Annual Report (2001)
ARLIS/NA South Representative

Paula Hardin
pjhardin@unc.edu
919-962-3034

Executive Board Activities

I attended the National Conference in Los Angeles for my first Executive Board meetings. I also attended the business meetings of the Space Planners Roundtable and the Academic Libraries Division. I served as liaison to the Technology Committee and the ARLIS Web Site Advisory Board, attending these meeting as well.

I established a live chat Board meeting venue using Blackboard Courseware. We held a successful meeting using it in June.

I attended the midyear executive board meeting in New York in August.

Regional Activities

I contributed articles to springs and fall issues of South Region chapters’ newsletters.

I attended the Texas-Mexico Chapter meeting in Albuquerque the first weekend in November and the Southeast Chapter meeting the following weekend in Boca Raton. Both meetings were extremely well organized, contained informative lectures and tours, and plenty of chances to chat and get to know each other. I did not get the chance to catch a DC-MD-VA meetings, but I felt that with the upcoming 2003 conference in Baltimore I would be spending a lot of time there during 2002.

Chapter Activities

The Southeast Region Chapter meeting included a vendor demonstration of ARTbibliographies Modern by a gentleman from Cambridge Scientific Abstracts. I especially found the tour of Mata and Arthur Jaffe Books as Aesthetic Objects collection particularly interesting. He was a delightful commentator and the books were marvels to behold. There were also several slide lectures, and another interesting tour and commentary by Jim Findlay of the Bienes Center for the Literary Arts at Broward County Library. The LoPresti Award Luncheon and Book Raffle was popular as always. It is always fun to see all of the submissions as well as appreciate the merits of the winners. It was also fun to take an optional dinner-cruise on the Jungle Queen of some of the most palatial estates and yachts packed in the smallest square footage that I have ever seen. Huge houses on yards standing about one foot above water. Amazing to see.

The Texas-Mexico Chapter meeting had a particularly lively business discussion amongst their very active and engaged members. This was the first year Mexican librarians attended, thanks in part to an ARLIS/NA grant. The two librarians who attended, Elsa Barberena and Beatriz MacGregor, both gave interesting presentations after the business meeting. In Albuquerque we toured the Special Collections Branch of the Rio Grande Valley Library system and the Zimmerman library at the University of New Mexico as well as the University of New Mexico Art Museum. While at UNM we also had the pleasure of a presentation on the Online Archive of New Mexico. The tours included a jaunt from Albuquerque to Santa Fe. I was particularly pleased at the chance to see the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum and the Research Center. Two other excellent tours in the Santa Fe area included the Institute of American Indian Arts library and the National Park Service Intermountain Cultural Resources Library.

Issues for the Board

I would recommend the Board look at options to provide a password protected web site for maintaining ARLIS membership contact information. Several concerns were expressed about the difficulties in finding the information they needed to contact colleagues when the directory only comes out annually. Having the most current information readily available was a stated preference.

It was interesting to contrast the two Chapters’ financial positions and see where perhaps the Board could provide some suggestions on ways of strengthening those positions. Perhaps some kind of information sharing amongst the fiscally stronger Chapters could report on how they got that way. It becomes problematic to come up with fundraising plans that don’t involve coordination with National. Recruitment of more people to join the Chapters did not seem likely since, for example, almost all people who would be interested in the Texas-Mexico Chapter were already members, so where can they go from there? There was also discussion about the expense and difficulty in attracting the Mexican librarians as part of the initiative to do so for this past annual meeting.