2025-05-27 Executive Board Meeting Minutes

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Minutes
WAML Executive Board Meeting 
Tuesday, May 27, 2025
11 am Pacific / 2 pm Eastern

Call meeting to order: 11:03 am Pacific
Officers in attendance: 

  • Meg Miller (President)
  • Cheyenne Stradinger (Vice President)
  • Jessica Benner (Past President)
  • Emilie Ducourneau (Secretary)
  • Bruce Godfrey (Treasurer)

Absent: 

Other attendees: Ken Rockwell, Jack Tieszen, Zoe Dilles, sam hidde tripp

Approval of minutes from last meeting:

Officer Reports & Check-In

  • Meg Miller (President)
    • IB Committee met
      • Tom Brittnacher invited to give historical context as IB Editor who transitioned from print to digital
      • Zoe Dilles invited to share archiving practices and help identify gaps
        • Stanford does not have an archival copy of some WAML information. We can make one a non-circulating archive copy but Zoe will ask Julie Sweetkind-Singer about this and will get back to the board at a later date
      • Next meeting will include Georgia and Kevin
    • Will meet with Cheyenne to troubleshoot Eventbrite

ACTION: Meg–add link to IB committee minutes 

  • Cheyenne Stradinger (Vice President)
    • The liability insurance requested and approved by the Executive Board was paid. Total only came to $125 for the coverage of conference dates. The initial request was for $750 for the UI Risk Management.
    • Emails to sponsors sent out for 2025 conference sponsorship.
      • Simply Analytics is sponsoring at Bronze ($250) level. 
      • Eastview sponsoring at the Silver ($500) level. 
    • Call for proposals sent out for WAML 2025. The deadline is June 20th.
      • 2 proposals so far. 
    • Finalizing details on field trip and banquet. Will have registration cost and conference website updated by June 20th. 
  • Jessica Benner (Past President)
    • Candidate for Features Editor, Emma Slayton Carnegie Mellon
    • Working on slate for Elections
    • Ad Hoc CoC Committee meeting later this week! Goal is to get out a draft so that it can be circulated before this year’s conference
  • Emilie Ducourneau (Secretary)
    • Secretary needs to remind the president/E-board on American and Canadian holidays that will affect scheduling. In addition to American and Canadian holidays, holidays recognized by public and private institutions (i.e. Cesar Chavez March 31) should also be highlighted.
  • Bruce Godfrey (Treasurer)
    • No update at this time

Actions approved over email by E-Board since April 2025 E-Board meeting

  • None

Appointed Position Reports

  • Sarah Zhang (Information Bulletin Editor)
  • Ilene Raynes (IB Book and Geospatial Resources Review Editor)
  • Georgia Brown (IB Features Editor)
  • Nick Beyelia (Membership Manager)
  • Mike Smith (New Mapping Editor)
  • sam hidde tripp (Social Media Manager)
  • Zoe Dilles (WAML Archivist)
  • Kevin Dyke (Web Administrator)
  • Jessica has sent out emails to all appointed positions to gauge interest for continuing their positions or transitioning to having other people fill these roles.
  • There are some new people assuming appointed positions. What is the onboarding process for these appointments? Bruce: The E-board can just approve them.
  •  President’s duties 1.1.D.

ACTION: Jessica– will send Meg the template letter 

ACTION: Meg–will get the template letter from Jessica and email the two people assuming positions: Features Editor to Emma Slayton and New Mapping Editor (Candidate TBD)

Updates from task forces, committees, etc.

  • Continuing Education (Kat Strickland)
  • Communications Committee (Georgia Brown)
  • Scholarship Committee (Jo-Ann Wong)

Old Business

  • Appointed positions update
    • Social Media (sam, email Apr 23)

“I think social media in general can be absorbed into more general communications. We don’t get a lot of engagement and after the last meeting where we discussed where to go from here, I think just having one, maybe two people, in communications that can control the social media and/or event coordination is going to be more helpful. A lot of people explicitly said they don’t want to join anything new and rely on the listserv anyways.”

*Thoughts? Honorarium?

  • Social Media being a part of the communications committee makes a lot of sense. How busy is the communication committee with what they already have on their plate?
  • sam: We can also have some or all of the stipend go over to the communication committee and someone can just post occasionally. It makes sense to just have it absorbed into the committee as our social media accounts are not a huge factor in disseminating information to the WAML base. Social media posts only ramp up before and during the conference. 
  • Jessica: We need to make sure that the communications committee is okay with absorbing the social media position. We can also recruit a volunteer at the conference to help the committee with logistics, coordinating postings about talks and activities at the event.
  • At this moment in time, a Social Media Manager is unnecessary. It may become more useful in the future.

