Suffolk County Library Association

Minutes of the Executive Board Meeting

Friday March 22, 2002

Location: SCLS Blue Room

Present: E. Hayes, M. Firestone, F. Altemose, E. Cichanowicz, S. Ingram, S. Holden, M. Fusco, R. McEneaney, P. Bornstein, C. Farrugia, F. Byrne, D. Baudowin, J. Carhart, V. Antonucci, A. Tiffany, J. Clemens, J. Loughren, J. Olney, R. Dressler, L. Tesoriero, G. Nichols, D. Engelhardt, D. Eidelman.

J. Clemens called the meeting to order at 10:04 a.m. After a review of the minutes, R. McEneaney moved to accept them. M. Fusco seconded. None were opposed. 

TREASURER’S REPORT: J. Loughren reported a $16,613.16 fund balance. J. Olney made a motion to accept the Treasurer’s report. J. Carhart seconded it. None were opposed. Joe announced that he had changed jobs, and asked people to direct correspondence to him at Mastics Moriches Shirley Library. 

PRESIDENT’S REPORT: 

Angela Richards had sent an e-mail message, reminding everyone about the April 13th Walk-a-thon. Board members were asked to make donations if they were unable to attend the walk. D. Engelhardt reported that the L. I. Ducks game will be Aug. 20th at 7 p.m. We have 200 tickets which will go on sale at the end of May. E. Cichanowicz reported that the final agenda had been set for the authors’ series at Palmer Vineyards this summer, for which SCLA is buying a block of tickets. Nassau Community College contacted Edana about buying some tickets through SCLA. 

President Rona Dressler reported on the Legislative Workshop held on Friday, March 15th at Half Hollow Hills. 25 people attended. Art Friedman from Nassau Community College and Gerry Nichols of SCLA were the speakers. They gave a complete overview of the budgeting process and following a bill from beginning to end. The meeting was videotaped, and a copy of the tape was shown on the bus to Albany on the Legislative Trip March 19th. Rona thanked Gerry Nichols for all his work on the workshop. She thanked Fran Altemose for ordering the buses for the trip. Rona also thanked people who helped on the day of the trip: Flo Denny, Kristina Farmer, Mike Squillante, Kris Minschke, Alan Schelp, and Laurene Tesoriero. Rona said there is a need to control last-minute cancellations for people attending the trip. She also reported there had been some discussion of new ways to publicize libraries to legislators.

DIVISION REPORTS:

DASL: S. Ketcham e-mailed a report. The March 8th workshop at SUNY Farmingdale, “Full Text Journals: where are they hiding?” was a success. They received positive feedback from the 40 people who attended. DASL is updating their web page. Next meeting will be April 19th at Katherine Gibbs.

RASD: J. Carhart reported that their last Executive Board meeting had been March 5th. Membership is at 300. C.A.R.E.’s career bookmarks are now on their web page and ready for downloading. Printed copies of the dozen bookmarks will be available at the LILC. The Electronic Resources Committee is under the process of reorganizing. RASD is in need of an Historian, because Arlene Leventhal had to step down. O.A.R.S. has completed their list of programs popular with seniors. They viewed assistive devices at their last meeting. Rose Marut of the Program Committee arranged for a proclamation to be made on 4/1/2002 by County Executive Robert Gaffney about the L.I. Reads program in conjunction with National Library Week. Copies of the proclamation will be made available. Their Annual Dinner is set for June. The “Ramblings” newsletter went out the week of March 11th.

CATS: A. Tiffany reported that the division’s newsletter would be going out the following week. They currently have 211 members. The division web page will now be maintained by Matthew Sheehy. We can look forward to seeing its new design at http://cats.suffolk.lib.ny.us. CATS will be holding the first in their Open Forum series on Friday, April 12, 2002 at SCLS. It will be focused on Technical Services (primarily technical processing). 20 people have registered so far. Ron Richards will be their speaker at the LILC, discussing “Migrating to Windows XP.” There is concern that the program time slots at the LILC are too short (40 min.). They are looking into a trip to Manhattan in the autumn, possibly to the Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center. Aurora thanked the Continuing Ed committee for offering the newsletter workshop.

