Washington, D.C.
October 14-16, 1998

Confronting the Challenges of the Digital Era

ARL Business Meeting October 16, 1998

President's Report

Report of the Nominations Committee

Recommendations for 1999 Dues

Report of the Special Membership Committee

Report from the Working Group on the Purchasing Negotiations Center

Report from the Copyright Issues Working Group

Report of the Executive Director

President’s Report

MR. NEAL (Johns Hopkins University): I’d like to open the ARL Business Meeting and remind everyone that this meeting is for members only. I’ll start by reporting on five Board actions that I thought would be useful to bring to your attention. First, the Board has discharged the Work Group on Scientific and Technical Information per the recommendation of that group. We have approved the implementation of a five-year rolling exchange rate for determining the annual membership dues for Canadian members in order to moderate the annual impact of currency fluctuations. We have established a new Internet2 Working Group chaired by Margo Crist. We are working with several committees of the organization to develop and implement the AAU/ARL educational campaign on scholarly communication and copyright. And lastly, I am pleased to announce that the new president-elect is Ken Frazier, University of Wisconsin.

(Applause.)

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Report of the Nominations Committee

MR. NEAL: I would now like to introduce Betty Bengtson, chair of the Nominations Committee to give her report and to move the membership adoption of the slate for new members of the Board.

MS. BENGTSON (University of Washington, Seattle): Thank you. First, I’d like to thank the members of the Nominations Committee who worked with me on this, Tom Shaughnessy of the University of Minnesota and Sarah Thomas of Cornell University. We’re very pleased to present a slate of three nominees for positions on the ARL Board, and those nominees are Meredith Butler of SUNY Albany, Joe Hewitt, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Carolynne Presser, University of Manitoba. And we move the adoption of the slate.

MR. NEAL: It has been moved by the chair of the Nominations Committee that these three individuals be elected as members of the ARL Board. Are there any nominations from the floor?

(No response.)

MR. NEAL: Seeing and hearing none, we will accept this recommendation and vote in favor by acclamation. Thank you, and welcome to those three new members of the Board.

(Applause.)

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Recommendations for 1999 Dues

MR. NEAL: I would now like to turn your attention to the dues proposal. There was a document sent out under my signature dated September 11th, 1998 which lays out the thinking of the Board and the recommendation of the Board concerning the dues for 1999. The Board confronted some very pressing financial issues for the Association in terms of advancing our priorities and our objectives.

We were faced not only with the increase in operating costs, but we also wanted to extend a significant merit-based salary adjustment pool for the staff of ARL. We wanted to enable the continuation of the ARL Leadership and Career Development Program. And we also wanted to advance a much more aggressive and sustained public information, public relations campus education program related to our work in the electronic information environment.

Therefore, given those priorities and those needs, we needed to generate $124,600. And we have proposed to accomplish that financial goal through a variety of strategies. These strategies include a roughly three percent increase of dues, which would generate $54,450, and a reduction of $20,000 in the contribution to reserve.

You will recall that earlier, the Board had designated that $60,000 each year would be built into the annual budget of the Association for the purpose of creating that reserve fund. That fund has grown significantly, and it was the feeling of the Board that while we should not undermine, diminish, or undercut our goal for that reserve fund, we could reduce the amount that we put into that fund each year in conjunction with a different investment strategy for the Association. The Board also recommended, working with Duane Webster and the ARL staff, that we invest ARL’s reserve fund in financial instruments that produce a higher level of return. We discussed strategies for accomplishing that at the meeting of the Board this past week. We believe that in the long term this will produce higher levels of income for the Association and allow us to reduce the annual contribution to reserve and perhaps even accelerate reaching our objective of a million dollar reserve.

We also talked about ways that we could reduce Association expenses by taking a fresh look at our Membership Meeting structure. The Board did recommend that we seek to achieve a savings of about $20,000 each year in the organization and length of the October Membership Meeting. And the goal in the coming year, with the approval of this dues proposal, would be taking a hard look at how we invest ourselves in this fall meeting and to see if we can reduce our expenses by about $20,000.

