ACS Division of Chemical Information

ACS Division of Chemical Information

Executive Committee Meeting

Monteleone Hotel, Queen Anne Ballroom

New Orleans, Louisiana

Saturday, 21 August 1999, 1:03 P.M. to 4:54 P.M.

The Executive Committee Meeting was called to order by Chair Grace Baysinger at 1:03 p.m. Those present for all or part of the meeting were:

Grace Baysinger* Michael O'Hara*

Andrew Berks* Peter Rusch

Ann Bolek* Arleen Somerville*

Cassandra Burcham William Town*

Guenter Grethe* Andrea Twiss-Brooks

Charles Huber Gary Wiggins*

Maggie Johnson Joanne Witiak*

Margaret Matthews*

(*voting member)

I. Review and Approval of Minutes from March 1999 Meeting in Anaheim

Guenter moved to accept the minutes as written; Gary seconded. Approved.

II. Fundraising

(Bill) We have eleven corporate sponsors of activities for this meeting. Raised $19,050. Shall have an exciting and different welcoming reception and nice Herman Skolnik reception. (Grace) Two programs are supported by Corporation Associates at this meeting which is quite helpful. Would be appropriate to transfer Corporation Associates information to Andrea. Have symposium organizer say for which program you want to use the funds. Grace will do write-up showing how funds were used. Andy asked if you could use for travel. In general you can, but you want to be as specific as possible. Deadlines: mid-Fall for Spring request, probably in November.

III. Treasurer's Report

(Marge) Hasn't received bills from ACS for Spring meeting yet. Grace said she had to guarantee a certain number for the lunch. Guenter said they goofed in the office, but it is resolved. Grace said you have to turn in an envelope with any unsold tickets. Need to document in procedures how you do this. For Corporation Associates, some money was going to a co-author, not the presenter. Illustrates need to have organizer write grant request or have grant writer get details from organizer. Two $1000 donations: Noordwijkerhout and the book donation. Bartow asked if there were any travel funds for the Lucille Wert Scholarship awardee. Marge said she doesn't think we should put it in the budget each year, unless you fundraise for it.

IV. Councilor's Report

(Gary) There is a deficit in the Meetings & Expositions (M&E) budget line. There is a rule or requirement that M&E has to break even over a five-year period; there was a deficit the last two years. Several options: Raise member registration fees tagged to consumer price index. One-third of the registrants are students and non-members; consider raising their registration fees. Modify criteria for selection of cities. Offset less popular cities with popular cities. Could raise registration fees for speakers ineligible to be members. Sandy asked if there is any explanation for why they are running a deficit. Fees support shuttle buses, for example. Overhead was reallocated, but M&E got $700,000 more this year than they would have gotten.

Several petititions to amend Constitution and Bylaws: Allows us to have a five-year maximum affiliation with another organization, but can renew for another five years; divisions can also have this affiliation.

Membership annniversary dates for new and reinstated members, invoiced on a weekly basis. May pose problems for companies which pay memberships for their employees to write checks throughout the year, instead of once per year for those employees. ACS would like to spread the workload over the entire year.

Bonnie Lawlor and Ann O'Brien are candidates for the Nominations and Elections Committee.

Joe Clark is on the task force for future publishing.

Recommended increase in Councilor reimbursement to $2000 per year with 25 percent coming from the division. Recommendation that Publications be expanded to include Copyrights.

ACS dues will increase from $105 to $108 next year.

The Committee on Patents and Related Matters has a new Web site.

Barbara Peterson is Vice-Chair of the Publications Committee. Aspects of Plan B for the electronic ACS journals are favorable. There is a surcharge for foreign delivery of the official organ.

Redistricting was ironed out, and there is more support for the current map, especially concerning the prior Region 2 objections.

V. Election Results

Ann announced the election results:

Chair-Elect: Andrea Twiss-Brooks
Secretary: Maggie Johnson
Councilor: Gary Wiggins
Alternate Councilor: Joanne Witiak

VI. Committee Reports

A. Archivist/Historian

Nothing new to report from Val.

B. Awards

(Chuck) Sent a draft of the update of the Meritorious Service Award. Had some suggestions for modification. Surfaced in 1991 previously, when approved by the Executive Committee. Suggestions to make active again. Need to find out if the Herman Skolnik awardee is willing to accept the responsibilities of the award before announcing the winner; have to wait. There were four nominations. Chuck's term as Awards Chair ends at the end of this year. Also looking for a Careers Chair since Andrea was elected Chair-Elect. Shall try to announce the Herman Skolnik Award winner at either the Welcoming Reception, the division's Business meeting, or this year's Herman Skolnik Award reception.

(Grace) Current officers (Chair, Chair-Elect, Secretary, Treasurer) should not be eligible for the Meritorious Service Award, but others on the Executive Committee could be. (Chuck) Could start taking nominations for next Spring's meeting. Could start giving out the award at each meeting or more often. Mike wonders if we should give the award every two years which is a carryover from previous instructions. Peter asked if it were in Procedures Manual; Grace will get a copy of the Procedures Manual from Robert Stobaugh and put it on Web.

