NHLA Executive Board Meeting
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
2:00 – 4:00 pm
New Hampshire Municipal Association, Concord, NH
Call to order: 2:05
Attending: Linda Taggart, Amy Lapointe, Mary White, Cara Barlow, Betsy Solon, Diane Lynch, Carlos Pearman, Randy Brough, Ann Hoey, Conrad Moses, Kim Mckee, Marina Hale, Eileen Gilbert.
Minutes: The minutes from the June 17, 2014 could not be approved due to the lack of a quorum.
REPORTS:
President’s Report / Linda Taggart
Since our last meeting, the Wild Apricot subcommittee (Membership, Web, Treasurer, and President) met to set up the new membership portal (http://nhla38.wildapricot.org/). While attempting to import the membership list, they discovered that the software only allows one person to register for each unique email address. However, it does allow people to be added to the system without an email address. These members will not receive automated Wild Apricot reminder and confirmation emails. To do so, they will have to provide a unique email address. At this point, our most up-to-date and accurate list of members is the Wild Apricot list. It appears that there are some omissions from the Excel list provided by Cornerstone. The Wild Apricot list has been cross-checked against the Excel list, and new memberships are now being added to Wild Apricot.
Cara Barlow and Linda retrieved a box of NHLA’s files from Cornerstone on Friday, August 15. This included the paper copies of member registrations, so we may be able to fill in some of the gaps that are showing up in the Excel spreadsheet. They were expecting several more boxes to be housed there, but Cornerstone say they do not have any others. Michael York stated that several NHLA boxes have been deposited at the NH State Library over the past couple of years, and will check to see if these are the additional boxes we expected to be at Cornerstone.
The public side of our Wild Apricot portal is not yet ready for use. The group is prioritizing the membership interface. Once that is ready, they will begin work on the event registration portal, including PayPay for online payments. All will be reviewed by a small group, but the hope is to be ready for the fall conference.
In other news, while our Past President was out, Linda distributed Geisel nomination materials to the Award Committee and set up a Survey Monkey poll to capture the results.
Treasurer’s Report / Cara Barlow
· Financial Report
Our accounts this month are as expected. We currently have $142,051.41 in cash.
Our July Profit & Loss statement shows a net operating income of -$2655.18 but that is slightly misleading as we expended $2,934 in restricted funds (Norris Scholarship, Winchell Loan, Macdonald Continuing Ed fund). If we take the restricted funds out of the mix, we had $1397.33 in net income for July.
The restricted funds do not figure into the NHLA operating income or expenditures - with the exception of the Winchell students loan fund (which is a revolving fund), the restricted funds are income from our New Hampshire Charitable Funds accounts.
· New Bookkeeper
Our new bookkeeper, Brenda Lockwood, has been helping Cara to straighten out NHLA’s books, and Cara thinks that we are now in a much better situation than we were previously. Brenda has helped untangle how our restricted funds have been tracked in QuickBooks, she fixed loan repayment tracking, and she straightened out numerous instances where what was happening in QuickBooks didn’t match our Citizens Bank accounts. Brenda is now making the NHLA deposits, updating the QuickBooks accounts, and running the monthly reconciliations and reports. The NHLA treasurer mail is being routed to Cara from the state Library, and Cara is writing checks. Our assistant treasurer, Betsy Solon, is approving payments before Cara makes them. This new division of duties seems to be working well, but is evolving.
We are in a much better situation now, and Cara feels confident that going forward we will be meeting our accountant’s reporting standards for small nonprofits.
· Taxes
Cara spoke with Ed Perry of Plodzick & Sanderson, and they will be doing a compilation for us. She will be submitting our FY14 info to him in early September 2014. The compilation and taxes is estimated to cost approximately $3,000. Linda has signed a contract with them.
