EMIERT (Ethnic and Multicultural Information Exchange Round Table)

Hello all,

Below are the EMIERT minutes from the Dec. 16, 2013 meeting.  These were approved at midwinter.  Once the midwinter minutes are approved I will also post those-- best-- Lori Mestre, Secretary to EMIERT

EMIERT Executive Board Meeting

December 16, 2013

11:30 a.m. ET

Minutes

In Attendance:   Leslie Campbell Hime, Jonda McNair, Lori Mestre, Katherine Trouern-Trend (chairing the committee via Skype).   

Approval of Minutes:  The November 20^th notes will be shared this month by Tess and will be approved in January.

Chair Report (Katherine Trouern-Trend): 

• Kathleen thanked everyone for their work in moving EMIERT initiatives forward and acknowledged the progress being made.


• Michelle Harrell Washington, Director of the Office for Diversity and Office for Literacy and Outreach Services (OLAS) will be sending Emily Sheketoff from that office to the EMIERT midwinter meeting.


• The webinar “Coretta Scott King Meets Common Core” that was planned for December 19 will be rescheduled to Wednesday, February 5, 2014.  This was due to low enrollment.  The new date coincides with Digital Learning Day and Black History Month.  We should continue to promote this, especially at ALA. There will be an announcement of this in Cognotes at ALA too.  Information about the webinar was in the October 31^st minutes.


• Kathleen mentioned that she received the contribution report and an individual is making two gifts: 1 to the Coretta Scott King award for the committee and another for the endowment.  Jonda will send a thank you note.

  Vice-chair Report (Leslie Campbell Hime):

• The membership report included 9 new members, 3 reinstated members, 13 renewals and 15 members who dropped membership.


• Leslie continues work on the newsletter and has most of the content and is working on formatting.  She has a few last details to collect.

 Membership Report:

• Most of theinformation was included above pertaining to the report, but there is a new chair for the Membership Committee, which should help with efforts.


• EMIERT has increased membership numbers to the extent that we now can designate a Counselor at Large for a seat on council at ALA.  We will consider this further at ALA midwinter.

 Coretta Scott King Committee Report (Jonda McNair):

• The additional posting to attract new members to the Coretta Scott King Committee yielded several new members.


• Jonda reported on the planning for the Annual program, “Milestones, Memories, Musings: 45 Years of the Coretta Scott King Awards- A Conversation with Past and Present Winners.  The facilitator, Andrea Pinkney, will ask questions to a mixed panel of people who previously won the award.  The goal is to have 6 panelists.  Jonda asked if the time slot could be extended 30 minutes to allow for more time for the panelists.  The proposed slot is Sat. June 28^th 1-2:30 p.m. Kathleen will investigate.

 Task Force/Committee Reports:

• A couple of the Task Forces and committees have gained new members and the groups are now waiting for ALA Connect spaces so they can conduct their work.


• Some of the Task Force chairs are working with graduate students to help them in their work, such as with the Directory of Libraries Serving Multicultural Populations Task Force. They should have a basic outline available after Midwinter.


• Leslie mentioned she has spoken to the Spectrum Scholars about opportunities with EMIERT task forces and committees.  She will also post some of the openings that are available in the Newsletter.


• Tess Tobin, as past EMIERT President, will work with the Nominating committee to continue work on recruitment.


• It was mentioned that EMIERT is open to creating new task forces or committees if there is interest in new topics.

 MidWinter Schedule:

• Leslie posted the midwinter EMIERT meeting times in ALA Connect.  She will add them to the newsletter and announce them via the ALA Connect members space as well.  Tess asked if we could put in programs as well to give people a heads-up.  For now, location could be marked as TBA.

 MidWinter Social:

• The social will be Friday evening 5-7 p.m. at SoleFood Restaurant, 1200 Market St. Philadelphia (215-231-7300).  Tess will call them to try to reserve for about 25 people.


• The group brainstormed ways to publicize this.  Since it is held during a no-conflict time at ALA (due to the opening of the exhibits) we won’t be able to add it to the scheduler. In addition to posting via ALA Connect, there was discussion about making up ½ page flyers to print out at the ALA office and then to post and have at the EMIERT table.

 Annual Programs:

In addition to the Coretta Scott King program, there are still plans for EMIERT’s Annual Taste of the Town (Friday afternoon) and the Get Hip program.

 EMIERT Awards:

There was a discussion about whether or not we will still offer the David Cohen/EMIERT Multicultural Award.  We had decided to alternate this award every two years.  In the past, information for the award occurred in the fall and the award was announced at Midwinter.  The group decided we could send announcements for nominations in March and award it at annual.   We will also need to begin contacting potential vendors who might sponsor the award, so that it doesn’t come from the EMIERT funds.

 Recruitment/Promotion:

• EMIE listserv:  the listserv is still active, although it has not been updated for a few years and still contains people who are no longer members. It is not possible to automatically add new members- they need to be invited first.  A few years ago there was a vote to discontinue the list, but it never happened.   Tess will ask John  (of OLAS) to take any previous list administrators off of the list and to add the new chair of membership as an administrator so she can update the members who receive the listserv. 


• Facebook:  Katherine is an administrator of the EMIERT facebook page and will ask that Leslie and Lori also be made administrators so that they can post announcements, events etc.


• At midwinter we should all continue to reach out and promote the EMIERT meetings, programs and committees

Next meeting is at midwinter

Adjourned at 12:17