BPG Business Meeting Minutes – Annual Conference April 23, 2008 – Denver, CO
1. Call to Order
The meeting was called to order by BPG Chair, Emily Jacobson at 7:42 a.m.
I. Old Business
a. Approval of 2007 Business Meeting Minutes
i. Minutes as submitted were approved by Kate Maynor and seconded by Susan Lunas. The membership voted to pass the minutes as they stand.
II. Reports and Updates
a. Board Report: Karen Pavelka
i. Ralph Weigand has been appointed as a new member of the board.
ii. Karen thanked the membership for contributions on website, which should be available sometime in the fall.
iii. Karen reminded the BPG that all specialty groups should spend reserves down and the board is actively encouraging angels projects by matching any funds expended for angels projects.
iv. The BPG was encouraged to continue contributions to the Stout and Professional Development funds.
v. Updates from the board included the new AIC Guide to Digital Photography and Conservation Documentation; funding to move all the specialty group catalogues to wiki format, and the exploration of access to JSTOR for AIC members.
b. Chair’s Report: Emily Jacobson
i. Bruce Bumbarger, the BPG website manager, changed look and navigation of BPG website. The site now looks really nice, but needs more and updated text for all committees and projects. Talk to Emily or Sue Murphy (incoming Chair) if you're interested in helping out with web site development.
ii. Emily has put together handbook for BPG Officers. This is a work in progress, but will help with the transfer of information to board members, establishing a BPG calendar, maintaining archiving guidelines, etc.
iii. Wiki: grant from NCPTT, through publications committee spearheaded by Paul Messier. Taking all conservation catalogues to turn into wiki – still a bit vague. Will need a BPG representative for this project and will need to work in tandem with new PCC project and BCC project.
iv. Budget issues: There were many changes announced at the AIC Officers Meeting just previous to this business meeting. Some of these will change our projected 2009 budget, especially in regard to the costs related to the annual meeting. The AIC has committed to work towards lowering coffee break costs and lowering AV costs whenever possible. We were reminded that hotel costs for conferences are very expensive. Related to this, we may need to consider cutting back on programming for upcoming conferences to keep overall costs down. The Board doesn't want us to cut down on programming, so no changes in programming are foreseen in the immediate future. One of the problems with conference costs is that attendance is very hard to project – for instance the Richmond Conference was much more highly attended than projected, which raised costs.
v. Reserves: The AIC wants us to spend down reserves. However, we are currently behind three issues of BPG Annual and each issue is about $8,000 for printing and mailing, so much of reserve is actually being held for these. The Paper Conservation Catalog has $17,000 in reserve funding earmarked specifically for use with its publication. The membership needs to think about ways to put those funds to use, possibly un-obligating them from the PCC, so as to spend down that portion of our reserves. Emily reminded the membership that BPG has not had a balanced budget for many years and has been trying to spend down reserves for some time now. However, it is possible that our reserves may soon be depleted and our annual over-spending will need to be curtailed. Possible cost-saving measures could be that we cut back programming to one day, or investigate other ways to reduce costs.
c. Election Results: Elmer Eusman
i. Elmer thanked all who ran and the Nominating Committee members for their work on the recent election.
ii. Incoming Chair: Sue Murphy
iii. Incoming Assistant Program Chair: Jodie Utter
d. Treasurer's Report: Jennifer Hain Teper
i. The final BPG 2007 budget fell well within our projected budget. However, we overspent in two key areas ("food and beverage" and "room rental"), but underspent in many other budget lines and it balanced out to leave us with an income for 2007 of $854.74. We were overspent by over $9,000 for food and beverage due to coffee breaks at the annual conference and also over $2,000 for room rental for the BPG reception, which wasn't budgeted for (this has been corrected). We were underspent in the areas of consultants ($3,000), mailing ($2,500), member travel ($3,400), miscellaneous ($2,500), and printing ($3,600). The printing and mailing are underspent due both to the electronic dissemination of spring and fall mailings for most members, but also due to the fact that a BPG annual did not come out in 2007, so that money will be spent as it's carried over to 2008.
e. Publications Committee Report: Karen Zukor
i. The Publications Committee works on all publications for BPG (Book and Paper Group Annual, Paper Conservation Catalog, Book Conservation Catalog), which are all essential publications for our membership. The 2005 and 2006 BPGA should go out this June. The 2007 issue should be out soon there after (2007 is very large). There are many challenges to publishing and editing the PBGA, and additional costs as well.