· Corporate Status & ALA Membership
Our NH corporate status has been reinstated (see attachment). Going forward we need to renew this status in years that end in 5 and 0. This means we will be doing this again in 2015. Cara learned in July that NHLA had not paid its ALA Chapter membership dues since 2008. We are now up-to-date. We will use a private Google calendar to set reminders for these.
NEW BUSINESS:
Advocacy Committee: The expenditures for NH Municipal Conference are: table/ $225, electricity /$75 and advertisement in conference brochure/$100. Nothing was allocated in the FY15 budget for this, but there is $200 in a miscellaneous line and an $800 buffer. Cara will create a line item for Advocacy for FY16. It was suggested that we share a table with NHLTA so we can split costs. Deb Baker feels it’s a valuable outreach effort. Randy has been there every year and believes we don’t need an ad. Ann Hoey says she hasn’t used her laptop when there so we could most likely do without the electricity fee. Conrad will check with NHLTA about sharing a table and the costs. The deadline is September 26. The board needs to approve this expenditure. Linda will send a ballot, via Survey Monkey, since we did not have a quorum.
OLD BUSINESS:
Fall ballot:
· Bylaws changes: We have the addition of the Paralibrarian Section to be voted at annual meeting.
· The board agreed to have a web link for the proposed bylaw changes in order to save paper. Kim and Marina will post this under the by-law tab as a PDF.
· The program and ballot will be in one mailing and must be postmarked by September 12th. Ballots will be returned to Diane.
Fall Business Meeting (November 7 / Hooksett Public Library):
We will need a report about the Paralibrarian Section meetings so that all can see. We also need the Executive Board to accept the Paralibrarian Section bylaws. We will vote at our next meeting.
We hope to have Wild Apricot going in time for online registrations for the Fall Business Meeting. For those who use paper, the registrations should go to a specific person – Amy Lapointe. Mary White will staff the sign-in table on conference day.
SECTION REPORTS:
Academic: No report.
Archivist: VACANT
CHILIS: Ann Hoey reported that the CHILIS Fall conference will be at the Barbara Harris Conference Center in Greenfield on October 9. The theme is “Building Community”. The Great Stone Face winner (author of Buddy) will attend. More than 100 people have already registered.
ITS: The ITS Section held its quarterly meeting on June 26th at Keene Public Library. The topic of the day was "home grown technology solutions". About 12 people were able to attend and there was good discussion about creative ways to deal with issues small and large. The next meeting will be in September, date and location TBA.
READS: READS 2014 Annual Conference is September 19th at the Hooksett Public Library. Registration closes on September 8th. Candidates for open positions on the board have been recruited and results from balloting will be presented. Wild Apricot does not have a way to send a ballot, but SurveyMonkey could be used.
READS-to-Go has added additional kits. We now have 137 circulating kits.
URBANS: The last URBANS meeting was cancelled, but they will meet again in the fall.
YALS: YALS will meet on September 25th at the Whipple Free Library. Elections for next year’s officers will take place.
LIAISON REPORTS:
Advocacy / Mary Cronin
· NH Municipal Association Annual Conference:
Mary has received the form for signing up for an exhibitor’s table at the NH Municipal Association’s Annual Conference on Nov. 12-13. The deadline to send contract with payment is September 26.
· NHLA Advocacy Committee:
There are 12 NH librarians interested in participating on the Advocacy Committee, with representatives from both large and small libraries. Their first meeting is Thursday, September 11 at 10 am at the Pease Public Library in Plymouth.
So far, the following have committed to participating on the committee:
Chelsea Hanrahan / H. Raymond Danforth Library, NECSharon Taylor / Lee Public Library
Sandy Holz / Whitefield Public Library
Charlie Matthews / Rodgers Memorial Library, Hudson
Laura Clerkin / Bethlehem Public Library
Heather Backman / Howe Library, Hanover
Mary Cronin / Madison Library
Becca Crockett / Pelham Public Library
David Smolen / Conway Public Library
Donna Bunker / Chesley Memorial Library, Northwood
Bobbi Slossar / NH State Library
Gail Zacariah / Keene Public Library
Mary contacted State Librarian Michael York, NHLA Legislative Committee Chair Randy Brough, and former NHLA Advocacy Chair Deb Baker to gather feedback on what types of advocacy efforts they feel worked in the past, and what the priorities for library advocacy are going forward. She will contact DCR’s Programs Information Officer Shelly Angers before the first committee meeting to get information on best practices for getting the word out in New Hampshire media.
