Minutes of the ENY/ACRL Annual Business Meeting

May 15, 2006
Hamilton College

I. Welcome and Call to Order

President Mary Anne Waltz called the meeting to order at 12:35.

II. Minutes of May 2005 Business Meeting

Mary Anne asked the membership to review the minutes for any changes. As no changes were presented, Inga Barnello made a motion to accept the minutes. Fran Apollo seconded the motion. The membership voted to approve the minutes as presented. Mary Anne noted that awards would be given out after Committee Reports.

III. Committee Reports

Mary Anne noted that the committee reports were included in the program and asked for questions regarding each committee. No questions were forthcoming regarding the Treasury, Government Relations, Membership, Communications, or the Program Committee. Inga Barnello, Past President, spoke about the Election Committee. Fran Apollo will be Vice President/President Elect and Program Chair; Liz Strickland will be Treasurer; Suzanne Preate will be Membership Chair. Inga thanked Barbara Petruzzelli as her assistance during the election which made the process much easier. She also thanked Sheldon Wein as Treasurer and John Thomas as Membership Chair for their hard work during their terms of office. Pat Hults will continue as Communications Chair with Mary Anne Waltz as Past President/Nominations Chair and Deborah Bernnard as President.

IV. Reports/Announcements

A. Inga Barnello presented the Librarian of the Year Award to a librarian who has worked with collections, databases, is extremely service oriented, has been on the Programming Committee, has been involved in the financial aspects of the Chapter, has worked with the Newkirk Fund, and is an excellent communicator. The award this year goes to Susan Zappan. She was presented with a plaque and an honorarium from ENY/ACRL. Susan gave a brief speech of thanks.

B. The awards continued with Barbara Via representing the Janice Newkirk Award. Barbara gave a brief history of the award and noted the change from a recognition award to a scholarship award. This change was approved by the Board and the benefactor. Barbara also thanked Catherine Dwyer and Ellen McCabe for their assistance on the Committee and in determining the winners of the scholarships. The Newkirk Award Committee was able to award 3 scholarships of $3000 each to current library school students interested in academic librarianship. The winners were Susan Yoo, Syracuse University, School of Information Studies, Christina Connor, University of Albany, Department of Information Studies, and Charlotte Widomski, University of Albany, Department of Information Studies. All the students were given a certificate and a check.

C. Mary Anne noted that the ALA raffle will be awarded at the end of the business meeting. In an effort to involve library school students in ENY/ACRL, three students attending the conference from library schools were given their registration checks back. Those students were: Christine Rudecoff, Hamilton College; Yu-Hui Chen and Christina Connor, University at Albany.

V. New Business

Mary Anne Waltz asked Deborah Bernnard to speak to reducing the number of annual conferences to 1 per year.

Deborah gave several reasons for this suggestion which came from the Program Committee. It is hard to find sponsors, vendors, programming, and participants for two conferences per year. It may be possible to have one larger conference in the spring with smaller, local workshops or piggyback with larger conferences during the fall. The Chapter may want to consider working with NYLA. The University of Albany will be sponsoring a Scholarship Conference on October 19, 2006 that the Chapter may want to participate in or sponsor. Alternatives could be small, local discussions on varying topics during the fall semester. Mary Anne Waltz noted that ENY/ACRL could collaborate and participate in NYLA to encourage more programming for the academic librarian. ENY/ACRL would not join NYLA but participate in the conferences on a professional development level. Susan Zappan noted that a change to the by-laws will need to be made if one conference a year is to be adopted. Deborah Bernnard noted that many organizations have gone to one annual meeting per year. Mary Anne Waltz charged the Board with investigating a change in the bylaws to have one annual meeting per year.

VI. Raffle of ALA Conference registration

Everyone’s registrations were combined to chose the following vendor prizes:

Books from Bouska: Pamela Flinton, Barbara Petruzzelli
Real Life Marketing in Libraries: Jonathan Lathey, Kathryn Johns-Masten
Local Gifts: Emily Hutton-Huges, book; Karen Ingeman, bear;
ALA conference registration: Michelle Parry

VI. Raffle

The meeting was adjourned at 12:55 PM.

Respectfully submitted,

Lorraine Melita