The last piece of the budget plan was to recognize the important support being extended to the SPARC initiative by the staff and the infrastructure of ARL. After consulting with the SPARC leadership, it was agreed that some of the expenses that ARL incurs to support SPARC should be covered instead by the SPARC member dues. Beginning in 1999, SPARC will reimburse ARL for administrative services provided. This amount is estimated at $30,000.

The combination of $54,450 from the three percent dues increase, the reduction in the reserve contribution by $20,000, the reduction in the Fall meeting cost by $20,150 and a SPARC reimbursement of $30,000, gives us the necessary $124,600 to meet the financial goals of the organization.

Therefore, the Board brings this recommendation to your attention and asks for your questions, discussion, and vote. Are there any questions?

UNIDENTIFIED: I’d like to hear a little more about what it means to reduce the budget for the October meeting. I think it would be helpful to have a little more background on what that would entail.

MR. NEAL: I’m going to ask other members of the Board to assist me in this discussion. But I think our discussion focused on the desire of the members to have increased opportunities to meet and talk with one another as compared with two meetings a year that were focused completely on speaker presentations. And so, one of the objectives was to maximize those opportunities for interaction.

Secondly, it was felt that we could concentrate and target a lot of our programmatic activities more successfully and effectively into one meeting a year. Essentially, we can build a higher quality programmatic effort during the May meeting and focus more attention on the work of the organization and interactions among members at the October meeting.

The net result of this could be the reduction of the October meeting by one day. This would include the expectation that the Friday of each October meeting would be devoted to the SPARC Working Group. It will be an opportunity for that organization to bring its members together and have a full day of discussion of SPARC plans and developments.

That, I believe, was the thinking of the Board as it sought to experiment with a different approach to the October meeting. We recognize that by having made this commitment, it is not a perpetual commitment. It gives us an opportunity, perhaps for a few years, to see if a different approach to the fall meeting makes a qualitative difference in achieving programmatic goals, member networking goals, and providing an opportunity for some real substantive work by SPARC within the context of the meeting.

UNIDENTIFIED: I’d like to comment that I support the dues increase, and I’m sure that the consensus will as well. But I would also like to comment that I think ARL is the best bargain in town. And in the interest of administering locally and well as globally, ARL’s agenda is also my home agenda. And I don’t think three percent is very much. So as far as direction for the future, if ARL needs the money, I’ll pay it.

MR. NEAL: I think the Board feels a sense of responsibility to the members by trying to manage the resources effectively. And, at the three percent level, this does represent the lowest increase that we have proposed since 1989.

I think we also recognize that the set of activities we as ARL embrace is calling upon us to make contributions in other ways, whether it’s through the Global Resources Program with our financial and staff commitments, or whether it’s through SPARC with another set of dollars we’re being asked to invest. So we try to take the total picture of what our institutions are bringing forward financially to advance the ARL agenda.

MR. FRAZIER (University of Wisconsin): There was a strong commitment in the Board to good stewardship by managing resources as wisely as we could in the interest of the membership. But I must add that there’s also qualified support for that notion of reducing the programatic aspect of the October Membership Meeting. The history of this organization is that it succeeds in attracting directors to the Membership Meeting while other membership organizations to which our institutions belong do not.

And I think there has to remain a sustained commitment to bringing us together, and that requires a quality program. So that commitment is there, and we’re going to experiment with it, as Jim says. But we’re going to do this with attention to having a quality program that will keep bringing you back.

MS. von WAHLDE (SUNY-Buffalo): I recognize that the idea of changing the October Membership Meeting is probably ripe for consideration, and I applaud the idea of looking for ways in which we can spend more time together to talk about the issues that are important to us and to learn from one another, rather than have talking heads. However, I thought today’s speakers were very intriguing and interesting, and I appreciated that program.

I don’t expect to have all the details from you yet, because it sounds like you’re certainly sorting this out. But I am very interested in how this will be organized, how you will communicate this with us, what our opportunities will be to influence the shape of those days and the outcomes that we would expect from shifting the way we conduct our meetings. I would also welcome the idea of having top quality programs at the May meeting.

MR. NEAL: Let me review the pattern of the Membership Meeting and our ideas for next fall. Tuesday we’re already committed to the meeting of the Board. On Wednesday we’re committed to the various committees of the Association. And what is being proposed is to commit Friday to the SPARC discussions and advancement, which leaves Thursday as the window for activities, whether those be enhanced interaction opportunities with leaders from our own institutions or from partner institutions. I think that is something that will be shaped over the next several months. And I think the primary tool for really getting member involvement in that planning is to use our electronic discussion list, and Betty Bengtson will work very closely with staff to make sure that happens.