Original Meritorious Service Award guidelines were drafted at August 1990 national meeting and approved at Spring 1991 Executive Committee meeting. Initiated during Bonnie Lawlor's term as Chair. Grace thinks the Awards Committee can vote on the Meritorious Service Award. Shall announce nominations for Spring. Chuck will incorporate suggestions and give to Andrea to put on the Web and put out a call for nominations on CHMINF-L.

Grace participated in the Patterson-Crane Award jury and felt that the recipient, Stephen Stein, deserved the award.

C. Careers

(Andrea) Did a panel in the Spring and doing a Careers Symposium on Monday. Looking to do this at the regional level. Looking for a new Chair.

D. Education

(Gary) Submitted a written report. Two new members attended the committee meeting this morning. Need tools to help people teach the use of Beilstein CrossFire. Have a very ambitious schedule for next year: Biennial Conference on Chemical Education in July, NERM in June, the ACS national meeting in Washington, DC, and the Western regional meeting in Santa Barbara (Chuck). Status of finances: Marge said we were in good shape, but we don't have the expenses from the Spring meeting yet. May work with some high school teachers or chemical technicians. Recommended having an Assistant Chair during the Chair's last year to groom as the future Chair. Arleen has carried the torch to the ACS Committee on Professional Training in order for the Education Committee to have input on their guidelines and has made great inroads. Guenter asked if they have given some respect to getting vendors involved. Can talk about for workshops. (Arleen) There is a delicate balance in the time available for workshops. Arleen thanked everyone who wrote notes for her retirement and thanked the division for their contribution to the book fund in her honor.

E. Membership

(Mike) Data collection for the member diectory continues. Two test versions were uploaded to the Web, but require a password and are currently accessible only by CINF functionaries. Hope to have the printed version published by the end of this year. Continue to send e-mail to new CHMINF-L subscribers, and are getting one to three new CINF members each month. In September, Bill will send an invitation to join CINF to ChemWeb members who have expressed an interest in chemical information. Received only one negative reaction to these solicitations. Received five and one-half hours of coverage for the membership table by posting on CHMINF-L. Asked that there be something more prominent on CINF's home page about how to join the division. When we send the welcoming letter to new members, we shall send them a form to gather all the data for member directory. Out of 1400 members on the April roster, 813 have less than ten years of service to the division which is a relatively short period of time in the division. Retention rate is fairly decent. Thought that fall-off would be larger in early years. Directory that Grace has put up will make it easier to gather this type of data.

A five-minute break was taken at 2:30 p.m.

(Grace) All chairs of committees should see whose term is expiring at the end of the year.

F. Program

(Andy) Programming is in very good shape. Full programs with 13-1/2 or 14 for San Francisco, 12 for Washington, DC, more than 10 for San Diego, and some for Chicago (Fall 2001). Have an organizer for NCIS. Bruce Slutsky is editor of the electronic newsletter and has contacted session chairs. Adding hypertext links to Power Point presentations. Who owns in terms of copyright? Andrea shall contact the ACS Copyright office; do they care?

(Guenter) Noordwijkerhout wants to thank the division for donating $1000, which went to students; has pictures of the conference including the students. Very, very successful conference, over 170 attendees; 17 or 18 countries participated. Hoped for more from the Asian countries. Shall try to get cosponsors. Funding and social was sufficient. Next meeting is in 2002 and will be organized by Guenter.

NCIS: Jorge Manrique, now with Cambridge Software, will organize with Bruce Slutsky and Graham Douglas (vendor side, fundraising, Synopsis representative). Need someone from industry in the information area. Need to find a location, probably in the Northeast, and shall probably hold in June of 2001.

For San Diego, CINF (Guenter) will organize a Biotech Symposium. Has commitment from four divisions. Pacifichem 2000: December in Honolulu; close to 200 symposia. Have 3-1/2 days of programming, including a symposium on reaction information.

G. Publications

(Sandy) Need a WebDiva assistant, new Chair, new Chemical Information Bulletin editor, and new business manager. Can't eliminate the print altogether. Have members either with no e-mail, or we don't have their e-mail address. Shall ask new members how they wish to receive their publications. Sandy has asked Pat O'Neill for copies of the disks from the salary survey, but has not received them yet. Suggested that someone else work on the salary survey with Pat. Bruce is working on the electronic newsletter. The Member directory is a stand-alone publication.

(Andrea) (Web) Nothing has been done with ACS to post the CINFWeb on the ACS web site. Crazy conditions, no sponsors allowed, and the contract needs a great deal of work. Grace is not worried about the hosting. We have a simple URL, acs-cinf.org, which Bill registered. Print and electronic publications of the division look great. There aren't any issues with the current server; we have enough space. Can maybe get some new members with Web skills to help out. After the last meeting, maybe have some stylistic guidelines for type font. New URL should come along very soon. New one won't be case sensitive. Won't rush to put member directory as a link any time soon; need to do more work.

