Gerd Muesham Award Committee Business Meeting

Minutes

March 21, 2001

Art Libraries Society of North America 29^th Annual Conference, Los Angeles, CA

Attending: Leslie Abrams (Board Liaison), Paula Gabbard (chair), Suzanna Simor, Lorelei Tanji.

Absent: Beth Dodd, Tom McNulty, Jennifer Moldwin, Liv Valmestad.

Having received no submissions that met the qualifications as specified for the Gerd Muehsam Award, we discussed how we could assure a reasonable number of submissions next year. 

A. We chose to take a proactive approach that calls for greater participation from each of our members. Here is the plan:

1. ASAP: Paula Gabbard will revise the announcement and send a draft to committee members (see further attachments) before it is placed on the ARLIS/NA Website.

2. ASAP: Once above announcement is on Web: Paula Gabbard will evenly divide the ALA list of library schools among the membership. Each committee member will be responsible for something less than ten institutions per person.

3. Deadline: May 18: Each member will e-mail, write, or the call assigned list of schools to get names, addresses, and e-mails of faculty members who might receive papers or projects that could be submitted for the GMA.  The members will then each contact these faculty (most simply by e-mail) to announce the award and to encourage them to ask their best students to apply.  Paula Gabbard could provide the text of the e-mail correspondence with the Gerd Muehsam Award announcement and links to the ARLIS/NA and the St. Louis conference Web sites.

4. Deadline: July 20: Committee members send Gabbard a copy of  all the names, addresses, e-mails of the faculty contacted, and she’ll compile a list.

5. Deadline: September 14: Gabbard will mail out GMA announcements to these faculty asking them to post a copy of the announcement, and to approach individual students whose papers or projects might qualify.

6. Deadline November 16: The official deadline on the GMA announcement.  If Gabbard receives an adequate number of submissions (it was decided that three was adequate), Gabbard will copy them and send them with ballots to members to evaluate.  If Gabbard does not receive an adequate number, she’ll let the committee know, and the committee will each need to nudge the faculty on their lists. Gabbard hopes this won’t be necessary, but if it is, the deadline will need to be extended to December 17.

7. Deadline: December 21: The committee must send completed evaluations back to Gabbard if there are enough submissions by the November 16 deadline.  February 4 will be the back-up date the deadline must be extended.

B. Realizing that few library students actually write traditional term papers, the committee agreed to expand the required format to include Internet projects.  This will require different evaluative skills on the part of the GMA Committee members, but we felt confident we can do it.  By encouraging Internet projects, we give up past practice of submitting the papers/projects to members anonymously, since Internet sites cannot be anonymous.  The committee is confident that our members can overcome prejudices for or against known applicants.