The meeting was called to order at 10:06 by the President, Bill Whitson. Since both the 1995 and 1996 Executive Boards were present, and this was the concluding meeting of the 1995 year, Bill took a few minutes to review our principal efforts and accomplishments, and commend everyone for a very successful year.

1. Minutes of the August 28, 1995, executive board meeting were accepted as amended.

2. Financial Report. The treasurer discussed the third quarter financial report, the fourth quarter to date report, and the financial summary of the annual conference. Bill Whitson commented that, even though costs exceeded income for the Annual Conference, the Conference expenses and income were fairly close to what had been projected, and the deficit was well within what we had expected to allocate as a subsidy. Because the overall year-end balance in the CARL Treasury is somewhat lower this year than it has been in previous years, the Treasurer's final year-end report will provide a detailed breakdown of expenses and income by program as well as by type of expense.

In view of the considerable time required on the part of the President, and the fact that many institutions are beginning to question more closely how much time and support they can afford to provide employees for work in professional organizations and committees such as CARL, the possibility of paying for some staff assistance was discussed. Bill said that the issue has come up before, and the Board has for some time been willing to pay some such expenses. In practice, however, he found this year that it would have been difficult to find tasks that could be assigned to a staff person on a regular enough basis to warrant the paperwork involved in paying for such work.

The board agreed that CARL is in good financial health, and has options to increase its income if needed.

3. Membership Report. CARL has over 700 members, around 300 in northern California and 400 in southern California, Charlotte Rubens reported. Board members expressed interest in learning the number of library support staff who are members. The membership form has been revised, in hope of getting institutional addresses for more people. The new membership committee will consider additional categories of information to request when the form is revised again. The leadership roster has been updated. A draft list of interest group chairs was distributed.

The membership director can print a list of persons who checked the box indicating willingness to work with an interest group. Discussion of recruitment into CARL, particularly of community college librarians, continued. The membership committee will address this issue, as well as recruitment of library school students. Carl Bengston reminded the board that the Long Range Plan addresses recruitment, and that the committee should review that part of the Plan.

CARL's email reflectors, which are maintained by a staff person at SJSU's School of Library and Information Science, are being updated around every three weeks. Board members were reminded to send any postings for the carlall, carlall-n, and carlall-s reflectors to Charlotte rather than to the list itself, so that she gets the "bounce-back "messages which she uses to update the membership lists. Board members may send requests for the creation of additional email reflectors to Charlotte.

The board discussed the need to develop guidelines for electronic messages and their retention. A task force on archival policy may need to be formed to review these issues.

4. CARL Newsletter Report. Carl Bengston informed that board that a second class permit for postage is pending. Second class postage could be used only for the Newsletter - not ballots or announcements. This permit would save a few hundred dollars per newsletter, but it precludes having advertising in the newsletter. The bulk of the December issue will be summaries of the sessions of October's Annual Conference. The board discussed the need to print extra copies of the newsletter to make it available at CARL programs, and to take to the ACRL Chapters meeting at the ALA MidWinter meeting.

7. ACRL report. (Bill, Stephanie.) Because Stephanie Bangert was unable to stay for the afternoon, the ACRL Report was discussed next. The new ACRL Liaison position will give CARL the opportunity to interact more with ACRL. Having Patricia Breivik as a keynote speaker at our Annual conference this year has increased our connection with ACRL, which heretofore has been minimal. ACRL will begin sending the ACRL liaison additional copies of "Chapter Topics" to redistribute to the entire CARL executive board. Stephanie could also send out an "ACRL packet" to program planners, which could be available at programs to encourage ACRL membership. Board members should send email to Stephanie if they have concerns she should take to MidWinter in San Antonio.

8. California Library Networking Task Force report. (Bill Whitson, Don Bosseau, Stephanie Bangert). Stephanie Bangert reported that the Task Force has now completed its work on a set of recommendations for the next era of multitype library cooperation, and will devote the next year to preparation of a legislative package for their implementation, which can be introduced in January 1997.

Three subcommittees of 12-15 persons will be appointed:

• A "Vision Committee", to work on the plan to create a "Library of California" which would replace the Multitype Library Network.
• A "Strategy Committee" to deal with jurisdictional concerns.
• A "Planning Committee" to work on writing legislation.

[lunch]

5. Regional Reports. Jean Purnell distributed a printed report of northern interest group activities in 1995, and Deborah Schaeffer had previously distributed a report of southern interest group activities via email.

The interest group coordinators and the board discussed the difficulty of getting commitments for leadership positions for some of the interest groups. Charlotte Rubens can generate lists of persons who expressed interest in each group, and those persons may be contacted. Bill reminded the board that interest groups don't necessarily have to put on large programs - they can also function as true discussion groups. Cynthia Jahns and Christina Woo suggested that a flyer explaining more about each interest group could be produced, and distributed by the campus liaison coordinators. Pat Lovett pointed out that as conference planning has expanded with the size of the conference, it's consuming more CARL members as conference planning workers, and so additional persons need to step up as interest group workers.

Bill said that nearly all of the members he recruited to work on planning the Conference were people not otherwise recently active in CARL, so he does not believe an expanded Conference should compete for committee members with regional interest group activities. Although he believes it is important to put out general calls for volunteers, he found it necessary, in practice, to identify potential appointees, and then contact them directly to invite them to serve.

Campus Liaison Coordinator - North Ann Patterson reported that the number of campus liaisons in the north has increased from 43 to 55. She distributed a report on the year's activities, which mentioned that only 5 of the 55 do not have email.

