FAFLRT Membership Meeting
June 26th, 2017
2017 ALA Annual Conference
Chicago, Illinois
Attending:
Karl Debus-López (chair)
Kathleen Hanselmann (notetaker)
Julie Blankenburg
Michael Golrick
Anne Harrison
Peter Hepburn
Richard Huffine
Kimberly Megginson
Loriene Roy
Virginia Sanchez
Wayne Strickland
Lance Wiscamb
Janice Young
1:09 PM meeting brought to order by Karl Debus-López. Introductions followed because this was one of the few meetings where we could see each other in person.
Peter Hepburn, FAFLRT Liaison to the Executive Board, said ALA is looking for an Executive Director. 22k attended ALA this year. Our new liaison will be Trevor Dawes. He asked for donations to ALA via the Legacy Society.
Loriene Roy attended our meeting to discuss her “Reaching those Who Served” and “Songwriting for Soldiers” grants and programs. She, also, said they were planning a program to train people to testify and lobby for libraries. As part of this discussion, Richard Huffine and Virginia Sanchez discussed Pathways Internships. Kathleen Hanselmann mentioned that she has two Pathways Interns now at the Army Corps of Engineers.
Reports
Karl gave his President’s report summarizing the activities of the year, which appears below.
Richard gave the Treasurer’s Report. We currently have a balance of $13,417. In addition to using the
funds to support awards next year, Michael Golrick discussed using any remaining monies to assist
FAFLRT members to make the transition to having membership in a more costly division.
Kathleen mentioned the successful awards program that was held the day before. Reimbursement for
framing and shipping the certificates will be refunded by Richard soon.
Janice Young discussed the well-received “Funding Mandate” program and Kathleen discussed the
excellent turnout for Dr. Scott’s program. She made the observation that we need more management
programs.
There was a reminder about the “Glass is Half Full” program, which was scheduled for the next day.
Virginia and Janice are both presenters at the program.
Janice Young loves doing the newsletter, and the membership affirmed that they love having her do it.
She has articles in the pipeline, but please do send her anything you have now. We all thought Richard’s
suggestion of having a Transitions column was a good one.
Committee on Legislation
Richard gave an update on the Committee on Legislation. We approved him moving forward with a
combined letter/resolution supporting the USGS Library, additional funding for preservation of federal
government publications, and support for federal and armed forces libraries generally. We also agreed
that it would be useful for the Board to talk to the new ALA Washington Office director, Kathy Kramer.
Round Table Jury Program Representation
Lance Wiscamb volunteered to help ALA choose programs for NOLA 2018.
FAFLRT/ASCLA Merger
Karl had prepared a timeline of activities that we need to complete in order to finalize the merger with
ASCLA. Michael mentioned that he also had a timeline prepared by Susan Hornung before she left ALA.
The FAFLRT Board will need to review the timeline at its next meeting in July. A key deadline is that we
must complete the documentation for the merger by the end of November to send it to the Committee
on Organization for it to be added to their 2018 ALA Midwinter agenda. We briefly discussed a new
name for the merged entity. Most thought we should add the word “Government” to the name.
Acronyms were also discussed: FASCLA, GASCLA, AGLOW. We will need to get input from the broader
FAFLRT community.
After an hour and half, the meeting was reluctantly ended because of time constraints. Productive and
excellent to be able to meet in person.
FAFLRT President’s Report
Karl Debus-López
FAFLRT Membership Meeting
2017 ALA Annual Conference
June 25th, 2017
The 2016-2017 year was a very successful one for the Federal and Armed Forces Libraries Round Table. FAFLRT returned to being a fully functional round table, supporting the needs of federal and armed forces librarians and libraries worldwide. Highlights include restoration of the newsletter, awards, and programs at ALA. For the first time since 2014, the Federal Librarian newsletter was issued. Led by newsletter editor Janice Young, all three issues were published with interesting articles on new and innovative programs at federal and armed forces libraries, updates from the FAFLRT Board, and information on our awards and conference programming. Moreover, the newsletter was a key conduit of information on the proposed merger with ASCLA. We also re-established the awards program. Kathleen Hanselmann took the lead on providing information on FAFLRT’s three principal awards – the Distinguished Service Award, the Achievement Award, and the Rising Stars Initiative. We had three outstanding nominations, and were able to present the awards at the joint ASCLA/FAFLRT Awards Ceremony. Our success can also be seen in that according to official ALA membership rolls, the round table grew this year, from 237 members in 2016 to 289 members in 2017. Finally, we had a more robust series of programs at the 2017 ALA Annual Conference, with three programs on the topics of funding mandates, “getting more with less” (as a co-sponsor with ASCLA), and an inspirational presentation from retiring Dr. Ed Scott, Associate Dean and Director of the U.S. Air Force Academy Library. Janice Young is to be applauded for the work she did on this year’s conference programming. Our social web presences were also kept up-to-date by Julie Bramman, Kelly Glaze and Stacey Bloomingdale, and our e-mail list continued to be maintained by Vicky Crone. Finally, the FAFLRT Board worked throughout the year on the proposed merger with ASCLA. This took considerable time with multiple meetings with the ASCLA leadership, and a joint webinar on the merger presented by myself and Michael Golrick, ASCLA President. In April, the FAFLRT membership voted in support of the merger, with 76% in favor. The new 2017-2018 FAFLRT Board will work assiduously throughout the coming year to implement the merger with an effective date of September 1st, 2018. I want to thank the FAFLRT membership for their support of my presidency this year. In particular, I want to thank the members of the Board for their hard work and support of the round table and federal and armed forces libraries, in general. Many thanks to this year’s Board members Julie Bramman, Kathleen Hanselmann, Richard Huffine, Stephen Pomes, Virginia Sanchez, Lance Wiscamb, and Janice Young.