Online Doc Minutes - 2009 Annual Meeting (consolidated)

ALA/EBSS Committee Meeting Minutes ALA Annual Meeting

Time and Place: 10:30 a.m., July 11, 2009; McCormick Place Conference Center, Chicago

Committee: Membership & Orientation Committee

Education & Behavioral Sciences Section (ACRL)

Minutes submitted by: Cheryl Goldenstein, Scott Collard

Members Present: Scott Collard, Rita Kohrman, Nancy O'Brien, Dottie Persson, Laura Ramirez (chair)

Members not present: Robert Hinton

Scott Collard opened the meeting with a welcome and introductions; chair Laura Ramirez was delayed due to representing EBSS at ACRL 101.

Minutes from the meeting at Midwinter in January 2009 were approved.

Scott shared membership statistics for EBSS and for ACRL as a whole. EBSS membership is down 3.24% to 955, well below the 1,000 members needed to meet ACRL's criteria for increased funding.  Membership in all but two of ACRL's sections has declined, and membership in ACRL as a whole has fallen 1.13% since 2008.

The committee brainstormed direct and indirect strategies to sustain and build EBSS membership during an economic downturn:

• Take advantage of features in ALA Connect to recruit and engage members
• Recommend ACRL change practices for funding sections. Lowering the 1,000-member threshold would be more attainable for sections in the current economic climate.  Considering alternative criteria and employing incremental steps for funding are other possibilities.
• Allow for more virtual participation in the section and in ACRL as a whole. 
• Approach members near retirement and provide incentives for them to purchase lifetime memberships.
• Promote ACRL to students in LIS programs.
• Pursue relationships with non-ACRL sections with interests similar to EBSS, such as AASL or YALSA. As a further step, ACRL could allow for members of other divisions to join ACRL committees by offering a revised fee structure. An increasing focus on interdisciplinarity is another argument for cross-division committee interaction.

Scott directed the discussion to action items from the previous meeting. He reported revising the letters sent to new, reinstated, and dropped members. Dottie created a set of survey questions to gain more information about why members let membership lapse. Committee members gave input and approved the letters and survey via email earlier this spring. An idea from the last meeting that we hope to address in the future is a buddy system to help new members navigate conferences.

Members agreed to focus on the following action items:

1. Scott will present the suggestion regarding changing criteria for ACRL's funding of sections to Advisory Council.
2. The Membership and Orientation Committee will explore a virtual meeting for Midwinter 2010. Scott will contact members via email to plan the meeting.
3. The committee will deploy the new survey Dottie created. Laura can access names of those whose membership has lapsed in the past two years and will check it against the list of reinstatements. This group will be the initial focus of the survey. The survey will also be included with letters to dropped members.

The committee meeting adjourned at 11:45 a.m. to join the larger section meeting.

Respectfully submitted