Present – Cary Sowell, Chair; Linda Bixler, Chair-Elect; Diane Bruxvoort, Councilor; Karen Hopkins, Past Chair; Sandra Hood, Bobbie Long, Fran Cotton, Elizabeth Mallory, Kim Wiley, Steven Ring, Maurice Fortin, Anthony Guardado, Mary Jo Ventis, Beth Thomsett-Scott, Janet Key, Jeffrey Levy, Secretary/Treasurer.

1. Introductions. The meeting was called to order at 10:00 a.m. Cary Sowell presided. The group’s current officers are as follows:

Cary L. Sowell – chair
Linda S. Bixler – vice-chair/chair-elect
Jeffrey B. Levy – secretary/treasurer
Diane Bruxvoort – councilor
Leslie Anne Navarro – alternate councilor
Karen L. Hopkins – past chair

2. Program Committee Liaison – There was a brief discussion with Sandra Hood regarding the “Keeping up with Technology” CULD program. The Programming Committee wants us to use a snappy title and to add special libraries as a group. Tomorrow afternoon, people will need to defend their programs. Cary added that we would like another program and will also be submitting a program on assessment / outcome measures. Ralph Dumas and Tina Martinez are the Program chairs. Finally, everyone should take the opportunity to serve on the Local Arrangements Committee or the Program Committee.

3. Approval of minutes – The April 25, 2006 minutes were approved as corrected.

4. TLA Executive Board Liaison – Janet Key briefly described the special TLA activities during Annual Assembly. She pointed out that a wide variety of programs are needed so please contribute ideas. Please continue making contributions to the Legislative Reserve Fund. Also, the TALL Texans Leadership program reports rising costs. Just make the contribution to the TALL Texans. The new electronic voting system begins this year (scheduled for early December). On December 15, be sure to have a slate of officers with biographical data. Voting is in early February. Make sure the bylaws permit electronic voting. The Executive Board voted not to charge for labels for TLA units and lists. TLA is working on blogging software to be used by the TLA units. The TLA Council will be voting on the Strategic Plan; after the voting, the Plan will be available online. The Plan is going to involve all the units; activities will need to be justified and fitted into the Plan.

5. Councilor’s report – Diane Bruxvoort (formerly Gwamanda) reported that most comments regarding the Strategic Plan have had to do with specific groups. There will be mostly minor changes. Most of the discussion has dealt with how to implement the strategic planning and how to apprise groups about the activities of other groups. The Strategic Plan needs to be arranged so that you can click on the various sections and see what the other TLA units are doing.

6. “State of CULD” and Financial report – Jeffrey Levy and Cary Sowell. Highlights of the financial report are that as of 06/30/2006 we have an ending fund balance of $12,707.30. We’re a little over budget with the Newsletter expenses ($800.00 budgeted; $913.57 spent). Note that we spent $400 on the speaker at the TLA Conference including the LCD projector and out-of-state travel. Note that we’re now spending $1,000 for TALL Texans, up from $800 previously. A discussion followed about the TLA Legislative Reserve Fund (not in the present budget). This contribution would be in addition to funding a representative to ALA Legislative Day. Note that the Texas Legislature is going to be focusing on educational issues. Motion: to budget $500 for the TLA Legislative Reserve Fund. The motion passed. An amended motion to make the contribution $1,000 instead of $500 was moved by Diane Bruxvoort and seconded by Karen Hopkins. The amended motion passed unanimously. Cary Sowell will make the change.

Next, there was a discussion about the newsletter. Should we continue to print the newsletter or just provide an electronic edition? We have more information going into the newsletter. There are over fifty lifetime members who are retired. Not all have email addresses. Suggestions: maybe we could send a letter or postcard to “go to this URL.” We can put a blurb about this on the CULD website. We can announce it in the TLA Journal’s “Announcements” section. Conclusion: we will try to furnish our newsletter electronically to as many CULD members as possible but will provide some print copies for those without email.

