leaders for nominations. Projects for emerging leaders are also being solicited and due by late October. Let Ryan or Judith know if you are interested in submitting a project. Wiki..

RUSA sponsors a project at a cost of $1,000. BRASS can also submit project.

5. Old Business

a. Development issues—will be covered under section 8 of the agenda.

b. Archives-Greg Fleming

Greg visited the BRASS archives currently housed at UIU. He compared the finding aid against the archives. There are a few gaps, some mislabeling (the general membership meeting is really the general business meeting). Compiled list of committee chairs from the rosters. The labeled year represents the beginning of the appointment year.

Celia added that she has the Education Committee gaps, and was waiting instructions on where to send because of archives transition. Exec confirmed that committees can send archives (Committee notebooks more than 2 years old) to ALA. Gregg will send out information related to archives and send message to ALA communities. Committees should currently be archiving documents to the online communities. Exec encouraged members to send photos labeled with names to collect a BRASS history.

6. Reports from BRASS Representatives (Boettcher, Bordelon, Diamond, Donaldson, Haynes, Hines, LaFaro, Neuman, O’Connor, Ortiz). Bring items for action and discussion only, submit full reports to Secretary for the minutes.

Representative to RUSA Access to Information-- Wendy Diamond

Wendy asked if there are BRASS related access issues that RUSA should be aware of and consider. Bring items to Midwinter meeting. The Committee discussed the definition of access to information as broader than intellectual freedom, for example the high cost of information, or access to tax payer information. Ryan added that he was representative 10 years prior, and even then there was a discussion on the need for a RUSA level committee. The Committee review question will be whether there are any burning issues at this time. Action: Send comments to Adele Barsh (incoming representative) at abarsh@ucsd.edu, and make recommendation at midwinter.

Representative to RUSA membership-- Christy Donaldson

Discussed the possibility of RUSA first time members receiving a certificate to a RUSA preconference or class. In answer to a question about financial tracking, the reply was that it would be tracked, itemized by section and revenue generated, and charged back to a coupon.

Representative to RUSA professional development.- Todd Hines

There is a large IMLS library support staff grant to develop certification. More encouragement for online professional development courses. Business 101 online course will continue facilitated by Celia Ross.

In addition to the two items reported on during the BRASS Executive meeting, the following items of possible interest to BRASS members were also discussed:

Advanced business reference course request – there have been multiple requests in the RUSA online course evaluations for an advanced business reference course.

RUSA has been having lots of problems producing reports about the online courses.  It has not been possible to review reports showing the enrollments of the different courses or the breakdown of who is attending (students vs. current librarians, etc.). There have requests to lower the online course prices for students.  The Committee would like to review some reports from RUSA showing how many students have taken the online courses and costs of comparable classes.  The input from the Committee was that there was support for reasonable prices for current students, but that some data to analyze would be helpful.

RUSA Planning and Finance—Bordelon

In planning for the 2008 budget, there was discussion that an ad-hoc task force be formed to examine what RUSA and its sections could be doing in terms of technology. David Tyckoson is accepting applications from the sections for funding for special initiatives.

7. Reports from BRASS Chairs -- bring items for action and discussion only, submit full reports to Secretary for the minutes.

a. Awards (Andersen, Flynn, Jacobe, Zhang)

1) Womack reported that the Emerald research award will continue one more year. Emerald is considering a permanent award, when that is approved BRASS will create a new award committee.

2) Thomson Gale Award for Excellence in Business Librarianship: Anderson

Sylvia James is the recipient of the award.

b. Business Reference (LeBeau, Maata, McKay, Moss/Ho)

1) BRASS Business Reference Sources Committee- -LeBeau

The Committee heard that the future of the Online Communities seems questionable. The committee has found it very useful, but the work could be moved to a Wiki if necessary. The Committee discussed a few refinements to the workings of the selection process. Three titles were chosen as Outstanding and four titles were chosen as Notable. Chris LeBeau will follow up with the RUSQ editor about an appropriate time to release the titles prior to publication.