MS. HOGAN (University of Illinois at Chicago): One of the things to think about when you’re setting up this timing is the rhythm of the school year. One of the advantages of the program we had today and yesterday was the fact that we have proposals before us that we now have the rest of the school year in a number of academic settings to bring forward and discuss.

If this program was replicated in May, we would lose that energy and attention that we’re all going home with right now over the course of the summer. So I think we need to be thoughtful about seizing the moment for initiatives that have an importance in timing. And even yesterday’s McCabe presentation will influence the programs that I go to for the rest of the year. And again, in May, that would not have the same effect by the time I went through the summer and September hit me.

MS. von WAHLDE: I also wanted to follow up on the use of our time. Because I’ve been an ARL director now for about 12 years, I find that my physical ability to go through the whole range of activities that we have with so many breakfast meetings and receptions, it’s getting harder to achieve as I age. I don’t have the stamina that was there when I was a fresh, young ARL director.

I’d like to see some models, plans, or possibilities developed that we might respond to, or some sort of survey sent to the membership about what things we like best to engage in, and what things we can do without.

MR. NEAL: I agree with that, Barbara, and I think we also have the benefit of the evaluations that members contribute. A lot is said through those evaluations both in terms of specific directions as well as the collective evaluations.

MS. CRETH (University of Iowa): I think it’s interesting that this proposal has come forward and probably it is not coincidental. I’ve heard a lot of talk, both at this meeting and a year ago about what Barbara von Wahlde has said. There is just no time to really interact and talk, because we’re being almost assaulted with people talking at us. So even for those younger ones, they may find it a bit wearying.

But I also think you must be listening to what people say, and I hope both myself and my colleagues will be honest about the programs in our response on meeting evaluations. I’m concerned that we seem to always have programs using the number three. We must have three speakers. This morning was an exception. It not only costs the Association money to get those people here, house them, et cetera. But then you have little time for questions and interactions. This morning, where we had two speakers, we had ample time for questions and interaction. So I would urge that we stop trying to load our programs in terms of the number of speakers.

And the other point is I think you should watch and listen to what we say about the program yesterday afternoon where we had presentations, and then we had the opportunity to sit together in smaller meetings. I attended two of those. There was a lot of good energy in those discussions. And during the one on fundraising, we all seemed to have been sitting around taking notes and learning from one another. There is a lot of expertise and experience sitting in this room, and we don’t always need to hear from people external to us. We have a great deal to learn from one another. And we’re here at our expense, not the Association’s. So you also save money there, you know.

I think the timing is good, and I commend the Board for rethinking this, but like Barbara von Wahlde, I’d urge you to check with the membership about your ideas with regard to all day Wednesday for committee meetings and all day Friday for SPARC. Maybe some people would have some different views on that.

MR. NEAL: I agree. I think you’ve echoed a lot of the discussion and thinking that went on in the Board’s review of this.

MR. LEINBACH (Tulane): Just a quick idea on perhaps saving some more money on this meeting. It seems to me we have an awful lot of free food, and I know hotel food is not cheap. I think most of us could handle the meals if we had to pay for them. I don’t know how much money that would save at this meeting, but maybe a few thousand dollars, just an idea. Like a cash bar.

MR. NEAL: I think we’re going to look at all of the cost elements that are bundled up in providing this type of meeting for the Association.

UNIDENTIFIED: It’s not particularly new, but here is something to think about as you plan for the fall. If you have committees on one day and you have essentially one day for programs and interaction, it could well be that some people—particularly given the cost of travel—if they’re not particularly interested in SPARC, would forego ARL. And then I think we would see a real diminishing of our interaction. Many of the people who preceded me spoke about the social interaction, and I think that’s one of the most important reasons why I make the trip. And as you look at the economies, do weigh the fact that this is probably the one place where we have a strong community to interact with.

MR. NEAL: I agree, and I think that will be a key element in evaluating any new strategies for the meeting.