SSSD: F. Byrne reported that their Executive Board had met on March 13th. Their membership chair has been in touch with the head of NCLA’s Clerical Division, and has found them very helpful. On Wed. April 24th another Roundtable Discussion program for support staff is planned for 9 a.m. at Longwood. Plans for their Annual Dinner have been finalized: a performance of “Gypsy,” and dinner at the Elk Street Grille in Port Jefferson on June 6th ($45 for members, $50 non-members). They are planning raffles, giveaways and membership incentives for their table at the LILC.. A mailing went out recently to all library directors announcing the formation of the division. Joe Loughren, with help from Danielle Zubiller, has gotten their website up and running. Soon, they will have a division e-mail address.

YASD: no report

COMMITTEE REPORTS:

ARCHIVES: No report.

CONSTITUTION AND BY-LAWS: No report.

CONTINUING EDUCATION: K. Baudowin reported that 60 people attended their newsletter workshop, even though they only used e-mail to publicize it. The presenter gave helpful critiques of Suffolk library newsletters. A listserv of about 30 people might grow out of the workshop. Karen expressed appreciation for the financial support from other divisions, which helped pay the speaker’s fee. “Collaborative Reference” will be their program for the LILC. For this autumn or next spring, they might do a Long Island or Manhattan trip to a library. The committee is still considering ”Internet Addiction” as a topic for a program. The committee might survey members to figure out interest in various programs.

ELSA: G. Pepa faxed a report. The make-up of the committee has been finalized. A camera-ready copy of the ELSA brochure is ready to be printed. Special thanks to Stephen Ingram for updating the ELSA logo that will be used in all the publicity that is sent out.

FALL DINNER: No report.

INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM: No report.

LDA AWARD: P. Bornstein reported that the brochures had been printed by NCLA, and that they have been distributed. The deadline for submissions is April 1st. The committee hoped that special and academic libraries would participate.

LEGISLATIVE: L. Tesoriero reported on the “Legislative Workhop 101” on March 15th which helped prepare people for the trip to Albany. (see President’s Report, above). She said there would be an article covering the March 19th Albany trip in the SCLA newsletter. 

LISTSERV: R. Dressler thanked members for using the listserv to communicate.

L.I. LIBRARY CONFERENCE: (Rona Dressler had mentioned during her President’s Report that there would be one more meeting of the committee to finish up on details.) Rona asked people to mention the inadequacy of the 40 minute time slots in evaluation forms that day, if they were dissatisfied.

LONG-RANGE PLANNING: S. Holden reported that the committee members were working on having brochures on the different types of librarianship ready for the LILC.. The May 4th Career Day at Queens has been re-scheduled. Initial contact was made with Pratt, and committee members may visit that library school in the fall to discuss librarianship. 

MEMBERSHIP: R. McIneaney reported that we have 655 members. 347 have renewed for 2002. Renewal reminders would go out the week of March 25th. After May 1st, non-renewers will be notified that they are being dropped from the membership list. There was a short discussion on the renewal process. Regina had lists available of members who had volunteered for the various divisions and committees.

NEWSLETTER: B. Hoffman sent in a report. The latest issue of the newsletter is out. She thanked everyone who sent in articles and artwork. E-mail is the preferred method for sending material to her. Digital photos are preferred. The deadline for the next issue is May 1st. The next issue’s feature will be a Long-Range Planning Committee report. A “Director’s Corner” column has been added. The December issue will likely have a tribute to Angie Lehner. She thanked Marcia Jefferson and Rona Dressler for their help in learning how to use new software, and she thanked Stephen Ingram for being staff artist.

NOMINATING: J. Clemens invited people to join the committee, and she said she would welcome ideas for nominees from the Board members.

