ASEE

Engineering Libraries Division

Extended Executive Committee Meeting Minutes Sunday June 27, 2001

Present: Mel DeSart, Jill Powell, Linda Musser, Gretchen Sneff, Andy Stewart, Larry Thompson

The meeting was called to order at 10:45 AM by Mel DeSart, ELD Chair.

JSTOR
The JSTOR Task Force, chaired by John Saylor, will continue to contact professional societies about the possibility of archiving backfiles of engineering journals. Mel DeSart will draft a modified and extended charge for the task force.

ELD Liaisons to Other Library Organizations:
The EEC determined that the following actions should be taken to implement the ELD liaison program:

• Establish a Task Force to coordinate the liaisons – Mel will seek a chair for this.
  
• Survey ELD to determine the following:
  
• Organizations and/or organizational divisions that ELD should have a liaison to
  
• Organizational conferences that ELD members presently attend
  
• ELD members who would volunteer to be liaisons to other groups
  
• Appoint volunteers as formal liaisons from ELD

The EEC noted that liaisons should do more than just attend another conference, but would be expected to attend the business and/or committee meetings of the organization in order to get a sense of the plans of that group. There would be no financial incentives from ELD for being a liaison.

Literature Guides
Sales of the Literature Guides have been low during the past year. In addition, ASEE will no longer agree to publish the Literature Guides. Therefore, the EEC determined that continuing the hardcopy format of the Literature Guides is not an option. The Publications Subcommittee on Literature Guides will investigate options for a WWW based format.

Union List
Mary Schlembach will investigate the future of the Union List, and what ASEE’s policy would be with regard to ELD publishing the Union List outside of ASEE.

EEC Members Appointed by the Executive Committee
1) ELD bylaws state that committee and subcommittee Chairs, Editors, the Archivist, and Webmasters shall be appointed by the Executive Committee for a renewable two-year term. In the past there has been little notification to members that an appointee’s term was expiring, and in some cases the length of the appointee’s term was not clearly communicated to the appointee. This oversight may have had a two-fold effect: First, renewing terms without notifying other members of the term expiration may inhibit participation by other members. Second, members might be reluctant to volunteer for a position without a clear understanding that the position had a term limit.

2) At the present time, two Committee Chairs and the Newsletter Editor have expressed a desire to step down:
Chair of Publications Committee: Godlind Johnson
Chair of Awards Committee: Suzanne Weiner
Newsletter Editor: Tom Conkling

3) Four terms are completed as of 2001:
Archivist: Don Richardson
Membership Directory Editor: Andy Stewart
Listserv Editor: Mel DeSart
ELD Webmaster: Jill Powell

The Executive Committee will examine the bylaws, present practices, and upcoming vacancies and make recommendations. It will also consider whether certain positions, such as Webmaster and Listserv Editor, which require computer space within a university’s network can realistically be limited to a two year term.

Communication with ASEE Headquarters
Mel DeSart will send a letter to ASEE expressing ELD’s concern about conference registration prices, complementary registrations for guest speakers, and lack of adequate internet e-mail access at conferences. The EEC particularly expressed disappointment with the high prices and long lines of the ASEE Picnic.

Links from the WWW site to ELD membership lists
EEC decided not to link from the ELD WWW site to the ELD membership list. The membership list will continue to be sent out on the ELD-L list as a PDF attachment. Visitors to the ELD WWW site will be given Andy Stewart’s contact information for questions about the ELD membership list.

ASEE 2002 – Montreal
1) Several topics were suggested for the 2002 ELD program. Gretchen Sneff will be distributing information about this in the coming months.
2) It was suggested that alternatives be explored for the get acquainted session. The large number of people attending has made the present format unwieldy. This year’s decision to have only one representative speak from each institution was helpful, but the session was still quite long. It might be possible to change the format entirely, and find sponsors for a get acquainted breakfast. Within the present format, a suggestion was made to have several ELDers who have previously attended these sessions set the tone by speaking first, hopefully in a concise manner.
2) ELD members are encouraged to consider taking a library student to ASEE Montreal. Registration is free for students. McGill University has a library school.