We have a proposal from the Board for you to adopt a 3% member dues increase for 1999. All those in favor, please say aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. NEAL: Any opposed?

(No response.)

MR. NEAL: Any abstentions?

(No response.)

MR. NEAL: Thank you.

I’d like to invite Gloria Werner to present the Board of Directors recommendation concerning the membership of George Washington University. She chaired the committee comprised of Martin Runkle and myself to visit the campus this past February. Gloria, would you please provide us with your report?

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Report of the Special Membership Committee

MS. WERNER (University of California-Los Angeles): As you will all remember, we’ve had a new process for the last several years for looking at potential new members. It goes through two stages. The first involves a quantitative assessment of whether a potential member institution is eligible or not. And having passed that kind of analysis, a visiting committee goes to the institution. As Jim Neal said, he and Marty Runkle and I spent almost two days at George Washington University.

In that setting, we’re really trying to assess the qualitative kind of factors that involve membership in this organization. I can tell you that the visiting committee had a very productive and positive experience. We did recommend to the full Board that we invite George Washington University to become a member of ARL, and with the Board’s complete endorsement, I am recommending to the membership that we vote on that issue.

MR. NEAL: Thank you. It has been moved by the Board upon the recommendation of its Special Membership Committee to invite George Washington University for membership in ARL. Is there any discussion?

UNIDENTIFIED: What do we see out on the horizon in terms of other potential candidates for membership? Do we have any idea if other institutions are in this position?

MR. WEBSTER (ARL Executive Director): There are a few institutions, less than a handful, that either have the numbers or are approaching the numbers that would deserve consideration. We will have a better sense after we get current data produced for non-member libraries. That data should be available soon from ACRL.

When we have that additional data available, we’ll have better sense of which of the non-members may be eligible.

MR. NEAL: Any other questions?

(No response.)

MR. NEAL: All those in favor of the invitation to George Washington University, please say aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

MR. NEAL: Any opposed?

(No response.)

MR. NEAL: Any abstentions?

(No response.)

MR. NEAL: It is unanimous. Congratulations to George Washington University Library.

(Applause)

We have one additional report. At our last business meeting, we authorized the creation of a working group on the Purchasing and Negotiating Center proposal. Paula Kaufman has been chairing that working group, and she’s going to provide an update on the work of the committee.

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Report from the Working Group on the Purchasing Negotiation Center

MS. KAUFMAN (University of Tennessee): Thank you. The charge to our Working Group was to design a study of the feasibility of a purchasing and negotiating center, to identify organizations that could carry out that study and to identify possible funding agencies. You need to know that your working group was filled with those of us who are more skeptical than not about the viability of this, so I think we came to the table with that healthy skepticism.

As a premise for discussion, the Working Group agreed that the most critical role for such a center would be as a service bureau for negotiating licenses for high ticket electronic content. Its service market would be individual libraries, both ARL and non-ARL, and consortia in North America. The center would serve as an aggregator and a consolidator.

Then we identified some potential secondary roles, including concentrating on the same services for non-electronic content. While we were in the process of undertaking our discussions about designing this feasibility study, a number of things happened in the larger marketplace. Specifically, we saw the first national multi-consortia license actually negotiated and carried out.

At the same time, the ARL staff took a poll of funding agencies, and it did not appear that there are deep pockets to fund this kind of study. So our question really changed from how do we do this study or how do we carry out this kind of function to how can we facilitate others to serve as the focal points for national and North American deals? And so, what we’re doing now is monitoring the marketplace and encouraging consortia who are looking at the market to analyze that market.

We’re talking in depth with SOLINET. We’ve already had one discussion, and we’ll be having others. SOLINET did that first national deal. They are in the process of building a business plan to get into this market in a larger way. They’ve identified some of the barriers and we’re going to be talking with them about what those barriers are and how ARL might facilitate lowering those barriers.

We also plan to encourage ICOLC (International Coalition of Library Consortia) to develop a searchable database of the various products that its members currently offer so that each of us can do better comparison shopping of the deals that might be available to us. And we’re going to be watching what’s happening out there in the marketplace, looking for organizations that are actually thinking about or will be undertaking some of these national deals and helping them move forward with that.

