Minutes from Midwinter 2004 Publications Committee Meeting

RBMS Publications Committee
Minutes, Midwinter Meeting
Jan. 10, 2004

Members present: Martha Lawler, Chair, Rick Clement, John Cullars, Larry
Creider, Christian Dupont, Michael Forstrom, Jeffery Makala, Judy Harvey
Sahak, Everett Wilkie 
Absent: Laura Clark Brown, Kenneth Lavender, Karen Rasmussen, Penny
Welbourne
Guests: Julie Grob, Sue Walker, Kelly Wolfe.

Called to order at 2:15 p.m.

The minutes from the 2003 Annual Meeting Committee Session were approved.

Christian Dupont discussed three proposals to be presented to the Executive
Committee dealing with the duties of the RBMS Webmaster, the RBMS Logo, and
the desirability of obtaining an internet domain name for the RBMS website.
The texts of the proposals as presented to the committee are available at:
;.
The first proposal would revise the RBMS manual so that the RBMS Web Editor
would be appointed by the Section Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect at the
recommendation of the chair of the Publications Committee for a period of
two years with the duties of maintaining the section website. The Web
editor would appoint one or more assistant web editors who would serve with
the Web editor. One of them might become the next Web editor. The Web
editor would be an ex-officio member of the Publications Committee, while
the assistant Web editors would not need to be Publications Committee
members but could be. The Web editor would be responsible for developing
guidelines to content creators who would be responsible for communicating
postings and maintenance of the content.  

Discussion of the proposal was favorable, with suggestions largely limited
to the notion that perhaps the Web editor might not serve two-year terms
that could be renewed once, but that the position be an open-ended
ex-officio position. The committee agreed that both possibilities would be
presented to Exec.

The second proposal stated policies for the use and distribution for the
RBMS logo. The logo consists of both the block letter "mark" containing the
letters "RBMS" and the associated label stating the official name of the
section and its affiliation with ACRL and ALA. Since the logo exists in
files, someone needs to be responsible for their use and providing some
protection for the files. The committee thought that the proposal was
excellent, but there ensued extensive discussion a bout the desirability of
registering the logo as a trademark. Since the cost would be about $300,
take a year or more, would create another layer of bureaucracy and the
process would need to be repeated every time the logo was redesigned, the
consensus was that such an action is not necessary. The logo is protected
by copyright, so that the only benefit of trademark registration would be in
case of the necessity of legal action against unauthorized use, which all
felt to be unlikely.

The third proposal requests that Exec authorize the creation of an Internet
domain name for the RBMS web site. This will allow the address to remain
the same when the web editor or his/her location changes. Since the site
has had to migrate twice and since institutional firewalls make it
increasingly difficult to maintain a web site at another institution, the
registration of a domain name would save much grief and frustration and be
relatively inexpensive. The committee enthusiastically endorsed this
proposal as well. 
The name rbms.info was suggested.

Everett Wilkie presented a report on the RBMS discussion list. The
membership is about 500, although a number of people subscribe before and
unsubscribe after ALA meetings. There was some discussion of "problem
postings," and Wilkie pointed out that he has no power to do anything about
them. Walter Henry, who keeps the ExLibris archives, will mount the RBMS
archives on his site. This will make things such as committee rosters and
minutes permanently accessible. There was some discussion about whether the
openness of the archives might be a problem, but Wilkie pointed out that the
archives can currently be downloaded by anyone in a text file. Berkeley,
which hosts the RBMS list would like to move from Listproc software to
Mailman. Wilkie will experiment before he makes any change.  

Jeffery Makala, editor of the RBMS newsletter, reported on RBMS newsletter.
The Fall issue was on the RBMS website. There was some discussion of the
desirability of statistics on the usage of the web version. Makala will
rotate off the editorship of the newsletter and be succeeded this summer by
Michael Forstrom of Yale and Jeff Barton of Columbia, currently assistant
editors.

Rick Clement, editor of RBM, discussed RBM. While most of the editorial
board has agreed to remain in place under the new editor, he would welcome
more members since they are well below their maximum. The next two issues
of the journal are full, so Clement is working on the Spring 2005 issue. He
has introduced a few small design changes in the journal, notably lessening
the amount of white space in the journal. He also reported that while all
the ACRL journals have experienced a decrease in advertising revenue over
the last year, RBM is down the least at 26%.

Christian Dupont led the discussion on Your Old Books. The text is
basically ready, but work remains to be done on the Internet links for the
document.  There was general agreement that the revised text should be made
available on the Internet as soon as possible. Dupont and Creider will
remain on the subcommittee, which will be chaired by Martha Lawler. They
will work to get the text approved by RBMS Executive Committee at the Annual
Meeting.  Dupont will post the current draft on the RBMS Web site and also
post an announcement on the RBMS discussion list to invite comment from
section members.  Current thought is to print sections 1-22, leaving the
Internet links to be maintained on the web version only. Rick Clement
offered to help with the technical aspects of getting the document in print.

Julie Grob, chair of the RBMS Diversity Action Plan Implementation Task
Force made two requests from the Publications Committee. The first is a
request that the Committee work on an insert on diversity that will be
placed in the RBMS brochures. After considerable discussions on the
practical issues, it was agreed that Martha Lawler would work with Julie
Grob to develop wording for the insert and to investigate how to get the
inserts physically placed in the existing stock of brochures. The insert is
to be ready for Exec to look at Annual. The second request is that the RBMS
web page include more information on the Sections' actions supporting
diversity, in particular providing a button on the main menu. The group
agreed to make the button and to include such things as diversity
scholarships to Pre-Conference in the News section of the web page.

Adjourned at 4:15 p.m.