TEXAS LIBRARY ASSOCIATION REFERENCE ROUND TABLE
EXECUTIVE BOARD MEETING
FRIDAY, MARCH 30, 2001
10:00-11:50
Attendees:
John Becker, Chair called the meeting to order at the Marriott Riverwalk on Friday, March 30, 2001 at 10:06 a.m. and thanked everyone for being here.
He reminded everyone that at 2:00 p.m. the meeting "Can We Chat" will be held with Martha Tarlton as a speaker for this program sponsored by the College and University Libraries Division and the Reference Round Table. Martha will be talking about e-mail service at UNT.
The minutes were approved as presented. Sandy Gillman gave the Treasurer’s report. At this time the Reference Roundtable has $8,008.22.
Tina Oswald, Chair-Elect reported on expenses for the program. One expense was for a teacher to reimburse the School District for her substitute teacher. Expenses might total $400.00. The group thanked Tina for a great program.
Jana Knezek, TLA Councilor mentioned there would be online handouts for many of the programs. These handouts will be posted for about two months. Mary Ann Emerson at the TLA office will make our handouts available. Credits are listed for programs that earn continuing education hours. Lynn Hambric suggested a generic form for the continuing ed credits.
The Legislative report included three bills on filtering. TLA’s approach is that filtering should be a local issue. Another bill is on allowing Education Service Centers to provide cheap Internet access. This has the Internet Providers upset.
Direct aid for public libraries is still being discussed, however, the amounts are very much reduced from the $20,000,000 requested. At this time, the House is proposing $2.9 million and the Senate is at $1 million for the biennium. The other budgeted item is money for schools. At this point the Senate is recommending $.25 per child while the House is at $.35 per child.
Currently, there is a strong coalition against UCITA but the legislative committee will keep watching the movement. Additional items to watch are two bills on the TIF funding. One is to move the governance of TIF under the Public Utilities Commission and the other is HB1736 on rewriting TIF and defining rural. The proposal is to divide the TIF into three units with rural being the third.
The final bill mentioned is HB3591 on Texshare. There is interest in adding medical schools but the libraries must pay. TLA is in support of this bill because the sponsor has been a good supporter of library funding.
Jana also mentioned that the Executive Board would be bringing a dues increase before Council for approval. TLA Councilor, Marion Jackson discussed the proposal in more detail. This will be the first dues increase since 1982. Questions were raised about Life Members not notified or added each year for journal subscriptions.
John Hepner expressed concern about the Reference Round Table website. John said the Webmaster never received the pages he sent. Several sites are outdated. The Reference Round Table is ready to load the history of the Round Table. Mary Ann Emerson will contact John directly about these issues. John mentioned this is a real concern and many groups are ready to move off the TLA website. Other concerns mentioned were the TLA website needs updating and it is very difficult to move around and find things from the basic TLA page.
There was a general discussion about this year’s conference. Patricia mentioned the shuttle bus service was great and the drivers very accommodating. The conference center under construction made moving around difficult at least the first days of the conference.
Committee Reports:
Nominating Committee: Martha Tarlton
Martha announced the new officers for 2001-02:
Dee Dee Rogers is Chair Elect
Jeff Levy is Secretary/Treasurer.
Planning Committee: Lynne Hambric
This committee will redo the Texas Reference Sources . Martha and Patricia suggested using the listserv. The original material is on a disc given to Charles Harold, a past president. He is at UT Tyler as an archivist.
Texas Reference Source Award: Patricia Stinston-Switzer
Still concerned about the promotion of this award among librarians. The nominations should be from Reference Librarians on books published within the last three years. Lynne will talk to Gulf publishers about designing a logo for this award. Also at Annual Conference 2002, the reward will be presented at the beginning of the program instead of the end. The business meeting will still be at the end of the program. Patricia suggested designing an award plate with all the winners listed. Texas Reference Sources Subcommittee is a little different from other subcommittees. It is suppose to be a closed meeting.
The winning books should be displayed at the Reference Round Table booth. The committee will get the winning books to the booth. The Membership/Publicity committee will have a logo and banner by next conference.
Susan Norissey has written a nice press release and will send it to ALA and TLA for publication.
Membership/Public Relations Committee: Claudette Hagle
Claudette was not able to attend and sent her report as follows:
Used the TLA Membership unit list for Reference Round Table dated 7/26/2000. The RRT had 499 members. 51 of which were new members with e-mail addresses; 2 new members did not list an e-mail address. All 53 members were contacted welcoming them to RRT and suggesting ways for them to get involved with the unit.
Nine of the new addresses were returned as "unknown"; 3 responses were received but 2 of these could not attend the annual conference in San Antonio this year. One respondent is here and volunteered at the booth on Thursday.
Booth: Getting volunteers for staffing the booth was not easy, but it was completed within 10 days of conference. A BIG Thank you to all who volunteered. Tina and Claudette supplied the candy for the booth. Materials, which were nominated, but not selected, for the Reference Source Award, were on display at the booth.
Membership brochures should probably be updated for next conference to add information about the electronic discussion list. This will be discussed at Annual Assembly. Originally 3 years ago, about 800-1,000 brochures were printed; nearly 500 remain. These could be updated by use of a rubber stamp or a sticker to save on the price of completely redoing the brochure. Proposed design for a logo is being considered and it is hoped a decision can be made by Annual Assembly.
The Board discussed Claudette’s report and suggested a new brochure be done for the Centennial year. The current one has been printed in different colors and is no longer eye-catching. If a new brochure could not be ready for next year, then perhaps in 2004, the birthday year of Reference Roundtable.
Centennial Committee: John Hepner
There will be a gala. Coco Cola and Pepsi have been approached about special packages. Many units are doing historical documents for the publication for the Centennial Year. Centennial pins are available. This committee will meet again an Annual Assembly.
Conference Program: Tina Oswald
Tina suggested having a pre-conference committee and not have the Chair/Elect do both a conference program and a pre-conference. A second suggestion is to decide how often to have a pre-conference for example one every three (3) years. John suggested appointing this committee several years out. Jack further suggested a pre-conference every two (2) years with at least one of the pre-conference committee members being from the host city. Tina mentioned that several people have indicated an interest in repeating the genealogy program. The discussion will continue at Annual Assembly.
Newsletter: John Hepner
Two issues of the newsletter came out on time. The ballots were in the fall newsletter. The newsletter will still be published in print for a few more years. One fourth of the membership does not report an e-mail address and once the membership directory is printed, it might be worth it to do both e-mail newsletters and printed. However, the question of how best to do the ballot comes up. John is finding not all Roundtable members have access to a computer. He is producing it in word and scanning into a pdf format. This creates a clean reproduction. This is how he would do a web format. By the Centennial year, John will have history of all projects done. He will also have scanned the original documents as well. He is still looking for pictures and memorabilia.
Old Business:
$350.00 total for Tall Texans and Legislative Day.
Received a letter from someone concerned about publishing the newsletter online. John will respond to the person about her concerns.
New Business:
Question on how to get on listserv. The listserv is for reference type problems. The Executive Board members should be on a separate listserv from the general reference listserv. This will be accomplished this year.
Meeting adjourned at 11:56 a.m.
Respectively submitted,
Sandy Gillman
Secretary/Treasurer
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