January 18, 2013 Board Meeting

Association for Rural and Small Libraries

Board of Directors Meeting

Friday, January 18, 2013

AGENDA  (APPROVED MINUTES BELOW)

I.          Welcome and Call to Order                                                 Andrea Berstler, President

II.        Approve Minutes of November 16, 2012                     Louise Greene, Secretary

III.       Treasurer’s Report                                                               Lesley Boughton, Treasurer

• Current Financial Statements
• 2013 Budget

IV.       President’s Report                                                                Andrea

• Schedule a January Committee Chairs Meeting
• Committee Volunteer Positions
• Digital Inclusion Survey Project
• Rural Librarians Unite (RuLU – Based in Vermont)

V.        Executive Committee Report                                               Andrea

• Review/Approval of 5 Year Conference Locations
• See them on a map here: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF&msa=0&msid=210494833907468038444.0004c4c0371622628c0aa

• 2013 – Iowa/Nebraska
• 2014 – Washington State
• 2015 – New England/Northeast (NH/Mass/RI/CT/VT)
• 2016 – Little Rock, Arkansas
• 2017 – St. George, Utah
• 2018 – Illinois (tentative)
• Other Potential Locations (Kansas, Mississippi)

• Approval of Volunteer Coordinator Job Description
• Audit Recommendation

VI.       Steering Committee Report                                                  Becky Heil, Immediate Past President

• Update on Board Retreat
• Update on Focus Groups and Online Survey

VII.     Partnerships Committee                                                       Steve Seale, Chair

• Affiliate Requests — committee recommendation
  • U.S. Fire Administration
  • United for Libraries (formerly ALTAFF; Formerly FOLUSA)
• SHLB Membership Renewal (Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition)
• Update on  UNT PEARL Program                                  Louise Greene
• Committee Volunteer Opportunities?

VIII.    Governance Committee                                                        Paul Healey, Chair

• Committee Volunteer Opportunities?

IX.       2013 Conference                                                       Tena Hanson/Becky Heil, Chairs                                           

• Update
• Committee Volunteer Opportunities?

X.           Member Services Committee                  Jennifer Peterson/Tameca Beckett, Chairs

• Programming:
  • December 6 webinar – Outreach Programs in Rural Communities: Simple Steps for Surprising Results (PEARL Project) had 465 registrants and 216 attendees.
  • March 19 webinar – Signature Events for Small Libraries, will be presented by Cassie Guthrie. Her ARSL conference presentation received a lot of positive feedback in the evaluations.
  • ALA Midwinter and Annual plans
• Website:
  • Library Jobs posting feature is up and running, thanks to Su, Kieran and Diana.
  • Features – Committee members and board members volunteered to take lead on recruiting or creating features.

• Newsletter:
  • December newsletter – sent to 644 recipients, opened 242 times (39%), top link click-through was to the ARSL survey (21 unique clicks)
  • March newsletter – copy due February 25.

• Committee Volunteer Opportunities?

XI.       Membership Development Committee                                Carolyn Petersen, Chair

• Update
• Committee Volunteer Opportunities?

XII.     New Business

XIII.    PUBLIC COMMENT

ADJOURN BOARD MEETING

APPROVED MINUTES

Opening:  The meeting of the Board of Directors of the Association for Rural and Small Libraries was

called to order by Andrea Berstler, President, at 11:30 a.m. Eastern on November 16, 2012 via conference call.

Present:  Andrea Berstler, Tameca Beckett, Lesley Boughton, Donna Brice, Louise Greene, Becky Heil, Paul Healey, Carla Lehn, Lisa Lewis, Carolyn Petersen, Jennifer Peterson, Steve Seale, Gail Sheldon, Lorie Womack

Absent: Tena Hanson

Quorum Present:  Yes

Others Present: 2 Members

Consent Agenda

The minutes of the September 29/30, 2012 meeting were approved without changes or corrections.

Treasurer’s Report

Future board meetings will display the treasurer’s report on the shared screen.

Lesley Boughton summarized the current financial statement.  Revenue from membership dues was stronger than anticipated.  The annual conference incurred expenses beyond revenue.  Two factors for cost overruns were 1) registration process funding exceeded what was planned 2) audio-visual costs were higher than anticipated.  Audio-visual support for hardware was provided by the hotel.  2013 conference planning will include requests for hardware support from the IA/NE state libraries.