We’re also going to call upon the principles that ARL developed with other library associations. Principles for Licensing Electronic Resources is a little booklet that we all put out to help identify some standard license terms for ARL libraries http://www.arl.org/scomm/licensing/principles.html. Perhaps, if things go far enough, we will develop a matrix of the various quirks of each of our individual libraries so it will be easier to facilitate the licensing process with each of our libraries.

And clearly, we’re going to continue to look at how all this goes in the marketplace and when it might be appropriate—if none of these things go very well—for us to go back to the table to look at the issues that we need to look at for a feasibility study. So that’s what our group is up to. Are there any questions?

MR. KOBULNICKY (University of Connecticut): This is not so much a question as a comment. I attended the ICOLC meeting in Denver a couple of weeks ago, and I think that I was the only ARL director there. What I was struck by as the vendors came in and met with this group was that the attraction of this multi-consortia type of deal is market share. They see that they’ve already got everybody in this room.

And what they’re after is the smaller institutions that they don’t have in their pocket. And so, coming to the table with a whole group of smaller institutions is the attraction and the bargaining power there.

MS. KAUFMAN: Are there any other questions or comments?

(No response.)

MR. NEAL: Are there any other committees of the Association that need or want to report to the membership today?

(No response.)

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Report from the Copyright Issues Working Group

MR. NEAL: I just want to make one quick comment about the efforts of the Copyright Issues Working Group. We heard Arnie Lutzker’s comments yesterday at lunch, and there were four strategies outlined by the Copyright Issues Working Group that need to be focused on post-WIPO legislation. One was to make sure that we have an effective role and effectively contribute to the distance learning study that will be organized by the Library of Congress.

Secondly, coming out of the WIPO legislation, we need to tell the story in a very aggressive and effective way of what we accomplished and how we interpret what that legislation is telling us for our communities.

Third, we need to position ourselves to participate and contribute information to the ISP (Internet Service Provider) liabilities studies that are going to be conducted over a two-year period. And we need to position ourselves to be very strong and aggressive as new database legislation is inevitably brought to the new Congress next year. So we’re working very hard to make sure that ARL and the interest of research libraries and higher education are reflected in those four areas.

I’d now like to move to Duane Webster for the Executive Director’s Report.

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Report of the Executive Director

MR. WEBSTER: Thank you. As I think you’ve seen during the course of the meeting this week, we’re dealing with a very interesting array of issues. We have considerable energy and ideas and hard work focused on those issues, and we are making progress in having an impact on the agenda you’ve set out for us. You can see how the priorities, as they were framed this year by the ARL Board of Directors, have served as a focus to continually test our work against.

I think you’ve heard with the SPARC reports, with the legislative reports, with the report on the Global Resources Program, with the discussions around scholarly communication and the Pew activity, and with the roundtable discussions, that we are, in fact, pursuing those priorities with some success. With the establishment of those priorities, though, we have to translate them into operations and deploy staff in pursuing them.

And so, the way we’ve done that is to look at the operating budget for the executive office for 1998, the $2.3 million dollars which is provided principally from the dues base. Seventy percent of the executive office’s funds come from membership dues. That, combined with the Office of Leadership and Management Services, created a budget of roughly $3 million dollars. That allows us to put into play 13 program staff, 10 support staff, and to operate our facility at 21 Dupont Circle.

Operating that facility, particularly with the conference room, is of utmost importance as a resource for the Association. That conference room is an attractive place to lure the higher education community to come and engage in work with us, deal with issues, or to use the facility even if it’s not on an immediate library related issues. We do make that facility available for higher education associations to use when there is a need for it. And it is often used. It’s a very active room, and it is a wonderful way of positioning the Association in a central fashion at an intersection of discussion and an intersection of commerce as it turns out.

We structure ARL operations around a series of programs. We’ve been able to fund, staff and present very active programs that go beyond the Association and take our issues, our agenda, and our work into larger arenas to be very influential.

The way we try to keep you informed of what’s going on, of course, is through a variety of communication channels. The ARL Program Plan which comes out at the beginning of the year is in lieu of annual report. It’s an anticipatory annual report, if you will. It tells you what we’re currently doing and what we plan to do during the course of the year. And it’s framed around the priorities set by the Board. The activity report that comes out at this time of year reports on how progress has been made over the last nine months.

