MEETING MINUTES

October 5, 2000

Members Present: Peggy D’Adamo, Gretl Cox, Anil Kumar, Maryann Belanger, Julia Cleaver, Margie Doggett, Bill Barrows, Susan Pasquariella, Zuali Malsawma

1. Call to order and announcements

President Peggy D’Adamo called the meeting to order at 9:40 AM. The minutes of the Spring meeting were approved.

2. Committee Reports

A. Membership

Eleanor Gossen will be taking over from Lisa Newman as Membership Chair.

Membership is slightly down from last year. A list of unpaid members was passed around to see if anyone could provide information about those individuals. Renewals will be sent out in November. It was agreed that it would be beneficial to compile a list of people and organizations which might be interested in membership in APLIC-I so that they could be sent brochures. If people know of likely candidates, please send that information to Eleanor. Peggy agreed to send a list of groups in the D.C. area. Susan agreed to check with the World Bank, which has an institution membership with no name attached. Maryann will contact drug companies in the New Jersey area. E. Gossen will compile a membership list by institution.

B. Treasurer’s Report

Anil reported that we currently have a surplus of about $550 and that there is another quarter’s interest to come. Our assets are now over $30,000. Membership receipts are slightly lower than last year, as is interest. Conference & registration fees are also down because attendance was down since the conference was on the West Coast; conference expenses were also down. We made a small profit ($60) on the conference. The only major expense this year were the travel subsidies for people to attend the conference. We should end the year in a comfortable financial position.

There was a discussion about the interest earned on our CDs, which is low because they are purchased for 3 months so money will be available if needed. It was suggested that we invest some of the money in longer term CDs to get better interest. Anil will explore this.

C. Archives

Peggy reported that she has been unable to get in touch with Edith Erikson, the previous archivist. Margie Doggett has agreed to take over as Archivist. When she has had time to organize what she has, she will send out a list to the membership to see if anyone has documents to fill in gaps. It was agreed that there was no need to keep multiple copies of documents. Peggy will ask Lisa Newman if she is interested in continuing her series on the history of APLIC which has appeared in The Communicator. It was suggested that these be pulled out and put in a separate space on the web page.

For many years, APLIC published the proceedings of our conferences; when we stopped doing this, the proceedings were supposed to appear online in The Communicator. It was agreed that at the least we should ask people for abstracts of their presentations.

D. DUPS Program

Peggy has been keeping track of the DUPS Program since Lisa Newman left; Julia Cleaver is willing to take this on once she is no longer President of APLIC, but there is a need for someone to take on this responsibility for the next year. This person does not have to be a board member. Peggy will ask people who have posted DUPS lists if one of them might be interested in doing this job. At the present time, there are 30 subscribers to the DUPS list, 8 of whom are from developing countries. It was decided that since nobody had responded to queries about the need for paper copies of the DUPS lists that we would stop making and distributing print copies. Gretl will put a notice to that effect in The Communicator.

There was a brief discussion of the cost of the DUPS program. The only institution which we have reimbursed is CDE at the University of Wisconsin, which has posted the most lists. Most of their publications were sent to UNDP in Pretoria. Many institutions cannot accept reimbursement and their libraries absorb the cost of mailings. Nevertheless, there was a consensus that it was worth the money to continue doing reimburse those who needed it. Total cost of the DUPS program over the last 24 months has been $500. Various options for mailing documents were discussed; Susan suggested that a help sheet (similar to the one she did on citing electronic resources) might be useful if it were posted on our web site. Peggy commented that it might be more useful to make publications available electronically rather than relying on the rather haphazard DUPS lists, in which one copy of a publication goes to one library if it ever actually makes it to a library in a developing country. Also, publications often disappear from the shelves in those countries. Susan urged APLIC-I to get involved in activities which will have more impact and sustainability.

E. International Relations

Susan Pasquariella thanked people for the support given to POPIN. She distributed a survey which will go to the POPIN evaluation team. She expressed concern that so many institutions are cutting back on their libraries in the belief that "everything" is available on the Web. She feels that many groups which are trying to make their information available on the Web really don’t know what they are doing and therefore there are few reliable information sources on the web. She suggested that APLIC-I might like to focus on this topic at a future conference. Susan also said that we as librarians have a responsibility to update ourselves and suggested that we try to form a universal depository library of things published by our organizations on the web to preserve them and make them available for posterity. This would have the added benefit of making information available to people in the countries in which it was gathered. It was felt that this was probably larger than just APLIC-I and that maybe we could cooperate with POPIN on it.

There was general agreement that we should pursue this. Susan will write up a proposal and distribute it to the board on e-mail

Peggy agreed to write a letter of support to POPIN on APLIC-I’s behalf.

F. Communicator

Since Diane has returned to school and is no longer co-editor, Gretl is looking for someone to work on The Communicator with her. She has produced two issues this year and is planning on another late in the year which will have preliminary information on the conference. She is open to suggestions about content and format. Tonya Allen will take over the technical side of things from Peggy. It was recommended that the e-mail announcement of new issues should come with tables of contents with clickable links to facilitate use.

G. Publications and the Web Site

Peggy reported that use of the Web site has increased; she’s happy that it’s now on a separate server with its own domain name. Tonya Allen at Penn State is the Web master and is happy to post things for people. The Web site now costs $600 per year.