A discussion of the 2013 Budget included: adjusting line items to more closely reflect expenses; eliminating costs for under-used services, and making conference costs for audio-visual part of the discussion with potential partners.

There were no other comments or questions.

President’s Report            

Andrea will schedule a Committee Chairs meeting for January.  Quarterly committee chair meetings are planned.

The Governance Committee is working on setting priorities for policy revision and a procedure for policy revision and review.  Committee chairs will be asked to state the need for the policy and its impact on the association.  Governance will put the policy in final form for a review.

The Volunteer Coordinator position guidelines have been developed with a position description.                                               

Executive Committee Report                                         

Revised 2013 Committee Workplans were reviewed and approved as follows:

Strategic Goals: edited and accepted

Membership Committee: edited and accepted

Membership Development Committee: edited and accepted

Partnership Committee: as is and accepted

Conference Committee: as is and accepted

Executive Committee: as is and accepted

Finance Committee: as is and accepted

Nominating Committee: change dates to match 2013 calendar and accepted

A final motion was made to accept the work plans as they stand or revised with the caveat that plans may be altered pending the results of a Board Retreat sponsored by the Gates Foundation in March.  Motion carried.

Steering Committee Report        

The dates of the Board Retreat have been set for March 6, 2013 to March 8, 2013.  The location will be somewhere in the Midwest to be announced.  The costs of the retreat will be carried by the Gates Foundation.

The general survey from the consulting group opened today (November 16,2013).  It has been requested that the survey be disseminated far and wide to both members of ARSL and non-members.  The focus groups have been completed.                                         

Conference                                                             

Business from the Raleigh conference has been concluded.  The Iowa/Nebraska Conference announcement for 2013 will be made today (November 16, 2013).  The hotel contract for the 2013 conference has been signed.

Governance Committee  

Connection for Paul Healey was lost during the meeting.  Policies for board review will be placed in DropBox prior to meetings.  A policy for website content is planned.

The Partnership Policy, as amended by Governance, was approved. Motion carried.

The Partnership Affiliate Policy, as amended by Governance, was edited and approved.  Motion carried.

Partnerships Committee 

It was reported that the UNT PEARL Project is in its final phase.  UNT has applied for an IMLS grant that proposes 20 fully funded Master’s degree programs in Library Science for rural librarians.

The US Fire Administration has requested that ARSL assist, through the rural library network, to inform communities about fire safety.

The committee will survey interest in mentoring among association members.

The newly adopted Affiliate status is expected to help align state associations with ARSL goals.

Member Services Committee

There have been new members on the committee since the conference.

The OCLC webinar for December has 200 registered to date.

Efforts are being made to continue planning with RNTLOK for ALA Midwinter.

The photograph collection maintained on FLICKR will be mined for images to keep the website constantly refreshed.   Member Julie Elmore was thanked for her contribution to this effort.  Many feature articles were recently posted on the website as planned.  After exploring alternatives to reduce expenses for the newsletter, the committee decided to stay with Constant Contact with an update to the contract to reflect the 501c3 status of ARSL.

The committee has worked with Governance to develop guidelines for web submission.  These guidelines were edited.  Motion to accept was carried.

Membership Development Committee

The Membership committee has divided work tasks.  Gail Sheldon will contact library graduate schools to recruit new graduates.  The Alabama Library Association has requested a panel discussion at its state conference.  Gail will be a member of that panel. The list of state key contacts is being contacted. 1/3 of the contacts have agreed to continue in that role; the remainder will be contacted in December. Other members of the committee are working out the expenses associated with producing the package of brochures, ribbons and banners.

New Business

No new business was presented.

Public Comment

A suggestion was made that state chapters of ARSL be formed to facilitate state-level discussionsamong ARSL members such as with round-tables.

A comment was made that hardware and software issues at conferences could be assisted by utilizing the capacity of the cloud.

The meeting was adjourned at 1:10 pm Eastern Time.

Next Board Meeting – Friday, January 18, 2013, 11:30 am Eastern Time

Respectfully submitted, Louise W. Greene, Secretary

See also Board Minutes Archive

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