Kay Reglein, Marilyn Augst, Christine Agostinelli

Back row: Thea Teich, John Bealle, Jim Fuhr. Front row: Christine Agostinelli, Shelley Quattrocchi, Cherry Delaney, Marilyn Augst

John Bealle, Laura Ewald, Carol Reed

Clockwise from top: Anita Downton, Sharon Hilgenberg, Judith McConville, Sandy Topping

Spring 2012 Meeting Recap

By Margaret Hentz
Spring 2012

Presentations

In May, Meridith Murray hosted a very informative meeting on building your website with HTML or with website builder software. John Bealle showed us the “nuts and bolts” of using HTML to produce a website. John demonstrated basic editing elements and provided an extensive bibliography to resources including how to create tables and use cascading style sheets (CSS) for advanced features on a website. By demonstrating the newly redesigned Heartland Chapter website that uses Weebly, Carol Reed showed how to choose a template, add pages and navigation, add and format content, and add such extras as photos, contact form, and widgets. Other chapter members indicated what website software that they use to manage their own sites. This has motivated me to redesign my own indexing website. After lunch, Judith McConville showed how she uses InDesign software to create embedded indexes.

Election results

As you will read elsewhere in the newsletter, the annual election results were presented in the business meeting and the incumbent Senior Co-President (yours truly) and the Junior Co-President (Meridith Murray) were re-elected. Cherry Delaney is our new secretary. Mary Peterson is continuing as treasurer. Thanks to Cherry and Devon Thomas of the Nominating Committee who contacted chapter members for interest in running for office. Also, thanks are extended to Sandy Topping, outgoing Secretary, for her meticulous work in the capturing and reporting on the meeting minutes for the last two years and also organizing the annual e-voting election. 

Speaking of annual elections, I want to emphasize that the Heartland Chapter needs volunteers like you to help out on committees and especially to run for an office. Cherry and Devon were not able to get anyone to run for office this year so Meridith and I volunteered for another term and then Cherry volunteered herself to run for Secretary. Since the length of term for any officer is two consecutive terms, neither Meridith nor I can continue next year in our current roles. Therefore, if no one volunteers there is a definite possibility that the chapter may not continue. I feel that I gain so much from this chapter, via the newsletter, listserv, and especially the semiannual meetings. It will be a great loss to each of us if the chapter does not continue both in terms of networking and sharing our trials and tribulations. Thus, I challenge you to volunteer this coming year (just email Meridith or myself) or say “yes” when someone from the Nominating Committee asks you to consider running for office.

Policy and procedures manual updates

Behind the scenes these past few months, Shelley Quattrocchi , Marilyn Augst, and I have been reviewing and updating the Heartland Chapter’s policy and procedures manual. Items such as the electronic voting procedure had to be incorporated plus standardization of terminology. A draft version with a summary of the changes was distributed at the business meeting. Since then, a few more changes have been proposed. Once the draft has been agreed upon by the chapter’s officers, I will distribute the draft for everyone’s review. It is not the most exciting reading, but the manual is needed during the transition of new officers.  I plan to have the proposed final version voted upon at the business meeting in the fall.

Brochure updates

Laura Ewald was also busy behind the scenes on updating the Heartland Chapter’s brochure. Since we are a chapter with a relatively small membership, I am trying to solicit new members. I will be distributing this updated brochure to new graduates from local library schools and members of other information-related associations like the Special Libraries Association. It is also available on our chapter website so if you know of anyone who might be interested in joining the chapter, send them a brochure and encourage them to attend a future meeting.

Website updates

Hats off to the website and newsletter committee comprised of Carol Reed, Paula McCoy and Laura Ewald (plus others who helped to proofread and check links) who redesigned our website and added wonderful functionality to it including an intuitive page hierarchy, integration of the newsletter with the website, and potentially an indexer listing. Go and explore its rich content!

Fall meeting plans

Meridith has already started making plans for the Fall meeting which is tentatively scheduled for the Richmond area in early or mid-October. Possible topics include time management and index reader considerations. Details will be forthcoming. As if these topics aren’t interesting enough to make you come to the fall meeting then maybe cake will entice you. We will be celebrating the chapter’s 20th anniversary with cake, prizes, and a look back into time with the early days of the chapter. If you would like to volunteer to organize the anniversary celebration or have some useful trivia to provide, just let me know.




© 2012 by Heartland Chapter of ASI. All rights reserved.