We have also come up with a new format for this report. Bradley Houseton and Lee Anne George have helped us in designing a format which we hope is more readable for you. It’s a little tighter, more bullet points, more concise. If you need to have additional information, believe me, we are eager to provide that.

With the ARL Bimonthly Report, we’ve made considerable progress with Jaia Barrett’s help in moving the newsletter from a house organ that focuses just on what ARL is doing to be more of an issue oriented commentary. Attempting to put our agenda of issues out, not just to the directors, but really to our communities. This is a newsletter that’s intended for the scholarly community. It’s not just intended for ARL directors. And it’s very much intended to get our point of view and our perspective on these issues understood and promoted.

The monthly E-News for ARL Directors is for you. It’s more of a house organ, if you will, telling you what we’re doing on a month by month basis. Hopefully, it is formatted in a fashion that you can scan it and move it on to somebody else. But at least a scan will keep you tuned in and aware of what is going on within the Association.

We update the ARL Webpage on a weekly basis so that we can take some of the pressure off the monthly news and also be very current. The ARL Website has proven to be a useful device for the staff to come together, almost like a press room might come together as a group of editors to say what is breaking, what we have available this week to give to the members, and what we need to highlight.

I hope you make an effort to check that page on a weekly basis to see the dynamic nature of the work of the Association and the resources being made available to you .

The director’s electronic discussion list is your vehicle for expressing points of view, raising questions and securing information. It is limited to you, and your flow of views, ideas, interests, arguments is, in fact, entirely shaped by you.

The ARL-Announce is a one-way broadcast to electronically issue our press releases.

I’d like to turn to a little bit of a salute to the staff and to talk a little bit about the changes that are taking place within your staff. There have been a number of appointments and promotions over the last nine months, and I’d just like to review that with you briefly. Katherine Deiss has been named as the Program Manager of the Office of Leadership and Management Services, effective in June. She’s worked in a variety of capacities for the Association, working first as an adjunct faculty member and then moving in as a training officer. In the last several years, she has emerged as a person with tremendous energy, vitality and interest. She will certainly be able to pick up and move the OLMS program forward to what we need in the future.

(Applause.)

MR. WEBSTER: As you know, Jaia Barrett left in July to go to Kiev, Ukraine where she’s going to be for the next several years while she continues to work with us in editing the Bimonthly Report. We’ve established a distant relationship, but an electronic relationship that is working very well to have her continue on a part-time basis to serve as the editor for the Bimonthly Report and to do a variety of other tasks that we’re working with her on.

But in the meantime, we’ve been fortunate to attract Lee Anne George into a position we’re calling the Program Planning Officer. Lee Anne joins us from Harvard, and before that, she was at George Washington University. So we have a connection to our new member. She is working on a variety of things, including being the point person on the content part of the program over the last several days.

(Applause.)

MR. WEBSTER: Laurel Jamtgaard, you were introduced to and you welcomed on Thursday. She has been a delight to have with us as policy analyst and lawyer, bringing connections of Pam Samuelson and the Berkeley crowd into our office. She’s been of great help.

The next person is Mary Jackson. Mary is one of these wonderful long term relationships we’ve developed starting first with Paul Mosher’s willingness to share Mary’s expertise from the University of Pennsylvania as a Visiting Program Officer. Then, because of the interest of her family in moving to Washington, she has moved from a position of Visiting Program Officer to Access Consultant. With the developments of this year and with her success in that capacity, I’ve offered her the position of Senior Program Officer for Access Services and she accepted in June. I also need to add that, effective this past September, she was asked to pick up the reigns from Dorothy Gregor and serve as the Executive Director for the National Coordinating Committee for Japanese Collections. This is a part-time position that is compensated by the NCC, so it works to our benefit in several respects.

(Applause.)

MR. WEBSTER: The next new staff member we’ve been able to attract is Rick Johnson who is leading the SPARC initiative. He knows the research library community very well and brings tremendous talent and experience from the world of publishing.

The next person I’d like to highlight is DeEtta Jones, who has been with us for a little over three years. Because of her success in shaping and moving along the Diversity Program, I was happy to promote her to Senior Program Officer for Diversity, effective in June. She’s doing a marvelous job for us.

