2023-08-09 Executive Meeting Minutes

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Minutes
WAML Executive Board Meeting 
Wednesday, August 9, 2023
9:00 am – 10:30 am PDT / 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm EDT

Koerner Library Room 548 – Presentation Room

Call meeting to order: 9:14 am PDT

Officers in attendance: 

  • Jessica Benner (President)
  • Meg Miller (Vice President)
  • Kat Strickland (Past President)
  • Lena Denis (Secretary)
  • Bruce Godfrey (Treasurer)

Absent: 

Other attendees: 

Approval of minutes from last meeting:

Officer Reports & Check-In

  • Jessica Benner (President) – happy to be here at the conference, happy to take feedback on the conference
  • Meg Miller (Vice President) – happy to be here
  • Kat Strickland (Past President) – we have coffee and biscuits, courtesy of Evan and Jessica
  • Lena Denis (Secretary) – happy to be here and meeting people for the first time
  • Bruce Godfrey (Treasurer) – will give a financial update at the business meeting, but we’re financially healthy!

Actions approved over email by E-Board since July 2023 E-Board meeting

  • none

Appointed Position Reports

  • Chrissy Klenke (Information Bulletin Editor) –
    • Wish she could be here, just published issue number 3, everything went well
    • Just sent out resignation letter for IB Editor, hopes to hear from anyone who’s interested in taking over
    • Will start working with Ken on the indexer position – an index is made for every issue, and our current indexer is going to retire
    • Pay rate for Laura was $250 per year and we should raise this, so we’ll need a budget with approval for that, and then Ken can post (Chrissy has an action item about this)
  • Ilene Raynes (IB Book and Geospatial Resources Review Editor)
  • Georgia Brown (IB Features Editor) –
    • If you have news or notes, email Georgia, nothing else to report
  • Nick Beyelia (Membership Manager)
  • Mike Smith (New Mapping Editor)
  • Amy Work (Social Media Manager)
  • Kim Durante (WAML Archivist)
  • Kevin Dyke (Web Administrator)

Updates from task forces, committees, etc.

  • Continuing Education (Jon Jablonski)
  • Communications Committee (Georgia Brown) –
    • Nothing to update yet, meeting coming up in October about this committee, which has just replaced the web committee
    • Officially thank you, Georgia!
    • ACTION: Jessica to send Chrissy the updated member list for the Communications Committee
  • Scholarship Committee (Philip White)

This year the WAML Scholarship Committee consisted of the three recipients from last year—Jo-Ann Wong, Wilsinia Ocasio, Méch Frazier—as  well as returning committee members Nick Beyelia, Susan Powell, and Phil White (chair). With the return to an in-person meeting, the committee decided to return to awarding two scholarships to attend in-person. For the past several years, WAML has awarded a total of $1,500 split among the recipients each year. Owing to the extra costs of traveling internationally, the committee requested a total of $2,000 to be split among the two recipients. This was a one-time request.

This year’s scholarship recipients are Neah Ingram-Monteiro and Gabriella Evergreen. The committee received more applications this year than in recent years. As in past years, goal of the WAML Scholarship program is to advance WAML’s efforts toward being a more inclusive organization and to support the professional development of library-workers from diverse backgrounds. Toward this goal, applicants are prompted to respond to an impactful map or GIS project. The recipients then have the opportunity to present on their topic at the WAML meeting during a special scholarship session. Both recipients are attending in-person and we will be hearing from them tomorrow (August 10, 2023) during the 2:15 session.

Old Business

  • UCSB-WAML maps (Evan & Tom)
    • Back story: back in 2009, maps were stolen at many libraries by someone caught by the FBI, who were going to put the maps up for auction but instead contacted WAML and asked if we wanted them
      • The FBI produced a letter saying these maps are now WAML’s to do whatever we wish with
      • Jon Jablonski was at Oregon at the time and did some processing with Kathy Stroud, to contact libraries they probably came from
      • Then Jon went to UCSB and brought the maps with him, continued work on this with Mary (Tom has documentation on this available in a folder)
      • Time ran out for people to work on this, and they’re all organized in a filing cabinet where they’ve stayed
      • Tom took over this responsibility inherited from Jon, and they remain sitting at UCSB’s library
      • Smaller staff now than before, and Tom doesn’t have the resources to do anything with them
      • Most of the maps are from serial sets, scanned in black and white in ProQuest
    • → How does WAML want to handle this?
    • Estimated that these comprise about 20-30 archival boxes
    • Brought this to Evan, who also has the spreadsheets and the images
    • The effort to retrace where these came from depends on the documentation and proactive-ness of the libraries, as to whether they were even noticed and marked as missing – requires a lot of outreach, most of which was done by WAML back in 2010
    • Could these just be offered up the way we do with general de-accessioning, so people could claim or even reclaim something?
    • Might be worth offering this again with the back story, with a suggested timeline for resolution, especially since so many new people have come in to positions in the affected libraries since 2010
    • Would the Library of Congress be an option? It could be part of their surplus maps giveaways, or even of interest as a collection
    • General goal: as WAML, we don’t want to hold on to these, we want them to be out in the world
    • Maybe this could be a project for library school students, if there were a way to get them involved
    • Kat and Meg are interested in working with Tom on this over the next year
    • Great support for Chrissy’s idea of turning this into an i-school project, so that it could be a learning experience and delve into the ethics and practices around dealing with collection thefts
    • Chrissy could publish a write-up about this in the IB
  • Appointed positions transition checklists (Jessica)
    • We would like to have documentation (checklists) for people who transition off appointed position roles, so others can step in as seamlessly as possible
    • List people at the conference we need to talk to about this – we need things from Chrissy (IB Editor) and Amy (social media) as they step out of their current roles, anyone else?

New Business

  • 2024 Conference (Jessica)
    • Cheyenne has offered to host us next year at UNM in Albuquerque!
    • Never been in New Mexico before, are we okay with this?
      • Jessica moves that we have the 2024 conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with Cheyenne and Meg as hosts
      • Kat seconds
      • The ayes have it!
    • Official announcement of this will be at the business meeting on Friday
  • Approve July 1, 2022 – June 30, 2023 honoraria (Bruce)
    • 1 Information Bulletin Editor: $650
    • 2 Information Bulletin Features Editor: $350
    • 3 Information Bulletin Book and Geospatial Resources Editor: $400
    • 4 Membership Manager: $350
    • 5 Web Administrator: $350
    • 6 Social Media Manager: $350
    • 7 WAML Archivist: $350 [Vacant for majority/all of term?] – Bruce will check with Kim
    • Bruce moves to approve these, Kat seconds
    • Motion passes and these checks will be written and distributed

Potential Social Media Announcements

  • We have a conference hashtag, encourage people to post photos with it

Next Meeting

Meeting adjourned: 9:52 am PDT

Minutes submitted by Lena Denis (Secretary).

Approved by the Executive Board by email on August 23, 2023

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