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Who we are > Minutes of recent committee meetings

Minutes of recent committee meetings

Annual General Meeting
Tuesday 3 July 2007
Minutes

1. Present

26 members were present

2. Apologies

Received from Carol Marshall, Joanne Findlay, Mike McGrath, Gillian Wilson and Tracey Jackson who were all thanked in their absence for their hard work on the committee.

3. Minutes of the 2006 Annual Meeting

Accepted as a true record. Proposed Marjory Lobban, seconded Thelma Goodman

4. Matters Arising

None

5. Chair’s Report

There is no doubt that we are all working in challenging times. Librarians throughout the UK are facing significant changes in the workplace, major reorganizations, job cuts, extra workloads and the inevitable added stresses which ensue. The area of interlending continues to evolve as new systems are introduced, organizations are restructured and access to information becomes increasingly complex. The FIL Committee has endeavoured to keep abreast of current developments and organize events which are relevant to the membership. We are keen to stress that we welcome any fresh ideas and are always keen to receive input and opinions from FIL members.

This year, FIL’s annual visit to the British Library at Boston Spa took place on Friday March 16^th. Over thirty FIL members attended the event and feedback indicated that people found the day both interesting and enjoyable. The morning presentations included a talk about recent service developments at BLDSC by Barry Smith and a talk by Stephanie Kenna on collaborative storage for the UK Higher Education Centre. During the afternoon there was a discussion on the topic of changing patterns of usage of the British Library, followed by a walking tour of the building. Graham Titley concluded the programme with a Question and Answer session.

We had hoped to organize an event in the South West this year, but several factors prevented us from proceeding at the time. Committee members are looking at suitable venues and it is likely that we will plan a one day event to take place later this year. We also hope to join forces with Libraries North West to organize a visit to the newly renovated John Rylands Library in Manchester.

We have continued to send a representative from the FIL Committee to CONARLS meetings over the course of the year. It is worth noting that CONARLS have designed a new website which, amongst other things, provides access to a non-English fiction database and a London Libraries database. The CONARLS committee agree with us that reciprocal attendance at CONARLS and FIL meetings has been mutually beneficial and has helped colleagues from both organizations to keep up to date with new developments.

The 10^th IFLA Interlending and Document Supply International Conference will take place this year on the 29^th to the 31^st of October in Singapore. It will be called “Resource sharing for the future: Building blocks for success”. It was agreed that we should send a message out to the FIL membership to find out if anyone was interested in applying for a sponsored place at this conference. I am happy to tell you that Avril Paterson from University College Dublin was the lucky person whose name was drawn to represent FIL at this event. We have asked Avril if she will report back to us after the conference so that she can tell us all about it. Thank you to all those members who expressed an interest and there will undoubtedly be further opportunities to apply for attendance of future conferences.

We are actively encouraging FIL members to attend these worldwide events is because interlending, like so many other operations, is becoming increasingly global in its outlook. It is beneficial for FIL to widen its scope and to ensure that document supply staff from the UK are represented globally.

Penny Street’s term on the IFLA Committee for Document Delivery and Resource Sharing is now drawing to a close and Rose Goodier has now been voted onto the Committee as a new member. The term will run from 2007 until 2011 and Rose’s remit will include representing the views of FIL as well as to report relevant information back to the FIL Committee. This year’s IFLA Congress will take place in Durban from August 19^th to August 24^th. We would like to take the opportunity to thank Penny for all the work that she has undertaken during the past few years as our IFLA representative.

We welcome Helen Trollope to the conference. Helen applied for a sponsored place at this year’s conference and her name was drawn out of a hat. Helen is currently in her third year studying for an MSc in Information and Library Studies at the University of Aberystwyth. Sadly, our other winner has had to cancel at the last minute so we have been unable to replace her at such a late date.

One source of ongoing concern to the Committee has been the problems we have experienced with the production of the FIL newsletter. Issue 46 was circulated in August 2006, and it will not have escaped notice that there were production delays with Issue 47. Finding a suitable designer had proved problematic. However, thanks to the efforts of Marjory Lobban, we now have a solution. Marjory has taken the time to train up on the use of Publisher software and you can see the results in Issue 48, our latest newsletter, the design of which, we hope that you will agree, is a vast improvement on the earlier ones. We once again apologize for the delays but now feel that, at last, we should be back on track after a rocky period. Thanks go to Jean Bradford and her staff for their continued work in printing and distributing the newsletter.

