Section Information

What Is SEES

SEES Committees

SEES Officers

Annual Newsletter

      Conference Information

SEES Programs

Conference Minutes

Conference Schedule

      Other Information

Internet Links

Slavic Cataloging Manual

Executive Committee Minutes
January 15, 2005

Present: Janice Pilch (Illinois), Jackie Byrd (Indiana), David Chroust (Texas A&M), John DeSantis (Dartmouth), Joanna Dyla (Stanford), Iris Godwin (Tennessee), Inna Gudanets (Stanford), Kristin Johnson Kulash (Harvard), Soobum Kim (Stanford), Pat Kreitz (Stanford), Sandra Levy (Chicago), Terri Miller (Michigan State), Stanislav Orlov (Toronto), Dan Pennell (Pittsburgh), Brad Schaffner (Harvard), Leena Siegelbaum (Harvard Law), Cathy Zeljak (George Washington)

ACRL Board: Pat Kreitz reported on issues and activities of the ACRL Board, including:

• Scholarly Communication: ACRL strongly supported an open access server for NIH funded research
• Effective Practices Website: ACRL is hosting an informal website where members can share "good ideas" and tips with other libraries
• First Year Experience: ACRL is establishing a First Year Experience Task Force to focus on the needs of students in their first year of post high school education.
• Subject-Specific Information Literacy: There will be a meeting on Sunday to focus on subject-specific information literacy.
• Virtual Meeting FAQ: ACRL has made an FAQ available for virtual mid-winter meetings. Those who wish to meet virtually are encouraged to meet the deadlines and follow the rules outlined in the FAQ. Software for virtual meetings will be available in the spring.
• Strategic Plan: The ACRL Strategic Plan was passed in June, 2004, and now the organization is aligning itself with that plan. There is not enough money to do everything, so the organization must become more and more member-driven. The Budget and Finance Committee is working on aligning the budget with plan, and the ACRL Board is working on the implementation of the plan. Committees are being examined to reduce overhead, and there will be an all-committee chair meeting to solicit input. In 2006, a similar all section-head meeting will be held
• Membership Dues: The ACRL Board will vote on Sunday, January 16 on whether an increase in membership dues should be placed on a ballot for ACRL members. If ACRL approves the ballot, ACRL members will vote on the issue in spring 2005. It involves an increase for membership does of $20, with one option being over the course of two years. In that scenario, the dues would be $45 in 2006 and $55 in 2007, up from $35 in 2005. This would be first increase in dues in 15 years for ACRL. Dues for students and retirees will not be raised.

Committee Reports:

• Newsletter Committee: Terri Miller reported that the committee had 100% attendance at a virtual meeting held Jan. 10th, 1:00-2:30 p.m. Email was used for the meeting, attended also by two non-members.

• Program Planning Committee: For the upcoming 2005 Annual Conference in Chicago, SEES will co-sponsor a program with WESS on "Digitizing Medieval Manuscripts: East & West". The three speakers will include Dr. David Birbaum, a professor from the Dept. of Slavic of Languages & Literature at the University of Pittsburgh. The program will be on Monday, June 27th, 10:30-12:00.

• Automated Bibliographical Control: Inna Gudanets reported on the ABC meeting, including:
  • Report on SEES/ABC Survey on Vendor-Supplied MARC Records: It was decided to post Diana Brooking's report on the SEES ABC website and to send a message to slavlibs notifying the list that this has been done.
  • Follow-up on June 2004 Program on "Library Catalogs and Non-Roman Scripts": Janice Pilch reported on the interest in some follow-up work to the successful "Library Catalogs and Non-Roman Scripts: Development and Implementation of UNICODE for Cataloging and Public Access" program jointly sponsored by SEES, ALCTS CAAM, and LITA at the Orlando Annual Conference in 2004. Janice reported on the program at the B&D Committee meeting at AAASS in November, and the question arose whether SEES and/or B&D should send a letter providing feedback on the issues presented. It was decided that Terri Miller will frame issues and send messages to slavlibs. Volunteers to work with Terri were solicited at the ABC meeting. Terri and her committee will work on a document.
  • Normalizing/Improving Central Asian Language Transliteration: John Eilts from CAAM requested SEES participation in a project to normalize the transliteration of Central Asian languages which have been written in Cyrillic, Arabic, and/or Roman scripts over time. He also hopes to influence the development of AACR3 and have a section of that publication on special languages and scripts.

• Access and Preservation Committee: Co-chairs Brad Schaffner and Cathy Zeljak presented the summary of the Access and Preservation Committee meeting, including:
  • Review of the SEES Home Page: The SEES Website was reviewed to ensure that it still met the needs of the section in terms of general structure. The general consensus was that it does.
  • Brittle & Slavcopy: Brad will send an email to slavlibs to determine whether there is interest in resurrecting Slavcopy in a fashion similar to the way that Brittle has been re-born.
  • Khrushchev Audio Archives Demonstration: Irina Lynden and Allynn Wilkinson gave a follow-up demonstration of Irina's presentation on the Khrushchev Audio Archives from the Orlando Conference in June 2004.

Last year ACRL requested that sections have active contact with new, dropped, or reinstated members. The chair is currently doing this, sending a letter when a member's status is changed. A SEES brochure is sent to a new member. The chair reports information back to ACRL.

Dan Pennell reported that six ABC members and two Newsletter members have terms expiring and will need fill out forms, if they want to be reappointed. He reminded those in attendance that there is a 3-consecutive term limit for committee membership and a March 30th deadline for renewing membership on committees.

Redesigning the SEES Brochure: Janice Pilch distributed copies of the text contained in the current SEES brochure. She indicated changes that need to be made in order to bring the brochure up to date and they were discussed. She will have an updated SEES brochure printed at the University of Illinois and begin distributing it to the new SEES members.

Virtual Meetings in Context of Larger ACRL Discussion: The committee discussed the pros and cons of holding virtual committee meetings at the 2006 Midwinter meeting. Janice Pilch explained that ACRL now approves of virtual Midwinter meetings, and a Virtual Meeting FAQ was distributed to section leaders on Friday, January 14 to guide them in the process. ACRL will implement chat software this spring to handle virtual meetings. Holding meetings by e-mail is also an option, provided that communications are synchronous; or sections may wish to use chat software installed at individual institutions. Many SEES members think that virtual meetings are a good idea. Janice indicated that SEES will allow individual committees to make their own decisions and we will make this an EC agenda item for the ALA Annual Conference in June 2005, at which final decisions will be reached. ACRL requirements and guidelines for holding virtual meetings will be discussed in detail at that point.

They include a 10-day meeting notice to the broadest possible group of attendees to fulfill the requirement of an open meeting, a written agenda, a synchronous meeting, submission of minutes, and attendance by all committee members.

Submitted by Jackie Byrd

Last updated 5/09/05