LISSA Officers Meeting 2/1/08

From lissa

Present: Cheryl Kohen, Ann Kardos, Stacy Schwartz and Barbara Raab.

Vacant Officer Positions

• Treasurer: LISSA urgently needs to find a Treasurer. Cheryl will send an email to the listserve, in particular targeting new students. In the meantime, Barbara is available to help Cindy, the former treasurer and Cheryl.

• Webmaster: After some discussion, it was decided not to fill the Webmaster position. LISSA’s current online vehicles for communicating with students, the LISSA wiki and the LISSA page on elearning do not require the use of HTML or coding, and therefore it makes sense to have each officer responsible for posting communications directly rather than through a webmaster.

Upcoming General Meetings

We would like to have our first general meeting as soon as possible. One will be during the day and one at night. Ideally, two officers should be available for each one. The daytime meeting will be February 14 at 12:30, staffed by Cheryl and Barbara. Possible dates for the evening meeting include February 12, 13, 19, or 20 at 5:30pm. Ann will send an email to officers not in attendance at the meeting to determine their availability in administering the meeting. Ann will make a flyer.

Bylaws and Constitution

The officers are in the process of proposing amendments to the LISSA Bylaws and Constitution that will update some of the language and reflect current operating practices. The first round of suggestions were made and commented upon by the officers. Barbara will make some additional changes, and give the officers another opportunity to comment and revise. These will then be presented at the upcoming General Meetings, and the procedures followed for officially amending the constitution and bylaws.

LISSA online

The officers discussed how eLearning and the wiki would be used for LISSA communication. In general, eLearning will primarily be used for discussions, professional development reports, static documents (like the by-laws and constitution) and the calendar. The wiki will be used to post minutes of officers and general meetings, schedule course evaluations, and other more dynamic content. There will be some overlap between the two.

In addition, we would like to publicize and encourage use of the LISSA blog.

LISSA fundraising calendar

Cheryl brought up an idea given to her by some LISSA students to create a calendar similar to the “Mildly Attractive Men of SLIS at USC”. This could be a fundraiser, with proceeds given either to an organization such as “One Laptop per Child” or a local organization. Pros (fun, bringing together various student groups, involving new people) and cons (possible interpretation as offensive or lack of inclusiveness) were discussed. This topic will be revisited at the next meeting.

Miscellaneous action items

• Barbara and/or Ann will create a section on the bulletin board in the lounge to be the “Official LISSA Bulletin Board”.
• Barbara will contact the GSLIS webmaster to add a link to the LISSA wiki and blog, and remove the link to the now obsolete LISSA website.
• Barbara will update elearning and the wiki changing references to WebCT Vista to eLearning.
• Cheryl will check with Cindy about possible dates for the deadline for requests for Professional Development funds.