Art Libraries Society of North America, 33rd Annual Conference, Hilton Americas, Houston, Texas, April 1-6, 2005

Professional Development Committee Meeting

Saturday, April 2, 2005, 5:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.

Chair: Heather Ball, Virginia Tech

Attendees: [*denotes committee members]

Heather Ball*, Virginia Tech

Tom Caswell*, University of Florida

Lauren Edison, 2004/2005 Internship Award Winner

Sarah Falls*, University of Richmond

Carol Graney, University of the Arts

Sara Harrington*, Rutgers University

V. Heidi Hass*, Pierpont Morgan Library

Louise Kulp*, Franklin & Marshall College

Angel Moyes*, Salt Lake City Public Library

Henry Pisciotta*, Pennsylvania State University

Rebecca Price, University of Michigan

Barbara Prior, Oberlin College

Tony White*, Pratt Institute

Recorder: Tom Caswell, University of Florida

Minutes:

Introductions – Heather Ball (outgoing chair) welcomed new PDC members, Sarah Falls, Louise Kulp, and Tony White, to the committee and mentioned that Jacqui Allen is leaving the committee. Carol Graney was also recognized as outgoing Board liaison to the committee.

Future of the PDC and Internship Award – Heather opened discussion on the future of the Professional Development Committee, starting with restructuring of the Internship Award. The Internship Award has always been administered and judged by members of the PDC but now will become its own subcommittee under ARLIS/NA’s Awards Committee (the committee responsible for the Wittenborn, travel, and research awards, etc.), as recently approved by the Board. Henry Pisciotta will be the first to chair the Internship Award sub-committee. Henry said so far it consists of Eileen Fry, Cathy Billings (the 2003-2004 internship award winner) and him. He wanted a visual resources person and a new librarian and is looking for volunteers to round out this sub-committee – which is not to exceed five members total, not including Executive Board liaison to the Awards Committee (Carol Ann Fabian). Please contact Henry if you are interested. He will stay on the PDC email list, but will have no PDC responsibilities other than overseeing the transition of the internship award.

Heather then asked everyone to comment on the current charge of the PDC and suggested that it needs rewording in light of recent changes to the committee structure, etc. We have until July to rework wording of the charge. The Executive Board approved the final draft of the Core Competencies project (it will be an Occasional Paper soon). We then discussed the future of the core competencies and that their revision, etc. should be addressed in the PDC charge/statement of purpose. The committee’s action items for the coming year should reflect the existing strategic plan. ARLIS will begin operating under the new strategic plan next year after the Executive Board approves it. Heidi Hass (incoming PDC chair) thinks the part of the current charge “to investigate ideas for continuing education at the chapter and regional level …” may need to be worked on with other committees or divisions, like maybe Academic Division? The part about “assembling information on career opportunities” is covered by our development of the careers brochure and its eventual web equivalent. Heidi continued, saying that the charge to “develop and recommend standards for art librarianship” is accomplished by our ongoing activities surrounding the core competencies project. She then questioned the part of the charge to “create standards and develop guidelines and evaluation methods for workshops, seminars, etc.” Maybe we need to make more general statements in our next charge as the current one seems to have many “action item” type statements. What about mentoring? Heidi will work on the rewording of the new charge and pass it by the committee before the July deadline.

The committee then discussed the status and future of the PDC website. Tom Caswell (PDC webmaster) reported that we continue to receive updates as far as internship listings and we now have 50 institutions listed from across the United States and Mexico. When asked about the current discussion of committee websites being hosted on a central ARLIS/NA server, Tom said he would not be opposed to the idea as long as it was using an extremely stable and easy-to-update content management system. He warned of the complexities of updating the website he concurrently maintains for ACRL’s Arts Section using ALA’s content management system. At the very least, it would be extremely helpful while we maintain independent websites to maybe have a redirect so we can have a shortened, easy-to-remember URL? Like www.arlisna.org/pdc? Also, will the internship information remain with the PDC site? Heather pointed out that the internship roster is kind of independent of the Award. Henry will contact Tom to see what will go where.

Funding Request – Deadline for funding requests is May 31^st. PDC has annually been the provider of the LOEX membership. Carol Graney explained that LOEX is a clearinghouse for library instruction materials. As members we can contribute to LOEX. Maybe then we need to publicize LOEX? Heidi wants to initiate a funding request for a speaker at Banff. Carol says speakers are conference expense funding. Make sure any proposals include possibility of outside speakers and associated costs.

Mentoring Program – Heidi and Tony then talked about the Mentorship Task Force Report. Heidi and Tony along with task force members Deborah Ultan Boudewyns, Miguel Juarez and Angel Moyes did a literature review; based on the summaries produced Heidi and Tony then wrote the report. They pointed out the lack of any recommendations, but rather avenues for further exploration of mentoring within ARLIS/NA. They talked with Jack Robertson about initiating surveys on the subject. They are also looking for speakers to talk about mentoring. Henry thinks mentoring report should be published. Tony and Heidi are talking with Judy Dyki at ArtDoc. Sara Harrington wants to know who are the mentors/mentees? Tony said it would be good for mid-career leaders to help out first-timers, etc. Heidi says mentors need certain skills sets or credentials of course. Mentees/mentors would negotiate needs, expectations of each. Getting the paper into ArtDoc will help start the discussion. Heidi and Tony will be asking for more input through email.

Core Competencies Project – Executive Board approved the final draft and it soon will be published as an Occasional Paper. SEI is looking at maybe using the core comp document for certification. And the current president of ARLIS/NA is looking at maybe asking library schools to use it. Heather wants to emphasize that it is not to be a stagnant document. PDC should look at it yearly and look to update it occasionally. Heather used Virginia Tech’s survey tool and highly recommends using such a thing to get feedback. Also targeting certain people in the organization to look at it. Members were asked to look at the core comps statement as a guide for Banff conference proposals.

Brochure Project – Tom and Angel presented copies of the very rough draft of the “Careers in Art Librarianship and Visual Resources” and are still looking for comments and feedback. This draft has been passed through several different groups within ARLIS/NA (Diversity Committee, Membership Committee, and Chapter leaders) for input. Please contact Tom and Angel as soon as possible, for they are closing in on a final draft as far as content and wording. An estimate from ion communications (designers of the current ARLIS/NA membership brochure) was presented. Production and layout using ion is estimated to be CDN$550.00 (= ca. $445.00 U.S.). Tom and Angel feel that hiring ion for the graphics and layout would be best as they are the ones who developed the membership brochure, so whatever design they create would probably be most consistent with the current graphic identity of ARLIS/NA. Whatever money is left over from the $1,525.00 we were granted (we assume that amount to be in U.S. dollars) will be used for printing. A final draft will be emailed to committee members for final comments soon and that content will then be forwarded to ion communications for layout and printing.

Meeting Adjourned @ 6:30 p.m.