Oregon Library Association

Support Staff Division

Executive Committee Meeting Minutes

Eugene Public Library

September 17, 2009

 

 

In attendance: Rea Andrew, Susan Bacina, Diane Bolen, Sarah Cunningham, Susan Gilmont, Margaret Harmon-Myers, Jessica Rondema, Suzanne Sager, Jey Wann [via conference phone for portion of meeting]. Absent: Cathy Zgraggen

 

July Minutes: Approved

 

Officer Reports

 

Chair (Susan)

-We are unable to access Memberclicks at present; permissions (except for Cathy’s) have been taken away during the transition of officers

Report from OLA Leadership Retreat:

            -Aug 24th meeting to tie up loose ends

-Discussed OLA dropping membership with PNLA – would have to revamp, Oregon and Washington have been carrying Idaho and Montana

-ALA with National Legislative Day

-McCully’s didn’t file 990 forms; did file them, but no enterprise reports, looking in to seeing a lawyer (those who do accounting)

-Forwarded scholarship info – compiling travel $ sources

-None of us will go to WALE this year, Wenatchee is too far, Susan, Diane, and Jey are attending EOLA; perhaps WALE next year, they would really like to go, we should be represented

 

Past-Chair Report (Jey)

-Table decoration from the conference given to Margaret for archives; Jey may have a conference poster from 2003

-Don’t have a conference chair yet, though Margaret said if no one else comes forward, she is willing to be conference chair; she currently has the 2010 SSD Conference information folder

-Rea will take care of the application for billing from the conference, which has to go to the Salem Conference Center (Phoenix Grande); do they need new bank account information from us or do they have all the information because OLA was held there?

-Back of Conference Center contract says large amount of liability insurance is needed. Do we need it? Rea will talk to Robert to let him know

-Possible speaker Senator Jackie Winters who lives in Salem (recent trip to the East African nation of Tanzania, working with water, empowering women)

-Jey was planning to contact each of the members personally to hear their thoughts and give them a personal contact; received some appreciative emails but also no responses; got through “K,” handing off to Cathy

-As Jey is still the list owner, remind her to pull new membership list to be sure she can get them subscribed

 

Treasurer’s Report (Rea):

-McCully’s supposedly sends us reports monthly, but this year we only received March and April, to compare and track expenditures

-$980 on pg.2 of the Support Staff Budget Report represents the money earned from the pre-conference at OLA in April 2008 (which is the only entry from the conference because McCully’s gives us the final amount instead of a breakdown)

-Rea will contact Kris Kern at Preservation Round Table to see if they got their half of the money from the Book Repair Workshop at the conference

-Current total SSD balance: $29,215.21

-The raffle ticket money and bag sales money do not appear on the SSD treasurer’s report because Rea wanted to know where we wanted the money

            -Raffle ticket sales will go to general funds

            -Bag sales will go to accessibility funds

-We will sell extra SSD bags over the internet, through email, and charge about $2.50 for shipping and handling; Rea will give her email address as the contact person

-The money from the extra bag sales will go to Accessibility fund; let people know the money will go toward this cause

-Rea will add an additional column on the report called “Accessibility”

-Currently there is $1,439.43 in scholarship monies

-There are three separate funds for the three scholarships (Sheffold, Mincks, and SSD CE)

-We decided to designate a set amount from main account to put into the scholarship funds at the beginning of each fiscal year

-No one can receive over $200 per 18 months

-Rea had geographical breakdown of the conference attendees to show Margaret

-We don’t have a confirmed number of registered attendees

-Number thought to be 102, but may not be accurate due to a registration mix-up (some people were erroneously registered for book mending, and had to be refunded their money. Rea deleted their registration and had them reregister)

-We don’t know if “Memberclicks” counts all registrations, or only the successful ones

 

Archivist Report (Margaret)

-She is about half way through sorting the 20 years of archives for digitization

-She will be getting input from us about what we want to digitize, what we want to keep in paper form, how many copies we have of certain items and if we can dispose of the rest?