Gillian Wilson has been working on improving and developing the FIL website. We would like to recommend that all members keep a regular check on the website as it is updated frequently and provides information on developments as they occur. Mike McGrath has been working on marketing and publicity and has produced letters to go out to potential new members. Carol Marshall has spent long hours ensuring that all the FIL accounts are up to date. Thanks go to our hard working secretary, Sarah Washford, and to Steven Prowse for being our main contact at KCL. Finally, many thanks to Tracey Jackson for putting in so much hard work in organizing this conference which she has been unable to attend herself.

This year, Peter Robinson will be leaving the Committee due to changes at work, but he will continue to attend future meetings as an observer on behalf of the BL so we will still see Peter on a regular basis. We would like to thank him for the work that he has put in as co-editor of the FIL Newsletter over the past year. Peter will take the place of Betty Lowery, who, as many of you will know, will be retiring later this year. We will all be really sorry to see Betty leave as she has played a very central role in our interlending community for many years. We wish Betty a long and happy retirement. Finally, as Penny Street’s term on the IFLA committee is ending, she will no longer be attending FIL Committee meetings as an observer. Many thanks go to Penny for taking the time to attend our meetings over the past few years.

6. Statement of Accounts / Treasurer’s Report

a. Treasurer’s Report

First of all, I would like to convey my apologies that I cannot present the annual report in person. However, I hope that these notes, together with the accounts presented by Whyatt Pakeman Partners, will prove adequate.

I am pleased to report that the Forum for Interlending and Information Delivery has assets of £50,382.07, as checked against the bank statement dated 31^st May 2007.

NB This includes £5,415.25, previously held by the Bradford & Bingley Building Society.

This account was closed Feb 2007 because the B&B would not allow a change of signatories.

Considerable effort has been applied to clearing outstanding debts, and accounting for monies owed, relating to 2005 and 2006. Of £7,590.00 outstanding on January 1^st 2007 £450.00 remains outstanding, (£50.00 membership fees from 2005 and £200.00 membership fees from 2006). These outstanding debts will be resolved by the close of 2007. Details are provided below:

2005

10 outstanding invoices for Interlend 2005, (£2405.00) – all now paid

46 outstanding membership fees, (£2300.00) – 1 remains outstanding, (£50)

- 15 paid, (£750.00)

- 15 confirmed cancelled, (£750.00)

- 15 written off for various reasons including a change in local contact details, or a lack of adequate paperwork to allow payment to be pursued. (£750.00)

2006

2 outstanding invoices for Interlend 2006, (£475) – all now paid

49 outstanding membership fees, (£2410.00) - £550.00 remains outstanding

- 23 paid, (£1,130.00)

- 20 confirmed cancelled – many duplicates from 2005, (£980.00)

- 2 written off, (098 – non-existant member / 255 change of contact details / new contact rejoined, (£100)

- 4 still outstanding, (£200.00).

The accounts for 2007 are in good order, see below:

Membership: 181 members have paid, (£8,910.00), (174 institutional members £50.00 each and 7 personal members £30 each). 14 members have failed to pay, (£700.00). Final invoices have been issued.

FIL at BLDSC: Expenditure: £1,130.00

Income: £1,000.67

Committee Expenses: £2,033.29 to date

IFLA membership and conference expenses: £3209.63 to date

Interlend 2007: Expenditure to date: £4,22.23

Projected income: £10,145.00

NB Significant further expenditure is to be expected, (payment for the venue, speakers expenses, sponsorship for the student delegates).

The healthy nature of the organisation’s assets has allowed the FIL committee to ensure that the fees charged to members for the BL day and the conference were held at 2006 rates. It has also allowed us to pay for two student delegates to attend conference.

Please refer any queries about the accounts to Carol Marshall, Treasurer.

b. Statements of Accounts

Copies of the accounts were circulated at the meeting together with copies of the treasurer’s report (see above).

It was noted that printing costs had risen significantly. The members present agreed that future AGM documents would not be sent out by post to all members but would be made available on the FIL website prior to the AGM.

The accounts were accepted – proposed Graham Titley, seconded Peter Robinson.

7. Newsletter

Apologies were given for the problems with newsletter production over the previous year as mentioned in the Chair’s report (see above). Issues 47 and 48 have been set and all members should have received copies. Issue 49 should be published early autumn 2007. The editor appealed for articles for the newsletter. It was noted that the newsletter is sent to the named contact for the organisation as listed on the membership database and this information must be kept up to date to ensure receipt of future newsletters.

8. Elections for the Committee

The number of vacancies on the committee matched the number of nominations, so no election was required. The following were declared elected:

9. Any Other Business

Betty Lowery was thanked for her huge contribution to FIL over the years. She is planning to write an article for the upcoming newsletter.

Peter Robinson was also thanked for his work on the committee.

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