ACTION: Meg– Send an email to Georgia (and cc sam) about the communication committee absorbing the Social Media Manager position. Would Georgia be okay with this? Would she prefer to have a Zoom meeting to talk about sam’s position and what can be done?

New Business

  • Resurrection/prioritization/ actionable of old
    • Brubaker maps- Maggie Tarmey (UCLA) does not have support to take them. SOme possible avenues:
      • Move forward with plans to email folks who have MLIS programs at their institutions to see if it can be used as a teaching collection
      • Original plan was repatriation, but that was decided to be too complicated
      • Currently, the maps are stored at UCSB. 
      • Ken: What if we have a conference at UCSB and people can come look at them and take what they want?

ACTION: Meg–ask Tom, Jon, Kat, and Cheyenne about repatriating the maps/ sending out an email to see if there is interest among institutions to take them on as a collection

  • Email Addresses- Bruce? sam/communications? How are these emails working out? Bruce has not started migrating accounts, yet. Sam has not tested the email, yet.

ACTION: Bruce and sam–migrate information to emails and test them out 

  • We should keep the SM email for Linkedin, Twitter, and Instagram
  • Continuing Education- Winter virtual? Was there any follow-up about this? Cheyenne: there is interest about having a virtual component of the conference.

ACTION: Meg–email continuing education committee about status

  • Disaster relief/ member support- nothing in old minutes- Sounding board item at the conference to gauge how people see this?
    •  Have a sounding board at the conference about this topic.
  • Principal region discussion- should we send a summary out from the last meeting or is it okay that it’s just in the minutes and will be brought up at the business meeting? Do we send this as an email/leave it in the minutes/summarize it in the business meeting/ should it be its own communication?
    • The business meeting should be sufficient since it is not a super controversial topic and nothing is changing.
  • There should be a Sounding board meeting at the conference. Specific items that we will be discussing should be sent out to membership before the conference so that people can consider them before the meeting. These items can be added to the agenda. During the meeting, we need to have enough time to discuss the E-board items as well as membership items
  • Whatever happened to the librarian in Mexico? Was there discussion about outreach to universities in Mexico? Is there a national-level Mexican Map Library group?

ACTION: sam–Search for Mexican Map Library group/make contact

  • Anyone else have priorities/ ideas they had hoped to get to this year?
    • Zoe: Geo4Lib was last week. Lots of relevant conversations were had that would be valuable to WAML like community sustainability efforts. Valuable connections can be made between the two organizations. Zoe will come back at next month’s meeting with more notes.
    • Meg–we can invite a Geo4Lib person to a future meeting
  • Jessica: election timeline and finalizing the slate. Jessica will then send the slate to Meg and Emilie. Emilie will take it and make it into a Google form/PDF. The election will run for several weeks and then we tally up the results. Election results are then announced. 

ACTION: Jessica–Send slate to Meg and Emilie next Monday (6/2)

Next Meeting

  • Tuesday, June 24 at 11 am Pacific/ 2 pm Eastern

Meeting adjourned: 12:12 pm Pacific

Minutes submitted by Emilie Ducourneau (Secretary).

Approved by the Executive Board by email on June 2, 2025

Action Items

Bruce

  • ACTION: Bruce–migrate information to emails and test them out 

Jessica

  • ACTION: Jessica– will send Meg the template letter 
  • ACTION: Jessica–Send slate to Meg and Emilie next Monday (6/2)

Meg

  • ACTION: Meg–add link to IB committee minutes
  • ACTION: Meg–will get the template letter from Jessica and email the two people
  • ACTION: Meg– Send an email to Georgia (and cc sam) about the communication committee absorbing the Social Media Manager position. Would Georgia be okay with this? Would she prefer to have a Zoom meeting to talk about sam’s position and what can be done?
  • ACTION: Meg–ask Tom, Jon, Kat, and Cheyenne about repatriating the maps/ sending out an email to see if there is interest among institutions to take them on as a collection
  • ACTION: Meg–email continuing education committee about status

sam

  • ACTION: sam–Search for Mexican Map Library group/make contact
  • ACTION: sam–migrate information to emails and test them out 
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