10:30 a.m. Teleconference
Attendees: Virginia Dearborn, Mark Draper, Patrick Milas, Elizabeth Miller, Ondrea Murphy, Bethany O’Shea, Myka Kennedy Stephens
Excused: Chris Schwartz
Approval of the Agenda
The Executive Committee voted to approve the agenda for the meeting.
Approval of Executive Committee Meeting Minutes
The Executive Committee voted to approve the minutes of the December 6, 2017 meeting.
Discussion – Executive Committee Membership Changes
Myka reported that Samantha Rice is no longer able to serve, as she no longer works at a SEPTLA member library. Virginia took the minutes of this meeting (Secretary’s duty). Elizabeth offered to help Myka with the next member survey following the Spring meeting (another Secretary duty). (Note: More frequent surveying of the membership is one of the recommendations brought forward by the SEPTLA Future Task Force.)
No minutes were received from the Fall 2017 meeting. Ondrea will try to get them from Samantha. If those minutes are not available by March 9, Myka will draft minutes based on the agenda and the exec committee will try to flesh them out. There was some discussion about the legal need (if any) for minutes as a non-profit organization. Generally, they are more of a “best practice” with the exception of documenting changes in the role of Treasurer for working with the bank.
Elizabeth volunteered to serve as Interim Secretary. There was a motion to approve Elizabeth as Interim Secretary, and the motion passed.
[Bethany joined the meeting]
Reports and Discussion:
Treasurer’s Report
The Treasurer’s Report dated March 2, 2018, was summarized by Patrick Milas, who reported that SEPTLA’s business account balance was $4,042.48 and the money market account balance was $6,712.99. View the Treasurer’s Report
The committee approved the report.
Membership Task Force Report
Elizabeth shared the report with the exec committee and there was discussion about the report and each of its recommendations.
Broadening membership criteria: As the report named several SEPTLA institutions, including Princeton, as offering both undergraduate and graduate programs, Virginia made the correction that Princeton Theological Seminary does not have an undergraduate program. Myka noted that the current SEPTLA by-laws use this language in regard to member institutions’ degree programs: “primarily at the graduate level.” Jim Sauer, who is involved in TCLC, had suggested to the task force a recruitment technique of using individuals who have contacts at potential new member institutions to send personalized letters (and chocolate) to those contacts. There was some further discussion about recruitment and whether a membership drive or something more structured and permanent was a better fit for SEPTLA.
Increase dues to $100 per institution: There are currently 17 member libraries, down from 18 because of the formation of United Lutheran Seminary. Everyone, including Patrick, agreed that it is important to know what the additional funds would go toward and to make sure that an increase wouldn’t negatively impact membership.
Explore alternate approaches to programming: We’re already doing some of these things. Greg’s talk from the Fall 2017 meeting is on SEPTLA’s YouTube channel and embedded on the SEPTLA website. ATLA is offering greater support for virtual meetings as well as producing its own webinar series. There was some discussion about Vance Thomas (Director of the Library at Central in Shawnee, KS) as a resource for producing instructional videos. When we met this fall, Elizabeth had mentioned that he presented at ATLA. Myka mentioned that increasing dues might help fund a Zoom meeting purchase for SEPTLA but that, alternatively, ATLA might be able to give online meeting support for no (or lower) cost.
New leadership model: One possibility put forth by the task force was to offer a stipend for a leadership position in SEPTLA. Elizabeth will find out what the one example group the task force had identified does. She thinks it was more like an hourly rate for administrative assistant-type duties. Other possibilities discussed were rotating leadership roles alphabetically (by institution) and/or encouraging co-leadership in executive committee roles.
There was some more discussion about the entire task force report. Myka offered to contact all recommended potential new member libraries to invite them to the Spring meeting as guests. Bethany raised a concern about how the task force’s recommendation to increase dues and possibily offer a stipend might be received. Myka will add “Do you know anyone at a non-member library?” to the next post-meeting membership survey. Discussing possible new leadership models will be saved to a future meeting when we (hopefully) have new members; e.g. a larger total membership. In order to avoid another lack of nominations for vacant or soon to be vacant executive committee positions (Secretary and President), Myka will seek volunteers/nominations prior to the Spring meeting.
The Membership Task Force Report will go out to the membership. Potential new member institution names currently in the report will not be posted online.
Resource Sharing Task Force Report
Mark shared that the task force wants to determine what current SEPTLA members are using (ILS, discovery, etc.). Evan Boyd is currently putting together the survey. Virginia will be in touch with him on behalf of the Communications Committee regarding promoting the survey to the membership. Mark spoke with the head of the Digital Theological Library consortium (DTL). Are there things SEPTLA members could be doing together to reduce duplication of effort across member libraries?
Continuing Education Committee
Ondrea said that the date of the next meeting will almost certainly be May 11, 2018 and take place in the library at Cairn University. There’s a chance that EBSCO may be willing to fund refreshments for the meeting. Ondrea will confer with Stephanie Kaceli (Cairn).
Communications Committee Update
Virginia reported that 1&1 has notified us of upcoming changes to our hosting package which will take effect on April 6, 2018. She will follow up with 1&1 for clarification. The next newsletter (Teamwork) should go out the week of April 6. Constituent pieces will need to be collected by March 23. Although we got some feedback from the membership following the fall meeting regarding newletter formatting, the format for the next issue still needs to be determined.
Cataloging and Metadata Interest Group
Chris was unable to attend today’s meeting and there wasn’t really time left to discuss anyway. She will email the committee an update next week.*
Research Services Interest Group
Bethany will also submit an update via email next week.**
Other business
Myka looked into online printing options for a new SEPTLA bookmark. It may end up being much smaller, which will require a revision of what information goes on it. She will include a question about it on the post-meeting membership survey.
Adjournment
The meeting was adjourned.
*Cataloging and Metadata Interest Group Report
For the SEPTLA spring meeting, the main topic for the Cataloging and Metadata Interest Group meeting will be a discussion of the new look to the RDA Toolkit–the RDA Toolkit Restructure and Redesign Project (3R Project). I plan to show portions of a video illustrating some of the changes. We will also look at the current RDA Toolkit user interface for comparison. The rollout for the redesigned toolkit is scheduled for June 13, 2018.
As time permits, we will also discuss a second topic, Name Authority Cooperative Program (NACO), in particular the ATLA/NACO funnel project. We have discussed this issue in the past, but it would be nice to revisit it to see who within SEPTLA is participating or planning to participate in the near future.
**Research Services Interest Group Report
At our Fall Meeting, several members expressed interest in seeking more information on the creation of instructional videos. Elizabeth Young Miller suggested contacting Vance Thomas, Library Director from Central Baptist Theological Seminary for advice. There’s a recording of an ATLA presentation on the topic available on the ATLA website.