ii. PCC: There has been no new input since 1994, but the contents are currently being reviewed. A new task force is going to put out mission statement in June on the BPG website regarding the PCC - how it's used, how often it is used, etc. We are now investigated how should we add to it. The committee is going to revise bibliographies, as well as keep everything in the current PCC for historical reasons. This will show how field has changed, but the publication requires new submissions as well. The PCC is going to go live on line in its new format – as will the BCC.
iii. Thanks were given to Shannon Zachary for all her hard work on the BPG Annual over the years.
iv. Book Conservation Catalogue: Olivia Primanis reported that submitted content should be live on the internet in a few months. Whether or not the BCC will change into a Wiki format still needs to be discussed, but this idea sounds exciting. Dianne van der Reyden and Diane Vogt-O'Connor have both supported the creation of the washing chapter being written by Yasmeen Khan at LC.
f. Education & Programs Committee Report: Glen Ruzicka
i. Glen reported that the primary function of the EPC is to support program chairs and program development. It helps to review submissions for the annual program and often has had more abstracts submitted than time available for presentations at the conference. Members are currently interested in partnering with any ideas for programs and workshops in active development, since the BPG can financially support programs and help in other ways to foster programs.
ii. This coming year the committee wishes to set an agenda for continuing education, and wishes to consider ideas outside of the annual meeting. This could be a potential source of revenue, as not only the BPG membership, but others may be interested in these workshops. Workshop development will be done in cooperation with Eric Pourchot, who oversaw the 2002 continuing education survey. A possible format under consideration would be a day of formal presentations and then a day of workshop, which has been a successful model for others.
g. Library Collections Conservators Discussion Group: Sarah Reidell
i. The discussion group is following up on the results of a Richmond meeting brainstorming session on digitization projects, which generated a lot of ideas for future programming and really voiced the need for more practical tips. This year's program is case studies with five scheduled speakers.
ii. Sarah is outgoing as discussion group chair, though co-chair, Laura McCann, will continue. The committee is looking for a new co-chair. If interested, contact Laura or Sarah for more information.
h. Archives Conservation Discussion Group: Susan Peckham
i. Linda Blaser and Susan are stepping down as chairs, and are looking for volunteers to serve as chair. The discussion group has tried to broaden discussion topics over the last four years and recent panelists have been really informative.
ii. The ACDG will meet tomorrow at 2 p.m. on the topic of sharing information about environmental monitoring.
iii. Emily added that although for this year the schedules have been compressed and LCDGG and ACDG sessions overlap due to scheduling constraints from AIC for this meeting, she hopes that the two won't conflict in the future.
III. New Business
a. Proposed Budget for 2009: Jennifer Hain Teper
i. Jennifer reported that there are four changes to the proposed budget which was sent out for review previous to this meeting, due to changes in AIC charges brought forward at the Specialty Group Chairs Meeting held yesterday morning.
Coffee break charges will now be paid half by AIC and half by the specialty group and will be based on total membership, not membership attending the conference. This will allow us to better project costs for breaks. The proposed budget should be changed from $12,000 to an estimated $6,000.
There will be no room rental fee for the 2009 conference (though this may change in 2010). Therefore, the budget should be changed on room rental line for the annual conference from $4,000 to $0.
The BPG Board would like to propose that $2,000 of those recovered funds be put aside to cover the cost of busses to transport attendees to and from the BPG reception in Los Angeles.
Due to the savings from these two expenditure cuts, we propose to move the Stout and PD Endowment back up to $1000 each.
ii. A question was asked from the audience as to why are we being encouraged to spend down our reserves. Karen Pavelka answered that the AIC Accountant tells us to keep only six months of operating expenses. This is due to our tax status as a non-profit, etc. Emily stated that improved communication about our plans for spending down the reserves needs to be more clearly stated to the AIC.
iii. Betsy Eldridge asked about why dues would be funding the reception. Jennifer pointed out that dues are not funding the BPG reception – the funds for the reception are shown as income from sales of tickets.
iv. There was no further discussion of the budget. A vote was called by Kim Shank and seconded by Betsy Eldridge to pass the budget with corrections and the 2009 budget passed by hand vote of those attending.
b. Election of New Nominating Committee Members: Emily Jacobson
i. Emily reported that the Nominating Committee currently has two open committee positions. The work of the committee is to solicit nominations for open positions to develop a contested slate for next year's board election. This is a one-year appointment.
ii. A call for volunteers or nominations for people to serve on the committee was made. Vicki Lee self nominated herself to serve. Nora Lockshin was also nominated.
iii. The two new members were voted upon and passed by a hand vote.
IV. New Business from the Floor
a. Publications Committee meeting
Karen Zukor announced an open invitation to attend the Publications Committee meeting.
Meeting adjourned at 8:34