1. Moderator Rosemary Haddad (CCA) welcomed members to the meeting, announced the meeting recorder (Linda Seckelson), vice-moderator (Nancy
    Simon, Denver Art Museum) who will take over as moderator immediately following  the meeting, and new UPDATE column editor Kaylyn Hipps at the
   University of Oregon (replacing Emily Roth).

2. Mary Graham, outgoing President of ARLIS, reminded the membership of the
    following:

• May 31 deadline for conference proposals for next year’s program
• May 31 deadline for funding requests for next year’s program
• Peter Blank will assume responsibility for moderating the division listserv
• Importance of providing feedback on ARLIS’ Strategic Plan
• Turn in conference evaluations

3. Rosemary reviewed the conference activities sponsored by the Museum Division during this conference.

4. Old business: none

5. Selection of new vice-moderator: Rosemary described the moderator’s duties as  “not onerous;” the moderator essentially reviews the conference proposals
    which are suggested by the membership,  prepares the annual report and conducts the business meeting at the annual conference.

Meg Klinkow (Kenamare and Klinkow) volunteered to be the vice-moderator     for the year 2000, becoming  moderator in 2001.

6. The ARLIS Strategic Plan has an action item which is yet to be completed involving a Task Force on Statistics.  The Museum Division needs a representative on the Task Force.  Linda Seckelson had originally volunteered  but must renege;  Mary Galvin (Detroit Institute of Arts) volunteered to represent the Division on the Task Force.

Rosemary Haddad promised the Strategic Planning Task Force feedback from the Museum Division membership.  She proposed two questions for the group
    to discuss:

• What are the most important issues facing the constituencies of ARLIS?
• How should ARLIS address these issues?

Rosemary began with the suggestion that one of the most important issues we face as professional librarians is managing change; libraries have to constantly redefine themselves vis a vis new technologies and their impact on  how information is organized and how research is done; ARLIS should provide the best, most competent guidelines and strategies for coping with these phenomena.

Other issues, problem areas were then discussed by the membership:

• Changing priorities of educational institutions has resulted in less support for the arts and for libraries in educational institutions and museums, both in terms of corporate and public funding.   ARLIS should develop and foster advocacy for funding and support, alone and in cooperation with CAA and ALA; both of these organizations have strong advocacy programs and ARLIS needs to maintain and strengthen communications with them for this purpose
• Difficulties of smaller institutions to access the resources  and expertise which larger institutions have built into their infrastructure
• RLG does not provide smaller libraries with affordable access to technology (case in point is the absence of per-search fee structure for accessing databases in CITADEL)
• Need for a standard for information systems for museum libraries; ARLIS should establish a standard of minimum requirements
• ARLIS should  try to influence organizations to understand basic needs
• Endorsements from other library organizations for standards might be helpful (e.g., ARLIS/UK, etc.)
• Librarians should share the “Round Robin” reports from colleagues with their own administrations to show what is happening at other institutions
• Status of librarians in museums and lack of parity with curatorial and administrative staff
• Librarians should become part of the strategic planning and budgeting process within their organization
• ARLIS Conference scheduling issues:
• Business meetings should be scheduled for Sunday or Monday, not Tuesday (as it was this year)
• Are evening meetings feasible?  It is difficult to squeeze everything into daytime slots which suit everyone; the membership should let the Strategic Planning Task Force know about preferences.
• It would be useful to compile and  study the attendance figures for each session by type of session, time of day, etc.
• Conference planners do not have to give every proposed session a slot; selectivity is important
• Discussion of standards for art museum libraries, with ARLIS functioning as an evaluation agent for issues concerning salary levels, space, working conditions, etc.
• The AAM (American Association of Museums) surveys and evaluates museum libraries already
• Standards need to be established, but ARLIS is not an accrediting body; it can exercise moral suasion but has no real clout
• The Museum Division can develop a questionnaire for a survey of museum libraries to address issues concerning salary, budget, staff, collection, automation, space, facilities, etc, if there a consensus that the Museum Division should undertake such a project, which could be taken up by the Museum Library Directors Discussion Group
• Linda Zoeckler (Huntington Museum) is willing to work on this status issue with others who can contact her if interested

7. The next agenda item involved program proposals for the Pittsburgh conference; send program ideas to Nancy Simon (Denver Art Museum).
    These ideas have surfaced so far:

• Program on innovative digital image management courses in library schools, such as at North Texas State University (Milan Hughston, Amon Carter Museum); other innovative library school programs (Mary Galvin, Detroit Institute of Arts)
• Collection management in art museum libraries (Jeannette Dixon, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston).  There is an ARLIS Occasional Paper on collection development policies.  Allen Townsend (Philadelphia Museum of Art) is also interested in this
• Fundraising as a mandate for museum librarians; how to go about raising money from local, national, governmental sources; possibly suitable for workshop format
• Web development and design, with attention to artistic issues (Joan Benedetti, LACMA); possibility of Barbara Prior as a speaker, giving a micro-presentation of her workshop; Lee Sorenson, webmaster, is interested in web maintenance issues
• State of health of libraries in a museum culture of reduced funding, increased technology, downsizing, cost recovery, emphasis on mass marketing and education; analyze and explore ways of dealing with this new environment; strategies for survival (Murray Waddington, National Gallery of Canada)
• Bring museum staff together (curators, directors, etc.) to talk about the “new museum environment”
• Invite a panel of directors and museum administrators to address a very directed set of questions which deal with these issues
• Consortial arrangements among libraries (RISS is interested in this topic as well); can ARLIS function as a brokering agent for consortial access to selected products?

Respectfully submitted,

Linda Seckelson