Reports - Midwest Chapter MLA

President-Elect Katherine Schilling
Treasurer Amy Donahue
Recording Secretary Chris Childs
Potential Nominee for MLA Nominating Committee Barbara Knight
At the conclusion of the Annual Chapter Business Meeting on October 10, 2011, outgoing President
Clare Leibfarth transferred the gavel to incoming President Janna Lawrence and newly elected officers
assumed their offices. Elected officers continuing their terms are Membership Secretary Katherine
Chew, Representative to the MLA Chapter Council Bette Sydelko, Alternative Representative to the
MLA Chapter Council Pam Rees, and Representative-at-Large Stephanie Schulte.
Efforts to update our chapter bylaws continue. The bylaws need to be brought in line with the 2010 MLA
Model Bylaws. Melinda Orebaugh will be chairing a special committee to guide this process. The
chapter will be voting on revised bylaws at the fall business meeting next year.
The Membership Committee used an online survey of the membership to get a sense of how well the
Midwest Chapter/MLA was serving its membership, what are the demographics of the current
membership, and if there were ways in which the chapter could improve or better serve its members.
407 survey invitations were e-mailed to 2010 and 2011 paid members. 232 responses were received,
an over 50% response rate. The survey consisted of 16 questions, including open-ended questions.
The preliminary survey results were presented as a poster during the 2011 chapter conference. During
the upcoming year, the Membership Committee will analyze the results, mining the data to develop
proposals for increasing membership and for improving service to the membership. Complete survey
results will be reported in the May 2011 issue of the chapter newsletter MIDLINE.
The 2011 Distinguished Librarian of the Year Award honored Sheryl Stevens whose more than 20
years of service to the chapter include a term as president. For 2011, the Awards committee revised
the criteria of this award emphasizing service to the chapter and the profession and simplified the
application process.
A Special Award ($100) was given to health sciences librarian Lenetta Atkins honoring her 50 years of
service in the library at Mercy Medical Center in Des Moines, Iowa.
The Jean Williams Sayre Innovation Award was not awarded in 2011. No nominations were received.
Archivist Mary Hitchcock is continuing work of the development of a retention policy for chapter
business documents, particularly documents relating to chapter conferences. Electronic
correspondence is a particularly thorny area of concern. The newly developed finding aid for the
chapter archives will be posted shortly to the University of Illinois, Chicago web site.
Chapter financial matters were extensively discussed at the fall Executive Board meeting and Annual
Business Meeting. The audit of the 2010 chapter accounts is ongoing and revealed issues with the
receipt of payments to the chapter made online, as well as some automatic debits payments that were
made in error. The resolution of these issues is nearly complete. The audit findings highlighted existing
concerns with our accounting processes. The chapter likely will be hiring a professional accountant as a
consultant to advise on improvements to chapter accounting processes. The Finance Committee has
many tasks ahead for 2012. Among their tasks are the consideration of changing from using Excel for
chapter accounting to using dedicated commercial software and the investigation of different vendors
for receiving online payments. The Executive Board also will be reviewing the 2004 Meetings Finances
Policy.
The chapter’s Travel Reimbursement Policy is currently under review with the goal of making it easier
for chapter members to become involved in chapter office by better reimbursing them for meeting
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