-Still working on getting a history written for the blog; trying to make it interesting, using an original approach

 

Committee Reports

           

Continuing Education (CE) Committee Report (Diane)

-Diane is trying to find a new Continuing Education Committee chair

-Oct 2nd EOLA book mending: Carolee is unable to do it, Diane said she would give it her best, and has been making preparations

-Rea is willing to coordinate book mending workshops for the coming year

-Idea to offer more advanced book mending classes

-Looking for a good place to offer it, perhaps Portland State

 

Scholarship Report (Diane)

-Something went wrong for someone who wanted scholarship money for membership – it worked for conference fee, however

-Diane will send Rea the email about verifying her membership

-Rea said she will email Karen and pursue it with Shirley

-Terms of membership: same one year or does she get extra month?

-McCully’s transferred money (or will transfer money) from our account to OLA’s general funds

 

Webmaster Report (Sarah)

-Sarah presented the Google analytics, which reflect the activity on the SSD blog

-There have been 775 visits total, and a definite rise in the numbers after an email is sent out

-Most visitors are in the US, but there are some international visitors as well, which might be spam

-Most of the visits are from Salem, Keizer, and Portland, but also some in Southern Oregon, Eastern Oregon, and the coast

-Most traffic to the site is direct, meaning that people are clicking on the links in the emails to access the site, while others click on the links from the OLA site

-Google analytics allows you to see the keywords that people used to search, which could be very useful information in the future for marketing the blog

-It also shows you the bounce rate, which is the percentage of visitors at a site who only look at the first page of a site – we had a pretty high bounce rate, but are not worried because on a blog the first page is the most current and frequently viewed page

-Sarah will email the analytics to the Board

-Need to have new posts at least once a month, or better yet, once a week

-She will also send an email with sign ups for the blog posting rotation schedule

-Sarah asked to have conference photos (recent or from archives) sent to her so she can post them on our Flickr page

            -Question of creating an SSD Facebook profile was raised

-Sarah would create an organization profile of which people can become fans, get information, network, and interact

-It would almost be like a more interactive branch of advertising

-People can interact, make posts, and ask what people think about certain topics or issues

            -Susan had a list of some potential topics of discussion that could be used

-In setting up the SSD facebook profile, Sarah would keep the passwords generic for ease of handing off the project in the future

-Rea suggested that we collect library related quotes to send to Sarah to plug in when there are lulls in blog posting

-She can also put photo albums on Facebook

-We will use discretion with regard to photos - safe photo posting with groups of people, not mentioned by name or workplace

-We agreed to go ahead with the Facebook page

 

Old Business

 

-Certification is a big issue at present

-OSU libraries want to know how to help with certification, and are anxious to move forward

-Highline – one of the pilot sites for certification, PCC too

-Possible Benefits:

                        -Shows that you care about the library world

-Major boost to SSD

-Would hopefully make it easier to transfer skills to another job

-Lets people outside the library know that there is a gauge of competence in this field

-A good way to create standards for competency

            -Gain personal satisfaction while increasing credibility and respect

-Concerns:

-Once certified, would job descriptions be adjusted to reflect this achievement? Would other states recognize it?

-Libraries have to be supportive of people getting certified

-Some librarians may feel threatened by it

-Others may wonder if they need to be certified to keep their job

-Possible Publicity:

-There will be certification information sent to the SSD list serve, about what it is, how to get certified, how it will benefit people, and how it will affect libraries

-It will stress the voluntary aspect of being certified

-Perhaps it should also be included in the OLA Quarterly

-Sarah will send out to get answers and then post it

 

New Business

 

-Next meeting scheduled:

-Friday, November 13, 2009 from 11am-2pm

-In Salem (most likely at Willamette University)

-There will be a meeting in January where we will make an extra effort to get people to come

-It will be more of an open forum

-Plan to use Polycom to have a video meeting, so more people can participate by going to one of the designated locations which has the software (Corvallis, Newport, Bend, or S. Oregon, as far as we know)