VII. Representatives' Reports

A. Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL

(Arleen) There hasn't been any activity with collaborating with ACRL-STS, but she passed the information to David Flaxbart who does attend ALA.

B. American Society for Information Science (ASIS)

No report from Judy Watson.

C. CHEMTECH

The CHEMTECH Advisory Board has been disbanded.

D. Documentation Abstracts, Inc. (DAI)

(Peter) There is still a DAI board. Information Science Abstracts has been sold, and everything has been transferred. The board meets infrequently.

E. Special Libraries Association (SLA)

(Chuck) The workshop at SLA was not held because it was not in the preliminary program for the meeting. A couple of people registered, and Chuck and Gary met with them. Bartow Culp and Dana Roth presented a "chemistry for nonchemists" seminar which was standing room only. A workshop for Philadelphia is unlikely because deadlines are passing.

VIII. Strategic Planning

(Grace) Copies of the strategic planning document are in the corner. Priorities for next year: membership database which has been started, and the electronic newsletter which has been started, although nothing has been published yet. Short, targeted membership surveys were suggested: Programming survey, salary survey, members interest. Perhaps Bill, Andrea, and Guenter will take the next step to move into practical reality. Grace took comments from people and put on the Web site.

(Guenter) Have talked for years and years about things we should do. Sees this as a mission; need to put a roadmap together with milestones. In her own work, Maggie said she has put items on a spreadsheet with names to see if anything is holding up anything else. Maybe we should call it a division statement. Strategic plan, strategic mission. Has been up on our Web site maybe a month. (Grace) Want to finalize by next meeting, but want to put it up for at least a few months. Everyone should read and maybe put to an elecronic vote. Peter thinks the Executive Committee should adopt, but should assign people to specific tasks. Guenter does not expect many changes. (Grace) Good to have endorsed by the Executive Committee on a particular date.

Have a domain name.

(Member Directory) (Grace) Testing the draft. Went through what is publicly accessible and what is only available to the functionaries. Much of the data is pull down so people don't have to guess the values. Put this year's CINF data in, but not earler data; members may add. Will see all fields collected to date. Could data mine and see relationships we were not aware of. Number of privacy issues if you display phone, fax or email; need members' divisions. Half of the directory belongs to ACS and half to the division. Contains confidential data, and there are glitches.

(Electronic Newsletter) Would like your support, and would like to disseminate the information efficiently.

IX. DAC Issues & Questions

(Grace) Received a series of e-mails from Bonnie entitled "Concerns/Needs of ACS Divisions." Representation and power in Council is predominantly from the local sections; division representation is small, about 20 percent. (Andy) At the DOC in Anaheim, divisions thought the representation should be 50-50. (Arleen) In looking at the action items of Council, it does not appear to matter if you were a division or local section Councilor. Grace wants to put a link to Bulletin 5 which has a detailed outline on how to charter a division. (Arleen) Committee on Committees (ConC) appoints members to committees, and maybe we can make suggestions to our division members, such as Carol Duane and Lydia Hines (Kalamazoo), who are on ConC.

X. CINF Members Being Considered Competitors by ACS

Some CINF members were kicked out of the ACS Press Room because they were not "ACS." There is a perception by ACS that many members of this division are from companies which compete with ACS. For example, if one of these members received membership information, they might data mine it to use against ACS. At the Spring national meeting, Wendy Warr was barred from the ACS Press Room because she was perceived to work for a competitor. Guenter wrote to Chris Pruitt and received an answer back on July 6th; they said that the Journal of Chemical Information and Computer Sciences has no news section; the press room is open only to appropriate media. Steve Heller was forcefully removed from the press room by two security people. General press has to apply for credentials. Our ability to use and compile member data may be in violation of this. Some competitors are dying to have our mailing list, but we won't sell it to them. Grace will find out what the half ownership means with the member directory.

(Marge) There are acknowledgments in the ACS Final Program for people who are sponsors. Someone should find out who sends in the sponsors to list them for CINF. Social events were left out, also. Since we were not reserving a room, a certain form was not turned in for our welcoming reception, for example.

XI. Bylaw Changes (including Name Change)

(Robert Stobaugh, via e-mail, 28 July 1999) The charge of the Constitution and Bylaws Committee is the maintenance of the Division Bylaws and Procedures Manual. Changes referring to gender were made in the bylaws and submitted to the ACS Committee on Constitution and Bylaws. These were found to be satisfactory, but additional changes were suggested. These were incorporated a draft that is presently under review by the Executive Committee. Comments have been received from one of the members. Eventually the revised bylaws will be submitted to the ACS Committee before the changes are presented to the CINF members for approval.