The 2008 Publishers Open Forum (Philadelphia, PA) theme is “Buenos Negocios Hispanic Market Information Sources.” Three vendors are confirmed representing SimplyMap, Simmons and the Economic Census Branch, Company Statistics Division. The committee also discussed future Forum topics: a dialog with business reference book publishers and venture capital resources. The committee also discussed increasing its efforts to seek input from members about needed product improvements.

2) BRASS Public Libraries Committee Forum—Maata

Sixty-five people attended the BRASS forum. Public libraries committee and PLA career and bus service would like to cosponsor a program. Ryan said there is not enough time now to get a new program approved, but that would be happy to cosponsor and put our name on an existing program. Otherwise the program cycle begins two years before the event. It would be good to schedule more meetings at the same time to free up space for new themed events like this.

3) Business Reference in Academic Libraries—Moss

The committee is considering stopping tradition of tour. Exec members congratulated the committee on the local business libraries brochure. The discussion forum topic was a questions and sharing format, with 60 people attending. Comments were that it was nice to get back to an open discussion instead of the recent topical session.

c. Programs (Leonard, Ortiz)

1. 2007 BRASS Program Planning Committee-- Sylvia Ortiz

The committee accomplished its goal successfully. The program presented on Monday, June 25th, 2007, was entitled Doing Business Abroad: Regulations, Markets, and Culture. The three guest speakers were Kirsten Mortimer, Director of Outreach & Educational Services Division, Bureau of Industry & Security, Dept. of Commerce; Greta Ober-Beauchesne, Research Librarian, Joint World Bank/International Monetary Fund Library; and Patrick Tunison, Chief International Lending Officer, U.S. Small Business Administration. The guest speakers provided the audience of 150 with very informative and useful information and followed up with a lively Q&A period. The bibliography which is a companion publication to the Program will be available at the BRASS web site. Jian Bai will post it under "Presentations and Handouts, International Business."

There was a suggestion to revise the evaluation form to allow for feedback on individual speakers. The suggestion will be added to the Tips for Chairs. The program schedule will be changed to 8:00—12:00, changing the ending time from 12:30. Contact scheduling coordinator, Julia Martin to make the change.

Thanks to S&P for their continued support for the pre-program breakfast. They collected business cards that were added to their exhibit floor drawing.

2. 2008 program—Faust for Leonard

The working title is “Finding Your Perfect Match: Niche Marketing”. Speakers are being selected.

d. Functional (Bordelon, Brothers, Hayworth, Marien, Ross, Oppenheim)

1) The BRASS Membership Committee — Brothers

The 2nd Annual BRASS New Members Reception was a success and Morningstar plans to continue their generous support.  BRASS increased membership by 102 over the past year while the overall membership in ALA decreased.  One member of the committee, Amia Baker (incoming chair) brought forward a mentorship proposal that will soon be presented to Executive Comm. 

2) 20th anniversary—Bordelon

The theme will be "BRASS@20: Promoting the Business of Business Librarianship". We plan to promote the major activities through "Bookend your conference with BRASS." The Friday night opening reception could continue to serve as the welcoming ceremony and a chance for new members to meet seasoned ones. Monday night would be a larger party. However, keeping in mind the logistics of Anaheim and the upcoming 25th anniversary the plan is to do a smaller celebration for #20 than #25. Giveaways and vendor support are being identified. An article commemorating the history since BRASS became a section is slated for RUSQ and the BRASS website can be greatly enhanced with more detailed histories for committees and interviews with key players. 20th anniversary theme: Moved, seconded and approved by Executive.

