Iowa OCLC Users Group Annual Report
August 2000 through August 2001
Prepared by Steve Duffy (Acting President, Spring 2001; President 2001 � 2002)
The following annual report consists of five sections: (1) Membership; (2) Executive Council Report; (3) Annual Conference Report; (4) Section Reports; and (5) Treasurer�s Report.
Membership for 2000/2001 held steady at 100 institutional members. Though this is below membership of some earlier years, it represents a stable and substantial base of Iowa OCLC users and gives evidence for the continuing usefulness of the group. Membership dues remain $15.00 per year for institutional members.
Election of officers in Spring 2000 for the year August 2000/August 2001 produced the following results:
President: Wendy Street (Urbandale Public)
Vice President / President Elect: Steve Duffy (Simpson)
Past President: John Pollitz (St. Ambrose)
Secretary/Treasure: Marianne Malinowski (Ames Public)
Cataloging Section:
Chair: Leo Kriz (West Des Moines Public)
Vice Chair: Claudia Frazer (Drake)
Interlibrary Loan Section
Chair: Jodie Morin (Buena Vista)
Vice Chair: Susan Wagner-Hecht (Coe)
Reference Section
Chair; Ed Goedeken (Iowa State)
Vice Chair: Randall Schroeder (Wartburg)
Ex officio members: Mike Wright (BCR), Rich Doyle (OCLC Users Council), Roy Kenagy, Barb Corson (State Library)
The Union List section has been disbanded owing to continued inability to recruit officers. This is an issue we hope to raise at the annual business meeting.
The 2000/2001 Executive Council met three times: August 18, 2000 (Ames); October 13, 2000 (Ames); February 23 (Urbandale). Topics of discussion at these meetings included: (1) Review of the Spring 2000 conference in Des Moines. Attendee comments were favorable. The idea of a scaled-down OCLC Institute for the pre-conference proved workable and should be considered in future years. (2) Review of the IOUG bylaws; in particular (a) Is our organization meeting its stated objectives? (b) Could we serve our membership better as part of ILA? (c) If we remain a separate organization, do we need to revise our bylaws? (d) Is our decline in membership a serious issue, and are there other ways to address it? (3) Setting up an IOUG web site. An IOUG web site was established, hosted by the State Library. (4) Planning for the spring conference, including structure for the section meetings, choice of a general topic, ebooks and NetLibrary, discussion of a pre-conference (which was not held because of scheduling problems). (5) Recruiting candidates for officer positions for 2001/2002.
Wendy Street resigned as president at the February meeting. Steve Duffy agreed to chair the spring meeting, Claudia Frazer volunteered to coordinate local arrangements, and Marianne Malinowski agreed to handle registration details.
56 people attended the annual spring meeting held at the Urbandale Public Library.
The theme of the conference was Perspectives on IOUG: Past and Future. This was a result of Executive Council discussions during the year about declining membership levels and difficulties in finding officer candidates.
At the morning session, Sharman Smith summarized the situation faced by the State Library, especially budget problems, and also discussed her resignation and planned move to Mississippi. Ellen Fox from BCR gave the main presentation on accessing and using the electronic books in the NetLibrary collection. Three section meetings were held. Concluding the morning session, Mike Wright outlined price changes and program offerings of BCR, and Rich Doyle gave a Users Council Report and indicated upcoming changes in OCLC.
During the afternoon session, Rich Doyle presented a retrospective history of IOUG, and Mike Wright and Steve Duffy discussed whether IOUG should become a forum within ILA or remain a separate group.
Review of comments after the meeting indicated that members value the annual conference and want IOUG to continue as an independent organization. The conference comes at a good time of the year and is affordable. Section meetings are valuable and provide times for important contacts among staff members. Membership decline is probably due to the spike of interest at the time FirstSearch was introduced, not because there is a lack of interest in the organization or in the conference. Most attendees indicated that problems in recruiting council and section officers should be addressed by greater publicity, including use of a web site and a list serve, and that by-laws should be revised and simplified as needed. Overall, however, participant responses indicate that the primary focus of IOUG and its Executive Council should continue to be organizing and planning a productive and useful annual spring meeting.
Cataloging Section (Leo Kriz, Steve Duffy):
The group met before lunch in a separate room at Urbandale, following suggestions that groups could have more focused discussions if all were not held in the same space. Leo Kriz gave a brief presentation. Most of the discussion focused on using CatME as an alternative to Passport for Windows. A number of users have already made this change and are generally pleased with the results. People who are already using CatME find it easy to use. Mike Wright discussed OCLC�s schedule for the upcoming changeover from Passport. There was some discussion of the problem of finding candidates for officers.
Interlibrary Loan Section (Jodie Morin, Steve Duffy)
The group met before lunch at one end of the main room at Urbandale. Jodie Morin gave a brief presentation. One topic, connected with the main conference topic, was how to handle NetLibrary books in ILL, and the impact of full-text databases and e-journals on Interlibrary Loan. There was some expression of interest in Direct Interlibrary Loan as a conference topic. Other topics of discussion included perennial ILL issues like Ariel and Custom Holdings, as well as the services offered to and the challenges afforded by distance education students served by our libraries. Much discussion focused on the type of interlibrary loan software our libraries used and discussion of the OCLC's new ILLiad software.
Reference Section (Ed Goedeken, Steve Duffy):
The group met in the main room at Urbandale and Ed Goedeken, section chair, chaired the discussion. The group spent most of its time discussing the use or non-use of various parts of the First Search databases. Participants also chatted briefly about using the NetLibrary materials, but there had not been much experience with them yet. Rich Doyle made some observations about the importance of using library homepages as a vehicle for getting users into the variety of electronic sources that we have. In addition there was informal discussion of a number of reference topics.
- Membership
- Executive Council
- Annual Spring Meeting
- Section Reports
- Treasurer�s Report
Balance last statement 3569.42
Expenditures:
Conference 858.89
Copies, postage 219.49
Council expenses 72.45
Subtotal 1150.83
Revenues
Conference 1225.00
Membership 60.00
Interest 16.32
Subtotal 1301.32
Balance This Statement 3719.91