CALA/NE Held Board Member Meeting

Post date: Oct 14, 2011 1:13:36 AM

On Friday, October 7th, 2011, CALA Northeast chapter held its first board member meeting after the election of its 2011-2012 officers. The meeting was from 3:00 - 5:30 PM in New York Public Library Mid-Manhattan Library. Invited also to the board meeting were past CALA Northeast chapter presidents, as well as the current President and Vice-president of CALA. Ten officers attended the meeting.

The meeting started with Judy Xiao, the Chapter president welcoming everyone to its first board meeting, and officers introducing themselves.   Lina Ding, immediate past president summarized the good work done by the chapter in the past year, and thanked all the chapter officers and members for their support and hard work. Hung-yun Chang, Treasurer of the chapter, reported on CALA/NE finances. CALA/NE has a strong balance sheet, which will help the chapter sponsor programs and events of interest to our members and the library community. Judy spoke about the Global Children's Librarianship Conference in NYC sponsored by CALA and the Library Society of China back in August, and thanked everyone for making the conference such a successful event.  The chapter officers discussed program ideas for the 2011-2012 year, and made recommendations as to how to effectively reach out to our members and provide better services to our members. The board will work with chapter members and seek their input and recommendations for program ideas and service improvement.

Some of the suggested programs include:

• • Visiting MoMA (the Museum of Modern Art) and lunch/dinner to celebrate Christmas and New Year (MoMA offers free admission on Fridays 4-8pm).  Date is proposed for early December.

• Visiting Princeton Univ. Libraries.  Date is proposed for late April and early May of 2012

• Annual CALA/NE Chapter symposium initiative.  A symposium planning committee will be formed to work on the initiative.

• Food, Fun and Fundraising for Diversity: CALA Continued Support for the ALA Spectrum Scholarship. Min Chou, president of CALA spoke about the program's success and the NE chapter will help with the fundraising effort.  The Spectrum Scholarship Program provides funding to students from traditionally underrepresented racial and ethnic backgrounds to help with their pursuit of a Master’s degree in library and information science.