H. Nominating Committee

There are a number of vacancies on the board now. We will need candidates for the Class of 2004 and for vacancies in the Class of 2003. In addition, we need a Vice-President for next year. Peggy will write to everyone who has been to at least one meeting to see if they would be interested in any of these positions. People should be able to come to the Board Meetings as well as the conference. As of the March conference, Kay Willson will take over as recording secretary. Peggy will ask Emma Stup if she would like to be Vice-President because the PAA meetings will be in Atlanta next year.

I. Publicity

We agreed that the conference should be publicized as widely as possible. Maryann will contact libraries and information centers in the Washington area, as well as pharmaceutical companies in the New Jersey area. Peggy will try to get a copy of the mailing list of libraries in the Baltimore-Washington area which is being put together by the World Bank. If people have addresses or e-mail lists of organizations which might be interest in our conference, they should send them to Maryann. The conference will be held March 26-28 in Washington, D.C.

3. Old Business

A. 2000 Conference Report

There were 24 paid attendees at the 2000 conference, whose theme was "Knowledge in the Digital Age: Preservation, Dissemination and Training." It worked well to divide up the planning tasks. The break-out sessions seemed to be particularly well-liked. $900 went to Silvia Texidor of Argentina to help her attend and $250 each to Wendy Brandt and Julia Cleaver. We should be able to attract a larger audience in Washington.

B. Union List

The Union List on the Penn State Web site doesn’t seem to be heavily used, about 65 hits in several months. Several people said they used the print list frequently and that it was no less out of date than the Web version. Mike Zimmerman is no longer interested in maintaining it. Peggy asked HBN Technologies about converting it into an Access database and making it available online and they said it would cost around $15,000 to do so. The general feeling was that it wasn’t worth that much, even though some people used it frequently. Many people feel that the listserv functions pretty well as a backup ILL system. It is the holdings information which makes maintenance of the list so difficult; several people thought that a list with just titles would be useful, particularly since most of the holdings are out of date. Bill and Margie will create an Excel template of titles in their library and will send it to members of the board so they can add their holdings to it. If this works, they will send it to the rest of the membrship. Peggy will ask Mike if he can give us a list of titles and library codes which they can use.

C. APLIC Survey

The survey of APLIC-I libraries was sent to everybody. Kay Willson did receive 20 completed surveys but hasn’t yet done anything with them. There was a discussion on what we were trying to achieve with this survey and a feeling that it really didn’t adequately characterize the membership since some members don’t have libraries . When the original survey was done, libraries were much more traditional and had few if any electronic resources. Things like library hours are really almost irrelevant now. What was regarded as important was the kind of information held by a library (i.e. training materials, statistical information, etc.) and the kinds of services provided. Guidance is available on the Netlinks database that Peggy created at http://www.jhuccp.org/netlinks/.

D. APLIC Brochure

Peggy will send it to the printer and have 500 copies printed on high-quality paper. If the cost of 1000 or more is significantly less per copy, she will have more printed.

The meeting was adjourned at 4:15 PM.

Members Present: Judy Dye, Maryann Belanger, Anil Kumar, Margie Doggett, Bill Barrows, Susan Pasquariella, Gretl Cox, Zuali Malsawma, Peggy D’Adamo, Eleanor Gossen

The meeting was called to order at 9:54 AM.

E. Web Site

There was further discussion of the Web site and a possible joint POPIN/APLIC-I effort to preserve Web documents. Susan thinks this would help develop more of an indentity for APLIC. She also reiterated her suggestion to create simple, one-page guides which could be printed out easily. Peggy suggested that this might be a good way to involve less active APLIC members. A suggestion was made to put Peggy’s Internet guide up. Another suggestion was made to discuss the Web site further at one of the breakout sessions at the conference.

F. Conference Planning

We decided that the theme of the upcoming conference will be "Not a One-Way Street: Information Collaboration in a Global Context." We will again share the conference planning tasks:

• Banquet: Gretl Cox
• Publicity: MaryAnn Belanger
• Hotel & Catering: Peggy D’Adamo
• Program: Zuali Malsawma
• Lists of restaurants & activities: Gretl Cox
• Pre-Conference Tours: IMF Library, World Bank, Library of Congress (Maryann will explore) and National Library of Medicine (Gretl or Peggy will explore)
• Break-out Sessions: Bill Barrows & Margie Doggett

Fees: We should have a larger group this year, so we should be able to negotiate a better deal at a restaurant. It was decided to include the banquet fee in the cost of registration since many employers will pay for registration but not for the banquet. That will make the cost of registration $140, including the banquet. Since the conference will be in Washington and travel expenses should be lower for most people, we will offer travel subsidies if people need them but no registration subsidies.

A tentative schedule was proposed:

• Day 1: Keynote speech: possibly Noah Sumara, who spoke last year at the African Development Forum on "Information Affluence for the Dispossessed." He’s well-known in African circles, or Carl Haub: Director of PRB Information Services; he’s a good speaker and is in Washington.

   

• Panel on distance education –people from UNFPA, World Bank, INTRAH, possibly Ron Laporte from the University of Pittsburgh.

   

• Ideas for breakout sessions:
  Working in an environment of diminishing resources
  Strategies for marketing library organizations
  Measuring the impact of information (Bill)
  APLIC Web site (Tonya?)
  Resource guides for information gateway
  Specific tools that are used by population librarians

Home | About APLIC-I | Members | Publications | Conferences | Listservs

Last updated 04/29/01