(Applause)

MR. WEBSTER: Our newest person is Trish Roseel who is coming to us from Vancouver, British Colombia having worked for an electronic information services network. She is joining the Office of Leadership and Management Services as a Visiting Program Officer with a particular portfolio and interest in distance learning. This is an investment OLMS is making both in a concept and in a person, and we’re very eager to welcome Trish and look forward to her work with OLMS.

(Applause.)

MR. WEBSTER: Those are the changes that are taking place in the staff arena. We also have a cadre of folks who have been here for a period of time. They represent what I view as a very talented and important group of senior staff that provides stability, talent and continues to provide energy to focus the programs.

And, of course, you know these people. You know Prue Adler. You know Jaia Barrett, who is more distant but continues to contribute, Julia Blixrud, Patricia Brennen, of course, Mary Case, and Deborah Jakubs. And with Deborah I would like to say thank you publicly to David Ferriero for his willingness to make available some of Deborah’s time. He recently promoted Deborah to Director for Collection Service, a critical spot for Duke University. David’s willingness to continue to let Deborah spend a portion of her time as a Visiting Program Officer and as head of the Global Resources Program is really quite important to us.

Martha Kyrillidou continues to work half-time for ARL from Greece. She will be returning to ARL full time within the next year.

And Dru Mogge, our technology person, has been very crucial and important to us as we’ve worked to strengthen our electronic communication capabilities throughout the Association.

And finally, let me acknowledge Mary Jane Brooks’ great help with the smooth running of the Association as well as the smooth arrangements and operation of the Membership Meeting. So I’d like to acknowledge both the senior staff and Mary Jane Brooks.

(Applause.)

MR. WEBSTER: In closure, let me say that it’s absolutely essential to us that we work in very close partnership with an agile governing structure. A governing structure that demonstrates interests, ideas, willingness to work and a willingness to treat and deal with staff on a collegial basis. We’ve had great success in doing that over the years. You can see that in the current array of members who are serving in a governance capacity.

This past year has been particularly exciting, not just because of the issues and not just because of the progress we’ve made on those issues but because of the character and quality of the relationships we enjoy with you.

Working with Jim Neal this past year has really captured the essence of this relationship. Jim has just brought an enormous amount of energy and fresh ideas. He has always been available on short notice to provide insight, advice, and counsel—despite his schedule. And I think foremost and very importantly, he’s always been there to give encouragement and support to all of the ARL staff. So thank you very much, Jim.

(Applause.)

MR. NEAL: Thank you, Duane. I’d like to invite three individuals who are leaving the ARL Board to come forward and provide us with an opportunity to thank them for their outstanding leadership, service and commitment to ARL. I’d like to ask Carol Moore, Bill Crowe, and Gloria Werner to the front of the room.

Bill Crowe, University of Kansas, has served on the Board for three years, and has always been a voice of reason. And we thank you Bill, also, for your provost.

(Applause.)

MR. NEAL: Carol Moore, University of Toronto, has always brought a very, very valuable perspective to our thinking. She really helps us think about north of border, and that’s important to an association like ours. We really appreciate all that you’ve done for us. Thank you.

(Applause.)

MR. NEAL: Gloria Werner, UCLA, has served five years on the Board. In addition to her years of contribution on the Board, she also, as you know, served as ARL President in 1997. Her leadership and direction set in motion many of the important initiatives that we have embraced and addressed here today. Thank you very much.

(Applause.)

MR. NEAL: As my last action as ARL President, I want to report to you that the membership of the Association is in a very strong strategic position, programmatically, financially, and politically. Over the last year, ARL has advanced its core agenda. The range and impact of its activities are extraordinary. Just consider these five: the Pew Roundtable, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, the Copyright wars, the Global Resources Program, and the Leadership and Career Development Program. All speak passionately to the impact and role that ARL plays in the scholarly and higher education communities.

We are blessed, as Duane said, with a remarkable staff. We are blessed with an extraordinarily strong Executive Director and a membership who contributes so much to the vitality of this organization. I am pleased to pass this gavel to your new President, Betty Bengtson. Thank you.

(Applause.)

