Minutes ***DRAFT***

ARLIS/NA Professional Development Committee Meeting

Atlanta, Sunday, 29 April 2007, 1:30-3:00 P.M.

Attendees: Tom Caswell (incoming chair), Sarah Carter, Sarah Falls, Heidi Hass (outgoing chair), Sara Harrington (rotating off), Kristina Keogh, Angel Moyes, Karan Rinaldo, Elizabeth Schaub (South Regional Representative; Incoming Board Liaison)

Regrets: Louise Kulp, Tony White

Guests: Ken Soehner (ARLIS/NA Vice President/President-Elect), John Bowman

Introductions and approval of agenda

Core Competencies sub-committee report

Angel passed out copies of the ARLIS/NA Core Competencies for Art Information Professionals with the proposed changes highlighted. Changes were made to clarify some sections. It will also be recommended to the Executive Board that Hemalata Iyer’s Core Competencies for Visual Resources Management be endorsed. More details were added to incorporate the VR Core Competencies. A discussion followed on whether to have Elizabeth take the recommendations to the Executive Board immediately or to continue revisions. It was decided to spend time cleaning a few things up (especially 13) before submission.

Careers in Art Librarianship and Visual Resources brochure

Credit was given to Tom and Angel for working on this. The brochure was to be distributed to chapter presidents and library school deans. More copies will be printed as the brochures ran out.

Internship Roster

The roster came out of the internship award. The PDC is maintaining a roster of all institutions interested in hosting paid or unpaid interns. This includes deadlines and sample projects. Someone should be charged with going through each entry systematically (Kristina volunteered). We can also brainstorm on how to solicit institutions to be added to the list. As it stands, some entries are specific, while others are more generic, so entries should be streamlined to provide more information. One possibility is to solicit ARLIS-L, SAA, and VRA Museums, and then subdivide according to the type of institution. The list should also be broadened to cover geographic areas not represented. Something could be sent to the editors of regional newsletters as well as chapter presidents. Those regions that are not well represented should be singled out. Also think about your own institutions.

Updating of AWS document Library Schools in Canada and the United States: Educational Opportunities for Careers in Fine Arts and Visual Resources Librarianship

There is a definite need for this as the document is at best eight years old. Someone also needs to talk to Nedda because the only way to find it is by Google. (Some content was lost in the website migration.) There are people coming up in ArLiSNAP who are willing to help with this. The format is currently a static, un-hyperlinked web page. It was started with 5 spreadsheets which tried to be as broad as possible. It might be best to put the information into a database to allow searching in multiple ways. Another suggestion is to later broaden the list of educational opportunities to those outside of library school, such as continuing education. There should also be a line for distance education. Those working on this (Sarah Carter, Rebecca Cooper, Sarah Falls, etc.) will split up the spreadsheets and call the various programs.

New ARLIS/NA Members

The PDC has been working with the Diversity and Membership committees to welcome new members and to convey how ARLIS/NA works and how they can get involved, which is often difficult to figure out. Should we call every new member? The Membership committee is working on restructuring fees. Do we in the PDC want to work on this issue as well?

It’s been reported that new members have checked off groups they are interested in and then never heard anything back. Headquarters is going to purchase Member Clicks which will make administrative things easier. The goal is to get a dynamic online member database that users can update themselves. Angel also reported that you can search and find people interested in certain things. Member Clicks probably won’t be up until the end of summer. It may also be a way to find people to work on committees. Elizabeth suggested it might be more useful to have types of interests broken down and then try to match them with certain committees since it is often difficult for new members to figure out what each committee does.

Mentorship Task Force Report

The task force was formed by Heather Ball in 2004 in response to a strategic plan action item to provide a mentorship program. They did a literature review and split into four proposed models for mentoring which were published on the ARLIS/NA site. They went forward with a workshop at Banff run by a mentoring professional. There was low participation there because of the cost of that conference (only nine participants). A DVD was made of the workshop. This year’s workshop was run by Heidi and Tony and had eight mentors and ten mentees. They ran the DVD and paused it for breakout sessions. In the final hour, Tony spoke with the mentees and Heidi with the mentors. One problem with the program is that it is tied to conference attendance. Those who need mentors are not always able to attend. An idea for next year is to train chapter leaders to use the DVD and the script to to run their own workshops at local chapter meetings. Heidi and Tony need help following pairs and contacting them at least four times a year as a way to gather information, quotes, and to troubleshoot the relationship if needed. Participants also know that they may contact Tony or Heidi if things are going astray. Angel Moyes, Sarah Falls and Sarah Carter volunteered to help with this. Heidi will send out copies of the DVD. Tom suggested that the program might be decentralized to the chapters. Heidi said that there will be additional value added by having both national and chapter participants. A chapter relationship will give more of an opportunity for seeing someone face to face. Another possibility is to have an open workshop for self selected pairs, not just matches made by the workshop leaders

By the Denver conference, Heidi and Tony will have been working on this for four years and they will be ready to rotate off. They were able to get a number of good ideas from the poster session. They might keep two co-chairs on the task force and stagger their terms so one always has a year of experience. They would also like to propose to the Executive Board that one of the co-chairs always act as the Educational Representative. This is a lot of work and a great deal of responsibility. There are liability issues if things go wrong. So it might be best if the functional officer for Education also be a co-chair of the Mentoring Task Force. This will keep the Board aware in the first person of how things are going. The Board also needs to address this as a standing committee or sub-committee to PDC, not just a task force.

Assessment Task Force Recommendations

Sarah Falls reported that the biggest change for committees is having the functional representatives go to the Board. The feeling is that the geographical reps are not as needed. This will strengthen ties and improve communication. It will separate committees by what they do. There are structural things to think about. We should be planning for five years down the road. We in the PDC have been concentrating on new members but there is no mid level professional development opportunities (how to be a manager, how to develop professionally). There should be resume workshops for those with 20 years of experience as they need a different type of help. The recommendations are very organic. The committees are more structured, but they can still come together or go away as needed.

There was some concern that all the groups will turn into special interest groups (this will create a scheduling problem at conferences). One model to look at is the ACRL conference, which has a huge room with round tables for various groups. People can then jump between tables. This is a format worth exploring. These groups could be put in the exhibit hall for an hour and a half.

Program Ideas for 2008

Heidi will propose a workshop for the Mentoring program. New Voices wants to do something every year so a call will be put out. It should probably be attached to the PDC as ArLiSNAP doesn’t have an official structure. Sarah Falls and Sarah Carter will be co-moderators. The papers should be published as a body or maybe in Art Documentation.

The meeting was adjourned by Tom Caswell at 3:00.

Respectfully submitted

Kristina Keogh, Virginia Commonwealth University