Africana Librarians Council Business Meeting

Minutes
April 25, 2003
Yale University

Present: Lygia Ballantine (LC), Helene Baumann (Duke U), Ruby Bell-Gam (UCLA), Phyllis Bischof (UC Berkeley), Simon Bockie (UC Berkeley), Joe Caruso (Columbia), Jill Coelho (Harvard), Moore Crossey (Yale ret'd), Andrew de Heer (Schomburg), David Easterbrook (Northwestern), Vicki Evalds, Greg Finnegan (Harvard), Miki Goral (UCLA), Marieta Harper (LC), Al Kagan (U of Illinois), Peter Kargbo (NYU), Patricia Kuntz , Deborah LaFond (U of Albany), Joe Lauer (Michigan State U), Bob Lesh (Northwestern U), Peter Limb (Michigan State U), Loyd Mbabu (Ohio U), Edward Miner (Iowa), Akilah Nosakhere (Atlanta University Center), Lauris Olson (U of Pennsylvania), Patricia Ogedengbe (Northwestern), Laverne Page (LC), Loumona Petroff (Boston U), Jason Schultz (Northwestern), James T. Simon (CRL), Gretchen Walsh (Boston U), David Westley (Boston U), Marion Frank-Wilson (Indiana U), Dorothy Woodson (Yale), Joanne Zellers (LC)

2. The minutes from the Fall, 2002 meeting in Washington DC were approved.

3. ALC Handbook. Walsh gave an update on the current status of the updating of the ALC Handbook. The suggestion was made to add the duties of executive board members. ACTION: Walsh will prepare a draft for discussion at the Fall 2003 meeting. Other items to be included are procedures to help ALC function more effectively, such as how to post things to the ALC website, information about the Conover-Porter prize, guidelines for minute-taking.

4. Bylaws changes were approved. ACTION: The Secretary will send a updated version to the ALC webmaster.

5. ALC Website. Zellers will send out sample re-design of committee pages.

6. ALC Directory. Zellers reported on the status of moving it online. Unresolved issues: some people do not want to be listed online and some people who want to be included are not ASA members. ACTION: The Secretary will maintain the list and submit it to the website. The Preface from the printed Directory will be included on the website.

7. Past ALC officers. Finnegan is compiling a list for the website. ACTION: The Secretary will update the list each year.

8. ASA Publications. Lauer will ask Malanchuk to send an email report to the ALC List.

9. ALC Meeting schedule during ASA. Options include meeting Wednesday to Friday morning or meeting on the weekend. Zellers moved that in Fall 2003 the ALC Executive meet on Thursday morning, followed by a 3-hour business meeting, lunch, and the CAMP meeting in the afternoon. The committee meetings would be held at the Spring meeting. The motion was seconded and passed.

10. Memorial volume for Dan Britz. Evalds reported on the progress of getting writers for the various chapters.

11. Future Spring meeting invitations. ALC has received the following invitations to host future spring meetings: 2004- University of Michigan; 2005 - Northwestern University or University of Kansas (the Executive Board will make the decision); 2006 or 2007 - Boston University.

12. ALN Editor. Frank-Wilson proposed a possible split of the editorship to distribute the work and the funding. She will be analyzing a survey of ALN recipients this summer.

13. Archival Holdings Guide. Bischof, Caruso, Easterbrook will review the database with Simon and report at the next meeting.

14. Bibliography Committee. Limb presented a brief report and referred people to the Bibliography Committee minutes.

15. Cataloging Committee. Lauer reviewed the funnel project procedures and reported that the committee will promote the use of Unicode.

16. Book Donations Committee. LaFond reported that ASA sees this as a symbolic activity, providing only $3000 of support annually. The committee will investigate preparing a matching fund proposal. As an ASA Board Member, Caruso was very helpful in getting ASA support for Book Donations; ALC should try to get someone elected to the ASA Board in the future to continue this work.

17. Title VI. Indiana has received a large Liberian collection. Bell-Gam suggested identifying projects that require major funding and actively starting to look for the funding.

18. Conover-Porter Award. This is now the beginning of a new cycle for the next award, to be given at the 2004 ASA Conference.

19. African Book Publishing Record Reference List. Coelho reported that ABPR is now published by Saur and that their websites will be archived.

20. Children's' Africana Book Award. Marieta Harper and Brenda Randolph coordinated the 2002 award (which went to Sankofa: A Journal of African Children's and Young Adult Literature) at the Library of Congress.

21. Institutional Reports.
Harvard is forming a department of African and African American Studies
Penn has a new Center for Africana Studies
Iowa is working on an initiative to create stored digital archive (?)
Michigan State has received a donation of a collection of papers on Ghana
Atlanta University has received the Walter Rodney papers
Illinois is conducting an internal search for a new director of their Center for African Studies
Library of Congress is planning an exhibit of ancient manuscripts of Mali in June, 2003 (if funding is secured)

22. New Business. Caruso asked about establishing contacts with African librarian associations who would like to connect with ALC.

The meeting was adjourned at 4:30pm.

Respectfully submitted,
Miki Goral

-------

Page last updated September 10, 2003