Fox Valley Library Council Executive Board
Minutes of the November 19, 2003 meeting held at the Oshkosh Library

Present: Mark Arend, Erin Czech, Pete Gilbert, Rick Krumwiede, Terra Mobley, Joy Schwarz, and Elizabeth Timmins

1. Call to order
   Rick called the meeting to order at 9:37. No one had additions to the agenda.

2. Minutes of September 3, 2003 Board Meeting
   Rick made a motion to approve the minutes as presented. Erin seconded the motion and the motion carried.

3. Treasurer's Report
   Deferred until Pete's arrival.

4. President's Report
   Rick explained where he was on tasks from previous meeting.
   1. Fee invoices for FVLC are due to go out. Rick said they would be in the mail by Friday, November 21, 2003.
   2. Rick did not have an opportunity to personally invite anyone to fill vacant board positions. He will do a general email to the FVLC list seeking interested candidates.
   3. Rick will begin drafting an application form that will be available for submission by those interested in working on the Web Directory.

5. 2003-2004 Schedule
   Mark Arend spoke about the 2003-2004 Program Schedule. The first program was held on Thursday, October 9, 2003 at the Outagamie Museum. It was called Creative Thinking in Tough Budget Times. The presenters were John Nichols of Winnefox Library System/Oshkosh Public Library; Holly Selwitschka of the Waupaca School District; Pat Wilkinson of the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. This program went well. The program, venue and food were great! The reason for low attendance may have been the time of day.

   Remaining programs in the schedule are:

   • Why do we need Wisconsin Public Radio? Friday, December 5, 2003 at the EAA AirVenture Museum;
   • Why is that book locked up? Friday, March 19, 2004 at Seeley G. Mudd Library, Lawrence University;
   • A Wisconsin librarian in New Guinea Friday, May 14, 2004 at Menasha Public Library

   To the education committee-Congratulations! The offerings look great! Hopefully they will appeal to people. Next year, we will try to finalize programming earlier in the season so people could get the activities into their calendars. Mark exited at 9:40.

6. Evaluation of Organizational Changes
   Joy gave us a handout of the survey that she has developed so far. Question number 3 is about scheduled meeting times. The idea was generated to add a free text area to question 3 or reword question 10 so the people could add free-flowing comments.

   Pete joined us at 9:55.

   We decided to look at each question systematically.

   Question number two is about what factors keep people from attending meetings. Joy is going to add several choices to this.

   Number three-a free text box will be added.

   Question number four is about the value of FVLC meetings. Joy will eliminate "conducting FVLC business" and add "a chance to visit other libraries."

   Rick looked at the by-laws of the organization and we realized that we will need to call the December 5th meeting to order for a short business meeting.

   Question number five under the heading Conducting Business had one item "Less business conducted at meetings" with a scale to mark either Good Idea/ Neutral/Bad Idea. We really like this scale. Joy will add three items to this question:

   1. Fewer business meetings
   2. Empowering Board to make decisions
   3. Communicating more information electronically
   And a free text box will be added.

   Question number six under the heading Board Structure will also have the Good/Neutral/Bad scale and a free text box.

   At this point we felt very good about the survey as sufficiently embodying questions about changes. Then we got excitable when Pete shared that Lawrence can host our survey since they subscribe to Survey Monkey-Yippee! That will mean we can freely add a few more questions!

   Some ideas:
   
   • Pete said he would like a question about whether people would like to serve on the board with a hyperlink to a form about getting more involved.
   • Erin said she would like a question about how people get their information-do people know about the website and do they subscribe to the list serve?
   • Rick thought a question about what is the most effective way to communicate with people and a list of ideas to choose from would be appropriate.

   Question number nine under the heading About You will have an additional box to mark called "All" because lots of librarians are doing it all, baby!

   Question nine will also have a demographic addition of asking what county the librarian is from.

   Wow, Joy, lots of effort and tweaking. We appreciate it! Great job Joy! More survey discussion! Survey is slated to go out in January. We are thinking about best way to appeal to people to complete the survey. If we go through list serves we want people to be able to click on a link immediately and fill out the survey right away.

7. Revision of the FVLC Education Grant Application Form
   Did we mention how great Joy is?! She changed email space to a full line and she changed "address 2 line" to read "city, state, zip". She is editing the .PDF document so that people will be able to fill out the form on line rather than run it off and fill it out. Cool!

8. Review of Annual Plan Objectives/Activities
   
   • We are thinking about putting a form about censorship on the website
   • FVLC currently has memberships with WLA; CCBC; FOCAL-how about WLA Foundation?
   • Website improvements will be discussed at a future meeting-our assignment will be to navigate the site and then Joy will have a pc available for us to have a working meeting on the site!
   • 2004-2005 plan updated for Board meeting prior to the May meeting

   We are in good shape! We are in progress or have completed objectives!

9. Any Other Business
   Next meetings will be February 18, 2004 (agenda will be website and survey) and April 14, 2004 (agenda will be 2004-2005 plan).

   More about the survey and the website:

   • Joy (bless her) will add a question to the survey: "Do you know about these services available from FVLC?" (courtesy cards, insurance fund, education grant, etc.)
   • Joy will ponder on the security of the survey.
   • A message will be developed to alert people that the survey is available to fill out during the first week of January. Another message will go out the last week that the survey is up, to remind people to complete the survey if they haven't.
   • FVLC list serve has to have names added. Erin will query her staff as to whether they would find it objectionable to be added. Pete can batch load emails. A list of emails with one per line in text format is best. Pete also will take this opportunity to purge some old email addresses.
   • Rick can contact OWLS, Winnefox, and larger libraries of FVLC with news about the survey.
   • We aren't sure about traffic on list serve. Probably a message a month or less is sent out from it. Primarily, Mark sends out messages regarding programming.

   Treasurer's Report was made by Pete. There has been little change since last time. 1st program spent its $300 budget-½ for food; ½ for rental of room. Upcoming events that will make a difference include interest income and dues income. Corporate filing will be necessary in the spring. There have been no mailing expenses. Thanks Pedro!

10. Adjournment
    Rick adjourned the meeting at 11:00 am.

    Next FVLC Board Meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, February 18, 2004 at 9:30 at Oshkosh Public Library.

    Respectfully Submitted By,
    Elizabeth ("make it so") Timmins

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