Pat Lovett, Campus Liaison Coordinator-South, distributed her report for 1995. She stated that one of her goals for 1996 will be to define the role of the liaisons as a group. Perhaps the liaisons can meet as a group for lunch or dinner at the 1996 Annual Conference.

There was a general discussion about the value of the regional business meetings, and how we might attract more people as well as make sure their time is well spent. Sandra Vella and Jean Purnell noted that when they contacted people about a second regional meeting in August, there seemed to be a general reluctance to spend a whole day traveling to and attending such a meeting, especially when it wasn't clear that their participation was necessary. One alternative might be to have the meetings in conjunction with a regional program. Les Kong suggested having an Executive Board member attend each Interest Group's board or planning committee meetings, instead. Bill suggested that some of the issues we don't seem to have time to discuss adequately in the Executive Board meetings could be "farmed out" for discussion at the regional meetings. In general, the group decided it would be good to continue with at least one regional meeting each year, but work on making sure the content is worthwhile, and characterize the meetings as meetings of the region's campus liaisons, Interest Group leaders, and other CARL leadership.

Tentative dates were set for the 1996 regional meetings, which will be during the first week of February, following ALA MidWinter Conference.

6. 3d Annual Conference Final Report. Bill Whitson distributed an evaluation of the conference planning process. He discussed the role of the interest groups in program planning. There is concern that if the groups are involved extensively in planning the Annual Conference they will be diverted from planning their own programs. Bill talked about the importance of appointing committee chairs early in the planning process.

The board agreed that it would be wise to send out an evaluation form via email following the next conference. The duration of the conference was discussed, as well as the difficulty in predicting the number of attendees for each of the break-out sessions.

Sandra Vella discussed vendor relations, and said that vendors should be notified as soon as possible of the next conference, since many must budget contributions of this nature a year in advance. She recommended that librarians who work in collection development be asked for names of vendors who might wish to support the conference. She also said that being able to provide a preliminary agenda was very important in attracting vendors.

Lee Jaffe (UCSC) has put up a temporary World Wide Web site with conference summaries and other information. [Since then the Web site has been moved and expanded. It now resides at http:// www.best.com/ ~bwhitson/CARL]

[Items 7 & 8 discussed previously]

9. Unfinished business.

Bill Whitson discussed CARL's electronic services and communication. Thanks to the support of the SJSU School of Library and Information Science, our listserv CALIBACA is functioning effectively, with a membership of over 200. We have not yet really taken advantage of it, however, for discussion of CARL or academic library issues, so may want to make more of an effort to do so next year.

We also have a smoothly functioning arrangement with SJSU SLIS for the various email reflectors mentioned in the Membership Director's report.

We have not yet found a way to establish a CARL Web site. The Task Force we appointed (chaired by Eddy Hogan) recommended finding an institution willing to provide it for us, but so far we have not done so. Bill has had some subsequent discussions this fall with Carl Bengston and Lee Jaffe, both of whom were members of the Task Force. Lee, who is now Webmaster for UCSC, has finally concluded that the best option would be to purchase our own server, but have it reside at and be connected through a host campus system. This would allow us optimum flexibility for managing the Web server, with multiple accounts and passwords if we wish, and might also allow us to provide other services, or even give space to other California professional groups. The Board passed a motion to charge Lee to develop a specific proposal along these lines, for purchase of a server and software, to be considered at the next Executive Board meeting.

In the meantime, Bill mentioned there is a possibility he could begin to develop a CARL Web site through a commercial account he plans to establish on his own for various reasons. He would like to use the CARL Web site as a vehicle for making available all of the important CARL documents, policies, guidelines and procedures which have in the past been compiled into the Administrative Manual.

Another initiative we didn't get to this year was to appoint a Task Force to explore our options for teleconferencing, either for Board or committee meetings, or for wider sharing of programs.

Finally, there was a question raised this year as to whether CARL should incorporate as a California nonprofit corporation, in order to provide limited liability for CARL officers, and give us a more solid legal identity as an organization. It should be addressed next year, probably through the Committee on Organization.

10. Transfer of responsibility to 1996 Executive Board. Bill gave the ACRL banner to Don Bosseau as the symbol of the transfer of leadership. The board thanked Bill for his intensive efforts on CARL's behalf, particularly his work in making the Annual Conference such a success, and his leadership in 1995.

11. New business. Incoming President Don Bosseau first reviewed the calendar for 1996 with the board.

Appointments of committees and charges to committees were discussed. Les Kong and Sandra Vella will make appointments to the Membership Committee, as well as to their respective regional program committees. Don needs to appoint three persons to one-year terms on the Committee on Organization. The Nominating and Elections committee should have a chair appointed, as well as members from both the North and the South. Most of these appointments are discussed in the new by-laws passed in 1995.

Consideration of new committees was postponed until March. To be discussed are a Task Force on Teleconferencing and a Legislative Liaison (or Advocacy) Committee.

Planning for the 1996 Annual Conference was reviewed. Bill discussed the results of his quick email poll, which revealed that, even though most CARL members to not plan to attend the CLA Annual Conference, there is a still substantial minority who would like to attend CLA and/or who feel strongly that we should avoid scheduling our Conference at the same time or even a week apart. Also, because the work to be done this year preparing the Networking Task Force legislative proposals is going to be a major focus of the 1996 CLA Conference (in Sacramento), there may be more interest than usual on the part of CARL members in participating. There was further discussion of other possible dates, and potential conflicts.

Don has contacted some hotels and will continue to contact others. The board discussed the appropriate level of room rates for the conference. Don will keep the executive board informed via email of his progress on determining a date and selecting a hotel.

The meeting was adjourned at 4:00 p.m.

Respectfully submitted, Cynthia Jahns, Secretary-Treasurer.