PROFESSIONAL CONCERNS: K. Minschke e-mailed her report. The committee had their first meeting. They would like to re-work the survey on compensation that went out in September, 2000, and send it out as an opinion poll to the general membership. They will run it by the Board first, including Jerry Nichols, and possibly the PLDA. Kris hoped to have the revised questionnaire ready for the April Board meeting. The committee plans to meet, tally the results of the opinion poll, and write a report. They would like to have a roundtable discussion in the fall, and use the findings from the poll and the roundtable discussion to draft a statement of purpose/mission for the committee. The mission statement could be used when recruiting new members. The committee would like to ask what charge they had been given by the SCLA Board, and wondered if it would be contained in old minutes.

PUBLIC AWARENESS/PUBLICITY: S. Ingram reported that he was working with Long Range Planning on the librarianship brochures. Stephen thanked the SSSD Division for helping to produce a brochure highlighting support staff. He also mentioned that James Olney was helping with a brochure on special librarianship. Stephen had been in touch with NCLA, and they were sharing their brochures with him.

SCHOLARSHIP: C. Farrugia reported that we have received at least two requests for applications. C.W. Post has put a message on their listserv advertising the scholarship. The committee is gathering prizes for this year’s fundraising raffle. She asked if there were any objections to including a Borders gift certificate as a prize (There were none.) Someone suggested looking into an amazon.com gift certificate, since SCLA gets a small percentage of the purchase price when members purchase from amazon.com through the SCLA web page.

STATISTICAL SURVEY: S. Atlas faxed her report. The committee is still working on possible additional questions for this year’s survey. Anyone with suggestions is encouraged to e-mail her at satlas@suffolk.lib.ny.us

SUFFOLK COUNTY JAILS LIBRARY SERVICE: M. Fusco thanked everyone for the paperback book donations that had been sent to the jails.

WEB PAGE: D. Zubiller e-mailed a report that said the website for L.I. Reads is up and running at: http://scla.net/scla2000/events.shtml (short listing) and http://scla.net/scla2000/lireads.html (actual site).

LIAISON REPORTS:

CLASC: No report.

E.S. BOCES: J. Barr gave out copies of the School Library System News. She reported that she was still working on a “virtual reference” project.

LILRC: V. Antonucci reported on several upcoming programs: an OCLC videoconference series (in March, April & May) ; the Documentary Heritage Program workshop April 30th on “Introduction to Appraisal and Selection of Historical Records”; and “Introduction to Arrangement and Description of Historical Records”on May 22nd. Virginia said that the Three Village Inn had been secured as a site for Archives Week in October.

LVA SUFFOLK: No report.

NCLA: L. Tesoriero reported that the 2002 membership of NCLA was 523 so far. At the NCLA meeting, there had been a discussion of the results of a survey about continuing education programs offered to NCLA members. Members were pleased with recent offerings, and wanted a balance between entertainment and coverage of educational issues. Laurene mentioned than an upcoming NCLA program on Library Security would feature some speakers from Suffolk libraries (Stephanie Heineman, Eileen Minogue, James Olney, and Charles Cornetta).

PLDA: D. Engelhardt reported that PLDA did not meet in March. She mentioned their Stress Management program for the LILC in May.

SCLS: Jerry Nichols thanked everyone in SCLA who supported the Albany legislation trip. He said SCLS will be delighted to help with the “L.I. Reads” campaign next year, and continue the cooperation we’ve seen with Nassau-Suffolk. He reported that bond issues were coming up in Babylon, Harborfields, and Sayville.

SLA: No report

OLD BUSINESS: R. Dressler said she was waiting for A. Lehner’s return from vacation in order to go ahead with the revision of the SCLA Handbook.

NEW BUSINESS: There was some discussion of Angie Lehner’s impending retirement from SCLS, and about some articles missing from the newsletter.

J. Clemens asked for a motion to adjourn. J. Olney made a motion, and J. Loughren seconded it. The meeting was adjourned 11:40 a.m.