3) Publications Committee—Gene Hayworth

600 new BRASS Publications Committee Brochures were printed. 300 copies went to ALA's New Members Round Table. Fred Rowland, the BRASS Member Publication List Manager, reported that the Submission Form is now working properly. Jian Bai, the BRASS Webmaster, reported that ALA is still in transition to the new content management system. He uploaded all the minutes for ALA Midwinter, and some of the "Best of the Best" and "Professional Tools" pages were updated. Elizabeth Clarage, BRASS-L Listserv manager, reported that 83 messages were sent to BRASS-L from January - June 15, 2007. There are 166 members of BRASS-L. Priscilla Geahigan stepped down from being co-BRASS-L Manager in April. Suzanne Sweeney will take over management of BRASS-L. Van C. Houlson, Membership Directory Manager, reported that New BRASS membership lists by name and by geography were generated from ALA membership files in April. Lisa O'Connor, BRASS Representative to the RUSA Publications Committee, reported that the RUSA Publications Committee currently has no chair. She discussed an idea that Jennifer Boettcher wanted the BRASS Publications Committee to explore, a best practices at the RUSA level, much like ACRL's Standards and Guidelines (). Gene

Hayworth demonstrated the RUSA and BRASS sections of ALA's Online Communities (), and showed the "BRASS Logos" folder, which contains an MS Word file that lists and gives information on all the Brass images. Suzanne Sweeney reported that the editor of Reference and User Services Quarterly (RUSQ) wants to emphasize that the deadlines RUSQ gives are inflexible. There have been some problems with individuals submitting material late or trying to revise something that was already in process. She noted, however, that BRASS has been one of the best sections in this regard.

Updated brochures for BRASS are ready. It is ok to discard the old ones and one copy will be sent to archives. Discussion clarified that the BRASS Stickers are to go to the incoming ViceChair / Chair Elect. Boetcher will send what she has.

4) Development—Stacey

Vendors are also BRASS members, who partner with section membership to improve products. Vendors are speaking with BRASS about sponsorship opportunities. Emerald will continue with 2 awards for one more year.

5) Ad-hoc Section review--Oppenheim

Haynes reported that RUSA Organization Committee is on schedule for section reviews. BRASS Committee Chairs will be notified in the fall of visits by the section review committee members to BRASS committee meetings. The Section review report will be submitted to BRASS exec at Annual 2008 and to RUSA by Midwinter 2009.

6) Education—Ross

The Education committee reported that they voted to rename core competencies to Core Sources. A discussion of core sources vs. competencies followed. Competencies suggest a human element, they resemble Business FAQ. Faust recounted that when she was chair there was a slide away from core competencies to a revision as FAQ. If something new is needed then that can also be created. Political Science is developing core competencies. Ryan Womack charged the committee with looking at the committee’s historical documentation concerning the issue of the competencies and how they are addressed. Examine original charge, consider rename them to FAQ, and bring a complete proposal to Exec.

Data—Ryan will find out from Donavon if BRASS can get a regular report on stats of webpage views.

Graphics—Publications Committee has logos and these are posted to the open forum in the BRASS online communities. Deliberate that the official BRASS logos are unalterable, but the website “buttons” are open for revision. Given the amount of work for the Committee, Ross proposed co-chair, or Pre-conference standing committee or coordinator. Ryan asked that the issue be viewed in the context of section review for now, which may result in splitting of the committee to handle the workload.

8. New Business

a) Handbook revision Womack

Handbook and Tips for chairs are in revision. Womack passed out deletions and additions on tips for chairs. He wants an initial draft by the end of July so changes can get to new chairs. There is a decision needed in Section 4 “vendor sponsorship” for the Tips. Send your ideas to Womack. As the handbook is also being revised Womack asked Committee Chairs to review their own committee sections of the handbook and send any changes to him.

b) Outgoing Committee Chairs – Womack

Please turn over minutes and add committee notes to the learning communities’ committee section. If you have any questions about where minutes or committee documents are to be submitted, send to Big 5 first. Otherwise send to BRASS-L. RUSA may be creating a WIKI for policies and procedures. Wikis.

c) Liaison to SLA Business and Finance Div.—Jennifer Boettcher

B&F is interested in sponsoring something jointly with BRASS. Stand alone event possibly in 2009 NYC.

Thank you to Michael as outgoing Member at large.

Gavel passed to incoming BRASS chair, Judith Faust.

Thank you to Ryan for his leadership of BRASS during the past year.

9. Adjournment

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