MS. BENGTSON: As I’ve been reflecting on Jim’s presidency, the first phrase that comes to my mind is ‘hard act to follow’. We’ve all been privileged to observe and benefit from Jim’s energetic leadership this year. As we know, he’s the ultimate multi-tasker, because he has not only been serving as President of ARL, but he’s also been serving on the ALA Executive Board and has been very, very involved in IFLA as well.

We certainly can thank Jim for his involvement with and continued leadership on copyright issues. He has been energetic in taking our message to many venues, including a stint in Geneva when the WIPO was being considered last year, and has worked very, very vigorously on those legislative issues. Those of us who have been privileged to watch him manage meetings of the Board this past year have learned a great deal. He encourages discussion. He invites new ideas, but then he summarizes, gets a decision and moves on. So they’ve been very, very efficient meetings. And he’s done it all with a great deal of humor. And, Jim, we want you to accept this small memento of remembrance and thanks.

MR. NEAL: Thank you very much.

MS. BENGTSON: Thank you. And, of course, Jim will serve as our past-president this next year. He will continue on the Board and on the Executive Committee, and we will continue to benefit from his ideas and leadership.

I have a few items to remind you about before we adjourn. First of all, the May Membership Meeting will be held in Kansas City, May 12th to 14th, 1999. I was in Kansas City over the weekend before I came here, and I think you will be pleased with the hotel, with the location, and with the local hospitality. Bill Crowe came over from Lawrence and I spent a very nice morning with him and with staff from the Linda Hall Library. Bill then drove me out to Lawrence, and we timed it to see if it would be possible to take you out to Lawrence during the meeting. We’re still debating that, but I think you will enjoy the heartland.

Remember also to fill out and turn in your evaluation forms for this meeting. As you’ve been reminded again and again, we do pay attention to what you say. So, please be sure to complete the short form. The Board of Directors meeting will begin after this session is finished.

The SPARC Working Group meeting will be held this afternoon.

Are there other business items which need to come before the membership this afternoon before we adjourn?

MS. CRETH: I’d like to put something forward that maybe we could all be thinking about in terms of discussion for our next meeting. I applaud and support the Leadership and Career Development Program. I think it’s important. I hope to see us continue it, but I remain concerned, as I know a number of my colleagues are.

This was reinforced yesterday with the presentation on demographics and the fact that we are not going to see the minorities coming through the pipeline into higher education. I think we are challenged as a community together, not just as individual institutions, on what we might do to bring people into the pipeline and not simply continue to fight over those that are already in our profession.

And so, I want to put forward a proposal in the hopes that it might help to prime other people to come up with better ideas. I’m convinced that if we can organize around legislation and if we can organize SPARC, then we can, in fact, collectively address recruitment of minorities for careers at research libraries. But we have not yet done so. So I propose that every member of ARL, using their private funds or resources, commit to support one individual to go to graduate library school under contract to work for us for two years following their graduation.

If we did that and were successful, we could bring, in one fell swoop, over 100 new minorities into our profession. It would probably not cost us much more than SPARC or other endeavors, but it could make an enormous difference. And I would really like to see us give some serious thought to this issue—what other ideas are there? How can we move people into this pipeline of higher education and into our research libraries?

We are really not accomplishing that in any collective sense at all. Thank you.

MS. BENGTSON: Thank you, Sheila. I would think that is a challenge that each of us should take up. Thank you.

MS. SCOTT (National Library of Canada): I’m speaking as chair of the IFLA Committee on Copyright and other Intellectual Property matters. I just wanted to let you all know that we have set up several working groups. One of them is on licensing. And we are looking particularly at clauses which really hurt fair use, or fair dealing, as well as provisions which really go against interlibrary loan.

So if any of you know of such clauses in contracts and licensing agreements, and feel that you could share them with me, I would be very grateful. It is a vast activity, as you can well imagine, to try and identify these clauses. So if any of you that know of such clauses, I’d appreciate your help. Thank you.

MS. BENGTSON: I would encourage all of you then to send those clauses to Marianne. The issue that Marianne has just talked about really affects all of us. Individual decisions and contracts begin to accumulate into policies and practices that we haven’t stopped to really think about. So I think these are very important issues that you’ve raised. Thank you.

Are there other issues for the membership before we adjourn?

(No response.)

MS. BENGTSON: Thank you for attention. I declare the 133rd Membership Meeting adjourned.

(Applause.)

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