Minutes
WAML Executive Board Meeting
June 1, 2023
9:00am PDT / 12:00pm EDT
Call meeting to order: 9:01am PDT
Officers in attendance:
- Katherine Strickland (President)
- Jessica Benner (Vice President)
- Evan Thornberry (Past President)
- Rebecca Seifried (Secretary)
Absent:
- Bruce Godfrey (Treasurer)
Approval of Minutes from last meeting:
- May 4, 2023
- Approved by email June 1, 2023
Officer Reports & Check-In
- Katherine Strickland (President)
- No updates to share.
- Jessica Benner (Vice President)
- Working on conference preparation and gearing up to take on the presidency.
- Evan Thornberry (Past President)
- No updates to share.
- Rebecca Seifried (Secretary)
- This is my last E-Board meeting as Secretary! It’s been a pleasure to work with you all and I look forward to continuing to see you all in WAML-land.
- Bruce Godfrey (Treasurer)
- Confirmed with Bank of America that the Secondary Signatory paperwork is complete.
Actions approved over email by E-Board since March 2023 E-Board meeting
- On 5/18/23, the E-Board approved Nick Beyelia to share the current membership list with Becky to assist in ensuring only active members cast votes in the election.
Appointed Position Reports
- None.
Updates from task forces, committees, etc.
- Continuing Education Committee (Kat)
- Still active action item.
- ACTION: Kat will reach out to the rest of the Continuing Education Committee to gather ideas about how the group might be reshaped.
- Web Communications Committee (Jessica)
- Meeting set for June 27th, 2023, 3:30 pm EST.
- Want to send a message to the group ahead of time. Here is a draft:
Hi All,
Thank you for agreeing to attend a meeting about the Web Communication Committee of WAML. I wanted to send you a few thoughts/ideas ahead of time so you have time to digest them before the discussion.
A decision: Since the Web Communications Committee as it stands was created as an adhoc group to manage the Website redesign, the Board moved and voted last month to dissolve the adhoc “Web Communications Committee”.
BUT we think that having a group of people, especially those in appointed positions (most of which are related to communication), should meet 1-2 times per year to discuss WAML Communications. One of these times can be at the annual conference. Outside of the conference, we propose the option below.
A proposal: Create a “Communications Committee” including all Appointed Positions and a few at large members.
- This committee would be required to convene a meeting at least once each year, have someone chair that meeting, and send the Executive Board a report once a year in February.
- A representative would then come to an Executive Board meeting between March-May to do a “Communications Check-In” to discuss the report and any other items of interest to the committee.
[END]
- E-Board approves this message.
Old Business
- New Mapping Editor – has Mike confirmed? (Kat)
- Still haven’t heard back from Mike. Suggestion for Kat to email and ask for confirmation so that we can send out an announcement.
- ACTION: Kat will respond to email sent to Mike Smith asking for confirmation so we can announce the position to the WAML membership.
- Transition Checklists (Kat)
- Still active action item.
- ACTION: Kat will request a checklist from Amy for the Social Media Manager position and create template checklists for each of the Appointed Positions. She will look into creating a separate shared drive for appointed positions. Also, mention that we’d like to recruit at the conference.
- WAML maps in UCSB Library (Evan)
- Still active action item.
- ACTION: Evan will follow up with Tom Brittnacher and request a list of items in the map collection they are holding on behalf of WAML.
- Transitioning the listserv to the new Google Groups platform (Evan)
- Evan is the admin for WAML Google Groups. When the new President-Elect is announced, Evan can set up a meeting to give them a tour of the Google Group infrastructure.
- ACTION: Evan will meet with President-Elect to update them on the plan to migrate the listserv to the new Google Groups platform and ask them to take over as point person.
- WAML domain registration (Evan)
- See 11/2/22 minutes for previous discussion.
- In order to register a new domain, we need to have a physical address. We need to have an address in CA because that is where WAML was incorporated. Stanford is a logical home for this purpose; the last contact with Julie at Stanford was in November 2022.
- ACTION: Jessica will respond to the last email Evan sent to Julie (re: physical address for WAML) and ask for an update (cc: Bruce). If it’s not a possibility, we will consider another institution in CA.
- Response to Theresa Quill, Journal of Map and Geography Libraries (Kat and Jessica)
- Kat emailed Theresa with the suggestion to reach out to the listservs, but didn’t receive a response (she is on leave).
- Evan and Jessica are brainstorming ways for her to potentially participate in the conference virtually – they plan to check in with her before the conference.
New Business
- WAML elections (Becky)
- 32 active members (out of 78 at time of election) cast their votes. An additional 7 people cast votes who are not active members. Becky reached out (cc’ing Nick Beyelia) to encourage them to renew their memberships. So far, 2 said they would renew.
- Concern about low membership numbers. There isn’t an automatic way for people to check their membership status, so it’s likely people don’t know if they have renewed or not.
- Suggestion to check in with Kevin about the status of the login screen on the WAML website.
- Suggestion to add a link to renew membership while registering for the conference.
- Ideas about how to encourage membership:
- Conference discount if attending in-person (already exists).
- Members-only workshops or events (would need to plan) – perhaps Planet, Chris Thiry.
- Suggestion that Nick (as Membership Manager) should be the main point person for contacting people about renewing their memberships.
- ACTION: Jessica will touch base with Nick this summer to talk about “membership strategy” for encouraging renewals in 2023-2024.
- Questions:
- Should we keep ballots from the vote, or should they be deleted? Delete it!
- ACTION: Becky will delete all election-related content from the shared drive.
- Protocol for announcing winners?
- ACTION: Becky will email individual candidates about the election results (cc: Evan), make an announcement on the listserv, and then inform the Information Bulletin Editor and the Web Administrator of the results to ensure that the information is updated in the IB’s July issue and on the website.
- Should we keep ballots from the vote, or should they be deleted? Delete it!
- WAML conference update (Jessica and Evan)
- Registration coming soon.
- Participants notified & schedule largely finalized.
- Any interest in generic T-Shirts (not conference specific) for WAML that could be sold at the conference or otherwise?
- Shirts were printed for the conference hosted in Texas; there was a lot of demand, even from non-attendees. The shirt featured topo lines and “WAML 2017”. Purchased a certain number of each size and brought them to sell at the conference. Design was approved by the E-Board before printing.
- Suggestion to print two shirts – a conference-specific one and a general WAML one.
- Need to include sponsor logos on swag; not necessary if we are selling the t-shirts rather than giving them away. Optionally, logos could be added to the conference t-shirt only.
- Discussion: moving Archivist honorarium to New Mapping Editor (Evan)
- Tabled from last month; we decided to wait to hear back from Mike before making any decisions.
Potential Social Media Announcements
- Conference registration
Next Meeting
- E-Board Meeting: TBD – Jessica will connect with the new E-Board to set a date and time for the July meeting.
Meeting adjourned: 10:21am PDT
Approved by the Executive Board by email on 6/13/23.
Minutes submitted by Rebecca Seifried (Secretary).