On the agenda for the Sept. 11 meeting are discussing potential advocacy activities, deciding on priorities and assigning tasks, and planning how we will communicate. We will also plan what, who, and how we will represent NH libraries and the NHLA at the NHMA conference booth.
Lastly, Mary met with NHLTA’s Conrad Moses, who is interested in coordinating NHLA’s and NHLTA’s efforts in library advocacy. He shared a slideshow on advocacy that was presented at one of NHLTA’s recent annual conferences. Mary will share that with Advocacy Committee members before our meeting in September.
ALA Councilor/ Amy Lappin: Amy’s report from the ALA annual meeting in Las Vegas is on the NHLA blog. ALA is encouraging use of “Engage”, which is a follow-up to “CapWhiz”, about advocacy relating to legislative issues. The NHLA board discussed this back in 2009 and decided not to participate at that time. This will be discussed more at the next meeting
By-Laws: Carlos Pearman had no report other than the bylaws changes as mentioned above.
Center for the Book: No report.
Conference Committee: Diane Lynch reported that the conference made $1,000 more than expected because OverDrive covered the cost of breakfast. The actual net is $4,390.44.
Continuing Education: Two members have left, but there are six new members. They are in the process of planning upcoming programs and presenters and will post on NHAIS asking for those who are interested in presenting.
Intellectual Freedom: No report.
Legislative: No report.
Membership / Deb Hiett:
As of August 18, 2014, NHLA membership stands at 487, with an undetermined number of “Lifetime Members (36 “Lifetime Members” were previously reported). At least 37 new members have joined so far this year. NHLA members also have membership in the following sections:
Ø Academics 18
Ø CHILIS 191
Ø IT 67
Ø Paralibrarians 2
Ø READS 205
Ø Small Libraries 71
Ø URBANS 14
Ø YALS 98
These numbers may not be an accurate reflection of our membership status as we have encountered some issues with the switchover to Wild Apricot. Our membership used to be over 600. Membership income was $21,790 so we must be missing some people and it’s very likely that Cornerstone was not keeping accurate records. We are diligently working to correct the records and should have an accurate record shortly. Thank you for your patience as we resolve these issues.
NELA Representative / Amy Lapointe
The fall meeting will be on Friday, November 7 at the Hooksett Public Library. Amy is putting together a program based on the theme “Enhancing the Library Experience with Technology”. She has confirmed a presentation with Merrimack Analysis Group on trends in technology. They present of a variety of topics (especially Internet security) in libraries.
Amy has also confirmed a presentation/ demo with Cubify, a 3D printer manufacturer. She had a great conversation with their Director of Social Impact who is very interested in working with libraries. Cubify is going to be launching a grant initiative this fall to enable libraries to purchase their 3D printers at a greatly reduced cost and it seems like the timing with our program will work well to talk about the program, demo a printer, and talk from a programmatic standpoint about how libraries can implement and use 3D printers.
Amy is asking Nicole Hennig to share her virtual presentation “Librarians as Rational Optimists: Using Top Tech Trends to Build Our Future” but she is not certain of NIcoles’ interest. Amy would like to ask Bobbi Slossar to briefly share what she is working on (Train the Makerspace Trainer and Tech-to-Go). For a final piece, she is hoping to ask the ITS section (or members of) to share their latest and greatest.
Staff at Hooksett have given Amy some restaurant suggestions for catering, and she is contacting Panera in Manchester.
Rough idea of agenda to date:
9-9:30 registration