Texas Library Association logo Continuing Education and Development Committee (CEDC)

TLA Annual Assembly Meeting Minutes

Monday, July 12, 2004
Hyatt Regency Hotel
Austin, Texas

Committee Members Present:

Ron Pollock (Chair), Amanda Barrera, Patricia Brauer, Dolores Greenwald, Gretchen McCord Hoffman, Marilyn Johnson, Laura Kimberly, Denise Landry-Hyde, Jeffrey Levy, Sandra River, Ted Wanner.

Not Present:

Damon Camille, Gloria D. Dennis, Cherry L. Fuller

TLA Officials:

Dana C. Rooks (TLA President), Patricia H. Smith (Executive Director)

Guests:

Melody Kelly, Christine Peterson.

 

  1. Call to order and introductions:  Ronald Pollock, Chair.

  2. Minutes from last meeting: Ronald Pollock.

    Mr. Pollock passed around a stapled set of handouts:


  3. President’s focus for TLA—review challenge and focus: Gretchen McCord Hoffmann (TLA Executive Board Liaison).

    Gretchen McCord Hoffmann summarized the changes in planning procedures for the committee. These changes were designed to make the entire conference program stronger and more cohesive. In the past, there was a problem with duplicate programs competing with each other. However, it is okay to have a different slant on the same topic. From now on, units need to start deciding on a program one whole year in advance (during their business meeting at the Annual Conference) rather than beginning this process at Annual Assembly. Another change: units will no longer be able to co-sponsor a program in name only. The Program Committee keeps a list of program topics.

  4. Review of Committee Charge (Ronald Pollock):  discuss the charge and how we can best fulfill our charge.

    Discussion: how do we integrate Continuing Education and Development with the work of the Program Committee? What about officer training? Support for planning? Outreach? Answer: look at the charge of this committee.

    There are areas of overlap between our committee, the Program Committee and other units with similar areas of interest (such as LIRT, Retention, Professional Responsibilities, Library Partnerships).

    How can our committee interact better with the Program Committee? Note that the Conference Survey results came in during the summer 2004. The Program Committee had been meeting since October 2003 so the Program Committee would not have benefited from the survey. The conference planning cycle starts 18 months prior to the Annual Conference.

    Regarding our committee, we need a better structure in place where we can interact with the programs. In particular, we need more interaction with the Program Committee.

    With regard to CEU credits, not all people need them. However, school librarians need CEU credits.

    Budgeting issue: how much to budget for a program or for a pre-conference? Who goes to pre-conferences and who can afford to go? Distance is another issue.

    Statistics on training needs: the larger academic and public libraries are using them. With the smaller libraries, the staff may need training to pull up statistics and interpret them.

    Question: what about online training? What are the barriers? We need more legislative support for databases, not just books.

    Question: who are the constituent groups who can assist us with training? Can we start with TexShare? Who can mentor? What are the barriers to finding mentors?

    Comment: Melody Kelly referred to the “Ask Texas” reference cooperative (TexShare, depository libraries, and other shared resources). Melody pointed out that there are many partnerships we could be looking at.

    Other ideas? What about free help? Sources of CE outside the state? Class projects? Could CE be better structured? Marketed better? Are we referring to all the CE opportunities in Texas?

    Developing recommendations for surveys:
    With regard to getting better survey feedback, is it possible to get the employers to give the survey to their employees to fill out? Comment: Pat Smith referred to the TLA survey that includes questions about salary level and years at that location.

    Suggestion: have a representative from our committee search for a Continuing Education director/coordinator.

    Ronald Pollock: this is a good time to look at our charge. How does it fit in with other units of TLA? How are we coordinating with the other units? Are there overlaps? Are we the initial coordinator? Do we contact the chairs of each of the committees to start these units working together? Looking at our charge on the website (http://www.txla.org/groups/committees/CE/index.html), we’re not doing #1 (assessing the needs of the TLA membership regarding continuing education). We’re not doing #2 (coordinating TLA’s CE programming and development activities). We’re not doing #3 (coordinating information sharing regarding other state organizations’ CE). We’re not doing #4 (identifying sources of funding and sponsorship). We’re not doing #6 (assisting with the New Officers’ Briefing and other officer training). The closest we come to is #5 (insuring that TLA members are informed of CE and development programs produced by TLA). We accomplish #5 through our continuing education website.

    Our website is fundamental but needs to be more of a resource that will impact people in TLA and within the state. We need to look at how continuing education is organized and how it is announced. Remember that the continuing education website is not maintained by us, but instead by the Continuing Education Providers Interest Group. We don’t take charge of the web site; we just evaluate whether it is meeting peoples’training needs. We will need to make our recommendations to this interest group. One recommendation is that the web site should be organized by type of activity. People should not have to go through the entire list. Also, the web site needs to be more of a resource that will impact people throughout the state as well as TLA. Comment: when we know more about how we want to reorganize the web site, we need to contact Mary Ann Emerson.

    Ronald Pollock: some fact finding is in order. We need to talk with a lot of people and then report to TLA as follows: (1) What is required for continuing education? (2) How do the different units overlap in terms of this responsibility? (3) Where do we fit in? (4) How can we work with the other units more effectively? (5) What do we think we can do better? (6) How can we improve marketing? After this fact finding, the committee needs to recommend changes in our charge to the TLA Executive Board. This is a proposal to set up three subcommittees to coordinate with each other via email. These are the three subcommittees:

    • Subcommittee to reevaluate the charge. Members: Dolores Greenwald, Laura Kimberly, Sandy River.
    • Subcommittee to reevaluate the website. This subcommittee will also work to improve the Web-based CE calendar. Members: Denise Landry-Hyde, Patricia Brauer, Marilyn Johnson.
    • Subcommittee to evaluate marketing (i.e. look at the CE listings). Members: Ted Wanner, Amanda Barrera, Jeffrey Levy.

    To keep everyone in touch, why not set up a blog for each committee?

    Time Frame:
    Let’s have all the ideas from the subcommittees put together by November.
    Goal: have all changes in place by 2006.

    Ronald Pollock will be sending out an email reminder after Annual Assembly.

  5. New Business: brainstorming new programs to sponsor for the 2005 Annual Conference (Ronald Pollock).

    The emphasis is on sharing ideas and practices. How can our group be instrumental in helping TLA? Here are some ideas:

    • Resource sharing and training. What is out there and what can we tap into? We would like a clearing house list. Comment: the calendar of continuing education and training events has an archive.
    • Marketing. We need to spread awareness of training availability, especially TLA’s continuing education opportunities. How do you get the department head involved and more motivated to train employees? How can we help? Our focus should be to train people strategically, not just in response to an immediate need. We can utilize online training techniques (one example is a webcam).
    • Develop recommendations to improve the exit survey.

  6. Report by Gretchen McCord Hoffman (TLA Executive Board Liaison)
    • Please add Gretchen’s email address to any preset lists.
    • Please support legislative advocacy (February 15th and 16th) in Austin.
    • Anticipate 8,000 TLA attendees at the 2005 Annual Conference.
    • There is a new program, “People to People Ambassador Program,” promoting educational and technical exchange between librarians in Texas and librarians from other countries. There will be a Texas delegation to China or Russia in 2005. This effort is independent of TLA.

  7. Wrap-up and adjourn (Ronald Pollock).

Respectfully submitted,

Jeffrey Levy
July 29, 2004

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