7. Community and Junior Colleges Discussion Group – There is a discussion group on Saturday morning about assessment of outcomes measurement. Note that program ideas for 2008 must be submitted in 2007. Here are some ideas for programs:

• How to recruit non-participating librarians into TLA
• Information literacy formats and successes
• How to use your statistics

8. Committee Reports – Unfinished business:

8a. Standing Rules – Minutes approval. Add the following to the standing rules: to speed up approval of the minutes, send out the draft to the CULD officers for corrections/additions within 3 weeks following the meeting. Then send the minutes out to the membership for approval. Kim Wiley will make the change to the standing rules.

8b. Revised Webpage – Kim Wiley said that the officers’ webpage has been updated. We’re waiting for information on the bylaws and the minutes. We will keep 3 years of minutes. A discussion followed about blogging. Let’s coordinate with Ted Wanner about this. Just have one blog. Individual posts can be tagged (community college, collection development, technology, etc.). We will need a blog administrator. Steven Ring volunteered to moderate the blog. When we have the elections, the candidates should have sent in their pictures as well as their biographical information.

8c. Membership Committee / Membership Drive – Karen Hopkins. We would like to get a survey to all the members of the CULD. The hang up is getting an electronic list of email addresses. Another problem is getting past spam filters. We didn’t have a membership drive last year. Do we want to have a joint ACRL/CULD membership drive? ACRL gives us a listing of Texas members. CULD now has 750-800 members last time Karen looked at the list. CULD is the ACRL chapter for Texas. Cary Sowell said she will talk later with Gayla Byerly about how to fit this in.

8d. Development of procedures for committees and officers – Karen Hopkins would like each CULD committee to draw up a list of procedures, especially for the new Executive Board. Send this to Cary for compiling. Please provide dates, timelines, procedures, responsibilities.

8e. Legislative Committee – Maurice Fortin reported he would be attending the first meeting of the TLA Legislative Committee; but Joe Dahlstrom will represent CULD at the second meeting. Funding for TexShare is looking better. The Texas State Library and Archives is undertaking a sunset review in the spring of 2007. Maurice is on the TexShare Advisory Board. The State Library can negotiate for discounts for database purchases for school libraries. Currently this is handled through the ESC 20 Offices in San Antonio. Issues the Legislature will be looking at include: the concept of K-16 initiatives, possibility of standardized tests in higher education, continuance of telecommunication discounts, and additional emphasis on accountability in higher education.

Maurice Fortin requested a new Legislative Committee chair since he has a major time commitment as a recently appointed member of the Angelo State University’s Presidential Search Committee.

8f. Scholarship Committee – no report

8g. CULD ad hoc committee on professional staff qualifications – no report

9. New Business: 2007 Conference Programming –

• Preconference: “Serving the Distance Learning Population” presented by Leora Kemp and Frances May.
• Preconference: “Establishing an Institutional Repository” (a LITA preconference with the TLA Digital Libraries Interest Group). We’re one of five groups helping. They want us to contribute $500.
• “Applying the Power of Personal Persuasion” presented by Julie Todaro.
• “Keeping up with Technology” coordinated by Greg Bodin. The speaker will be a medical librarian. The program will deal with topics such as instant messaging, blogs, wikis.
• “Learning is a Game: Playing to Win.” This program deals with integrating gaming and instruction. It also deals with learning styles. The speakers will be from Austin Community College.
• “SACS: How we can use the ACRL Outcome Measures in our reports for SACS Accreditation.” The speaker hasn’t been chosen yet. Cary pointed out that there are not many programs on assessment. She has a list of colleges applying the ACRL standards. It is hard to find a Texas college doing this. Questions and comments: what college has just gone through SACS assessment? How do you assess distance education? Can someone talk about ACRL benchmarking? There is a lot of interest in this topic.
• Cary called for additional suggestions for programs. One suggestion is to contact Melody Kelly, the Associate Dean of the University of North Texas Libraries.
• Program suggestions -- Let Linda Bixler have any suggestions ASAP. We won’t meet until April 2007. However, the TLA Program Committee wants us to start preparing programs in January.
• 10. Announcements/other information – Karen Hopkins attended the ALA/ACRL Power of Persuasion program with Julie Todaro. This program provided several ways to approach the faculty and the administration.

The meeting adjourned at 12:00 PM.

Minutes submitted by Jeffrey Levy, secretary/treasurer, August 1, 2006

These minutes were placed online on August 3, 2007 by Kim Wiley.
Copyright 2007, TLA College & University Libraries Division.