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WAML Executive Board Meeting
Annual Conference 2018
Meeting Minutes
Date and Time: September 12, 2018; 10:00am – Noon
Location: Geisel Library, Redwood Conference Room, UC San Diego
Head of Meeting: Tom Brittnacher, President
Minute taker: Julie Sweetkind-Singer, Secretary
Attendees
Officers: Tom Brittnacher (President), Susan Powell (Vice President/President Elect), Bruce Godfrey (Treasurer), Julie Sweetkind-Singer (Secretary), Philip White (Past President)
Others Present: Sierra Laddusaw, Chrissy Klenke, Louise Ratliff, Ken Rockwell, Michael Smith, Greg Armento
Regrets: Lisa Lamont, Chris Salvano, Jon Jablonski, Daniel Brendle-Moczuk
The meeting was called to order at 10:08am.
Old Business
The group reviewed the Policies and Procedures document based upon changes and updates made by Tom Brittnacher and Phil White. The Board discussed in detail the Honoraria for different positions as well as the list of representatives and liaisons for currency and completeness. The Board decided to move the document from the WAML wiki to a Google document. The membership will be given a chance to comment on the document for month in the fall.
The Board discussed the two changes to the Bylaws and agreed that the ballot would be sent out by the Secretary on October 1, 2018 with voting closing on October 31, 2018. The membership will be notified of the results on November 9, 2018.
The Board noted that there are different mission statements on the website and in the Information Bulletin. The Board decided to standardize all of the wording. A motion was passed that empowered Phil White to convene a task force to develop a single mission statement for the organization. The task force will produce a document to amend the Bylaws in accordance with the rules by the 2019 Business Meeting. He will recruit members to the task force at the 2018 Business Meeting.
New Business
Officer Reports
President Tom Brittnacher reported that 50 people were attending the conference and that the workshop had full participation. Vice-President Susan Powell stated that there was no venue for the 2019 meeting as yet decided. Past-President Phil White reported that the Nominating Committee successfully organized the election of new officers. Susan Powell was nominated for Vice President/President-Elect and stood unopposed. Kathy Stroud and Julie Sweetkind-Singer were nominated for Secretary. Susan Powell and Julie Sweetkind-Singer won. Treasurer Bruce Godfrey reported that the organization was in good financial health with $19,505.55 in its accounts. Secretary Julie Sweetkind-Singer reported that all preparations for the upcoming meeting were in place as far as the Secretary’s duties were concerned.
The Board decided it was in the organization’s interest to have a second signatory on all bank accounts. A motion was passed that starting July 1, 2018 and every third year thereafter, the President will appoint the new President-Elect as a secondary signatory to the Treasurer on the WAML bank account(s) for a term of three years that coincides with their term on the Executive Board.
Manager Reports
Lisa Lamont provided the Business Manager report. Lisa noted that only two copies of past Occasional Papers had been sold in the last year. She received a quote to digitize all of the WAML OP’s with the exception of OP14 for which they do not hold copyright and OPs 9 and 10 as they have been superseded. The Board asked Lisa to get an updated quote and move forward with scanning. She will work with Web committee to get the materials online and will come up with a communications strategy to publicize their availability. Chrissy Klenke will work with Julie Sweetkind-Singer to get DOIs minted for the books and they will be added to the Digital Archives.
Chrissy Klenke, the Information Bulletin (IB) Editor, reported that the newest issue, 49.3, was released. She is thinking about how to commemorate the 50th year in next year’s Bulletin.
Ilene Raynes, Atlas & Book Review Editor, noted that the process is moving along smoothly with about 9 book reviews per year.
Michael Smith, News & Notes Editor, reported that News & Notes is now included in the IB.
Jon Jablonski, the IB Production Editor, reported that 3 issues were produced this year. A new version of the Map Librarian’s Toolbox is now running on a wiki engine.
Greg Armento, Membership Manager, reported that WAML has 83 members including 8 new members and 9 lifetime memberships.
Daniel Brendle-Moczuk, Web Administrator, reported that the responsive website was now the default. Some pages from the old website were not converted including the Map Scanning Registry, News & Notes, Conference Manual, Conference Toolkit, and ToolBox.
Committee Reports
Jon Jablonski provided the Continuing Education Report. The committee planned and carried out a pre-conference workshop for the San Diego meeting on Online Map Indexes: Faster, Better Access to Map Sets and Aerial Photographs. The workshop was attended by nearly everyone attending the conference. Jon put out a call for new members and asked that a member of the committee (or a new member) take over the leadership role.
Susan Powell provided the Scholarship Committee report. The 2018 scholarship committee had 5 members including the previous year’s two winners (Taylor Hixson and Anita Martinez). There were 30 applicants for the two awards: Diversity and Early Career. The winners were Nicholas Beyelia, Librarian for History & Genealogy at the Los Angeles Public Library and Sarah Zhang, Reference Librarian at the Belzberg Library at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada. Over the course of awarding the scholarships it became clear that the award distinctions were not useful in choosing the winners and so two generic scholarships were awarded. For 2019, the group will reconsider the award categories and eligibility criteria. They also plan to look into creating an endowment for the two scholarships.
Sierra Laddusaw provided the Web Communications Committee report. The website has now been migrated to an updated, responsive version at the same URL: https://wamlorg.mytestingsite.com. News & Notes has been folded into the Information Bulletin. The Map Librarian’s Toolbox has been migrated to the MediaWiki platform: /toolbox. Three issues of the Information Bulletin were published in the last year with Issue 49, Volume 1 celebrating the 50th anniversary of the organization. The organizational Twitter account now has 235 followers.
Julie Sweetkind-Singer provided the Archivist report for Chris Salvano in his absence. There needs to be a formal Memo of Understanding between WAML and Stanford University to house the organization’s archives. The Executive Board will hold a special meeting with Chris Salvano and Kim Durante this fall to review all of the electronic materials that need to be submitted and to come up with a plan to move the archiving from a paper-based system to an electronic-based submission system.
Other Business
The Board discussed the need to codify the procedures with respect to the archives. The group would like to develop a formal Memo of Understanding between Stanford and WAML. This topic will be discussed at an Executive Board meeting in November.
Matthew Toro asked that WAML formally support the upcoming Mapping the Grand Canyon Conference to be held at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona February 28 – March 1, 2019. The Board decided to bring this up at the Business Meeting for a discussion by the membership.
The meeting was adjourned at 12:05pm.