Organization > Chapters > Greater Philadelphia > Minutes and Reports

Minutes

March 4, 1999
Swarthmore College

Present:

Minutes:

Susan Shifrin convened the meeting by having everyone introduce themselves and then proposing a review of the previously drafted proposed chapter by-laws, which need to be submitted to the national VRA Board for approval and formal acknowledgement of the Chapter.

Susan shared that at the recent LA VRA convention she attended a meeting of branch chairs, at which she learned that there are apparently several problems existing in the VRA handbook on setting up branch chapters. In light of this, she suggested that it would be wise to submit our draft by-laws to Jenni Rodda, President of the VRA, to be previewed, prior to formally submitting them to the VRA Committee for formal approval.

The first item of discussion was the proposed name of the organization. After some discussion it was agreed that "Greater Philadelphia Area Chapter" will suffice. Susan pointed out that membership eligibility is not limited by geographical area, and that local VRA chapters may overlap in their membership areas.

The question of dues was next discussed. It was agreed that the option to waive membership dues will be included in the by-laws.

Susan next proposed reviewing the by-laws in their entirety. It was decided that it would be best to go through the articles piece by piece.

The positions of Secretary and Treasurer were next discussed, specifically, whether or not these two positions could or should be held by a single individual. Peggy Ottens pointed out the onerousness of fulfilling the duties of both offices at the same time, and strongly recommended that the language of the draft bylaws be revised to provide for separate offices for Secretary and Treasurer. It was eventually decided that language should be included which would allow the nomination and election of one person to both offices upon the recommendation of the nominating committee, but that the positions would otherwise remain separate.

It was further agreed that the language of the bylaws would be revised to include among the responsibilities of Secretary that of producing and distributing notice to the membership in advance of the meetings.

Membership eligibility was briefly discussed. It was decided that membership will be open to any member of VRA, institutional or individual, regardless of geographic location.

The issue of having a listserve discussion serve as a substitute for actual meetings was next broached, to which suggestion there was a generally unfavorable response, and it was agreed that this was not a good idea. Susan pointed out that there is a minimum requirement of two meetings per year to meet VRA guidelines. The issue of voting in absentia was next broached; it was decided that determinations regarding how and when votes should take place would be left for future discussions.

At this juncture it was agreed that we would proceed to edit the by-laws with the appropriate revisions resulting from the meeting and resubmit them to the list for approval. It was also agreed that any further discussion along these lines should be submitted to the entire list.

Following a short break, attendees reconvened to discuss database issues in an open forum for the remainder of the meeting. These discussions ranged from the appropriate/possible interface of database architectures with label formats and filing information (specifically pertaining to Filemaker Pro, Access, and EmbARK database softwares) to the generic virtues of using databases per se. The meeting ended with a demonstration of the flat file Filemaker database currently used for general collections cataloguing at Swarthmore and a demonstration of the relational Filemaker Pro 4.x database now under construction by the VR staff at Swarthmore for the current collaborative ARCHoSC project and for future general collections use.

It was generally agreed that our next meeting would be scheduled following the submission of revised bylaws to the membership and to Jenni Rodda.

Minutes submitted by Tessa Izenour and Susan Shifrin,
March 9, 1999

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