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ALA Midwinter Meeting, Boston, Massachusetts
Sunday, January 16, 2005
Business Meeting Minutes

Present: Linda Ballinger, Binghamton University, SUNY (vice-chair/chair-elect); Ann Della Porta, Library of Congress; Anaclare Evans, Wayne State University (ad hoc chair for series; ad hoc chair for local systems); Marlena Frackowski, College of New Jersey (Music Library Association liaison); Stephen Hearn, University of Minnesota (secretary); Shannon Hoffman, Brigham Young University (ad hoc chair for subjects); Mary Charles Lasater, Vanderbilt University; Sandy Roe, Illinois State University (ad hoc chair for names); Mark Scharff, Washington University (ad hoc chair for uniform titles); Manon Théroux (chair), Yale University; Rachel Wadham, Brigham Young University.

1. ALA 2004 Annual Conference - Business Meeting Minutes
   Chair Manon Théroux distributed minutes from the last business meeting. In the past, business meeting minutes have not been posted on the ACIG website; the group agreed that they should be posted regularly from now on.
2. ALA 2005 Midwinter Meeting - Presentations
   Six presentations were made at the ALA 2005 Midwinter Meeting. Time management was somewhat tight. One of the intended speakers was unable to attend the conference, so an additional speaker was found as a replacement. The original speaker had agreed to send a brief written report, to be read in his absence, but the report was longer than anticipated. Perhaps it should have simply been photocopied and distributed rather than read aloud. Some proposed that a short break might be appreciated during a session of this length (two and a half hours); others pointed out that having a break can sometimes cause a program to lose momentum. Audience members might be less likely to stay for the second half if they get distracted during the break. Some thought that more time should be built in for questions, especially at Midwinter sessions (which usually have more reports than the Annual Conference programs).
3. ALA 2005 Annual Conference - Program
   Preliminary descriptions of the upcoming 2005 program were distributed. The program will take place on Sunday, June 26, from 1:30-4:30pm. The topic is "XML and Authority Control"; six speakers are scheduled. There will be no reporting sessions, though perhaps we could solicit reports from the Library of Congress and/or the utilities to be distributed as handouts. The program will be followed by the business meeting, to end no later than 5:30pm. Elections will be held for the following offices: vice-chair/chair-elect and secretary. Three ad hoc chairs are also reaching the end of their terms: series, names, and subjects.
4. ALA 2006 Annual Conference - Program Proposal
   The group discussed possible topics for ACIG's 2006 program in New Orleans. Program proposals are due to the LITA Program Planning Committee at the 2005 Annual Conference. Topics discussed included: form and genre headings; FRANAR; AACR3; Virtual International Authority File; ONE; LEAF; the archival community; Google; federated searching and portals; 024 field. Some of the topics have been addressed in past programs but it might be time to revisit them. Annual Conference programs usually explore a particular theme; Midwinter sessions typically involve more reporting and updates.
5. ACIG Bibliography
   Anaclare Evans reported on her work preparing a retrospective annotated bibliography on authority control publications over the past twenty years, based on bibliographies submitted by ACIG ad hoc chairs and scans of indexes of library literature. She has been investigating options for publication with both LITA and ALCTS. The bibliography would probably be a web publication (ideally, a searchable database). She has been offering students in her advanced cataloging class the option of writing 25 abstracts for the bibliography in lieu of a term paper.
6. ALCTS Interest Group Status
   The group discussed whether to petition ALCTS to become an interest group (currently ACIG is a LITA interest group but an ALCTS CCS discussion group - ALCTS only began allowing interest groups recently). The potential benefits of becoming an ALCTS interest group include: Program Committee assistance; publishing opportunities; the ability to sponsor programs, institutes, and preconferences under the ALCTS name; and the end of our rather complicated dual IG-DG existence. New responsibilities would include: presenting program proposals to the ALCTS Program Committee (in addition to the LITA Program Planning Committee) and petitioning the ALCTS Organization and Bylaws Committee for renewal every three years. It was decided to petition ALCTS for interest group status under CCS using the name "Authority Control Interest Group" (dropping "in the Online Environment"). We will ask LITA to drop "in the Online Environment" from our name at our next official renewal in 2006. Some asked whether it made sense to continue as a LITA group at all, given that most of our members and audience seem to come from ALCTS. Because LITA has been easier to work with than ALCTS in the past, in terms of programming, support, website updates, AV setup, etc., it was decided to continue as a joint interest group for the time being and then reconsider after seeing what it is like to work with ALCTS in the current environment. We should request the same Sunday afternoon time slot, though we could have shorter meetings at Midwinter.
7. "ALA: Ahead to 2010" Draft Strategic Plan
   The group had only a couple of minutes to discuss the ALA draft strategic plan. It was noted that the concept of "organization of information" was not mentioned anywhere, that international initiatives were not addresses, and that some of the priorities seemed skewed. It was agreed to discuss the draft at greater length over e-mail after returning home from the conference.