Minutes of the Spring Meeting
of the Heartland Chapter of the American Society for Indexing
October 5, 2013
MCL Cafeteria, Richmond, IN

Presentation
Playing the Marketing Game with Sue Klefstad – Sue Klefstad is in her second year as a freelance indexer, after spending more than a decade working in a book production company. Avoiding her hard-to-spell last name, she has branded herself as Sue the Indexer. Sue presented a very informative workshop on how to market your indexing skills. A well documented handout was shared with members present and posted online at the Heartland website.

Business Meeting
Meredith Murray called the business meeting to order at 1:00 p.m.

In attendance: Marilyn Augst, Cherry Delaney, Laura Ewald, Meridith Murray, Carol Reed, Margaret Hentz, Sue Klefstad, Jill Barringer, Tina Blair, and Devon Thomas.

Secretary's Report – Cherry Delaney read the minutes from the Spring 2013 meeting. Marilyn moved to accept the minutes, Sue seconded.

Treasurer's Report – Mary Peterson was not in attendance. Cherry shared notes from online discussions about possibly loaning the national chapter money. Mary had indicated that the treasury has $2009.77 as of December 31, 2012:

     "2013
     Beginning Bank Balance: $2,009.77
     Spring Meeting Revenues: $405.00
     Spring Meeting Expenses: $177.15
     Bank Balance as of 6/30/2013: $2,237.62

"As you can see, our expenses have averaged approximately $1,230 per year (2010–2012) and our revenues have averaged $1,283 per year (2010–2013). I do not anticipate this to continue as evidenced by the Spring 2013 Meeting, but if we were to do so, we could potentially be in a hole if we loaned $1,000 to National. My recommendation would be to loan National 10% of whatever balance we have at the time of request. This would allow us to continue to afford instructive and informative programs.

"A suggestion would be to ask other small chapters like ours if they have determined what they can afford to loan National."  

Laura moved to accept the notes from the email discussion as the treasurer’s report; Sue seconded.

Senior Co-President's Report – Meridith Murray stated that National was short on funds as a result of moving to a new administration. They mistakenly thought the monies were all part of national ASI but some of the money belonged to the chapters or SIGs. This led to the possible request for loans from the chapters. We are a small chapter with limited resources. We are willing to offer money should it be needed.

Nominating committee – Our Spring meeting is our annual meeting and we need to have a business meeting at this time. We need to assign a nomination committee in the fall meeting to set the nominees for the Spring.

We have about 40 members presently. Not all members are able to attend our meeting.

Laura will be on the nominating committee. Devon said we should send out an email to find out who might wish to serve on the nominating with Laura. We don’t know if Mary wishes to remain as Treasurer. We will need a secretary, and Junior Co-president.

Junior Co-President – Sue Klefstad

Newsletter / Website Committee Report – Carol Reed reported the next newsletter will be sent out by early November.

New Business
There was discussion about offering a new indexer listing through the Heartland Chapter website for those people seeking a local or state indexer from a particular state. Carol checked Chicago and Rocky Mountain chapter listings and saw that they created areas of specialty, such as expertise in embedded indexing. If we were to move forward with this idea, we would need to check if members are still active with ASI. This would be just be a listing of members. We would add a disclaimer that this is not an endorsement of their work.

Do we organize the list by states that indexers live in? It is just one way to break up the list. The list would include the topics each indexer offers their services for. The disclaimer/head note on the Rocky Mountain website looked nice and we could add something like this to our website. At present, we will not charge for listing. We would list indexers by state, and then alphabetically. Carol needs a current membership list.

Marilyn moved that we authorize Carol to put a member listing on our website for whoever chooses to be listed. Margaret seconded this motion. We will need to update this list once a year.

Member updates from ASI National Meeting – April 30-May 3, 2014

Scheduling for our Spring meeting is usually after the National conference so we can get updates from those that attend. We don’t want to meet during Mother’s day weekend.

Chicago’s date for their spring meeting is not listed yet.

April 12th is our first choice for next Spring; April 5th is the alternate date.

Indexing Patterns was a possible topic for next spring. John had presented on this in the past, maybe we could ask him to present on this topic.

Sue wondered if we could have a virtual meeting. There are copyright and intellectual property issues. We could copy mostly the speaker and not the entire meeting. Marilyn thought that Sue’s handout was wonderful and asked if she was willing to post this to the Heartland website. Sue had planned to do this. Margaret said we should ask our membership how they would like to have things shared.

Adjournment of Business Meeting

At 1:50 the meeting was adjourned. Marilyn motioned to adjourn the meeting Laura and seconded.