Archives and Local History Round Table
Business Meeting

TLA Annual Conference, Houston, TX • April 4, 2003

In attendance: Matt DeWaelsche, Marvin Rich, Mike Miller, George Gause, Will Howard, Allison Beechwood, Paulette Delahoussaye, Melinda Curley, Diane Warner, Evelyn Brass, Rose Marie McElfresh, Mary Jane Stevenson.

• Elections: We confirmed Will Howard (Houston Public) as chair, Matt DeWaelsche (San Antonio Public) as vice-chair and Melinda Curley as councilor. In addition, we chose Paulette Delahoussaye (Center for American History) as secretary, and Evelyn Branch (University of Houston) as alternate councilor.

• The Disaster planning preconference, cancelled for the 2003 conference, was put on indefinite hold.

• TLA strategic plan: TLA liaison Rose Marie McElfresh talked about the need for member input to TLA’s proposed strategic plan. Mike provided copies of the sections he thought related to ALHRT. Comments may be directed to Pat Smith at TLA.

• Webmaster: Diane Warner agreed to take responsibility for the ALHRT website. Shewill be a liaison between ALHRT members who provide info., and TLA staff, who can post material (which can be in word format.) to the website.

• Newsletter editor-Will Howard? We aim for annual publication of this, so since 2004 conference will be March 17-20, we hope to have a January 2004 issue. Material (again, word documents are okay) can be provided to TLA, who will handle publication. Address labels are not needed.

• Conference program planning--some ideas:

1.      another preservation metadata talk:  this one would focus on the various schema being used by libraries. Cataloging and automation round tables would likely co-sponsor.

2.      Texana publishers panel—they would discuss the history and outlook of Texana publishing. Possible participants: Republic of Texas Press (purchased by Scarecrow Press), university presses, Eakin, etc. the Acquisitions roundtable might co-sponsor.

3.      “special” friends of the library topic. We received a handout on TSL friends, Mike talked about a friends group in Lancaster, and Matt talked about his experience in San Antonio.

4.      paper marbling: Since this was a popular program in 2003, Will suggested we might have it as a booth in exhibits in 2004, using marbling folks to demonstrate. (Mary Jane mentioned something about a charge for this?)

5.      Texas History Benchmark Project: Will noted that 1/3 of the recent  Texas history book by Calvert, De Leon and Cantrell is post-WWII history: what are the historical benchmarks in this era? He is thinking of calling for essays on the topic, and then perhaps having a panel consider the essays as a program at TLA 2004. It would be a cross-organization dialogue.

6.       Matt suggested a general session—joint pre-conference?—on under-utilized sources in our libaries.