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Statement
July-Sept 1998 Volume 19 Number 3
Letter from the Chair
Maryanne
Blake
This is a long message. You can also look at it on the Web at the PNC/MLA web site. Each year we look forward to the annual meeting of PNC/MLA. We see it as an opportunity to network and share experiences with colleagues; meet with vendors to hear about and see new products; find out about new technologies; take advantage of reasonably-priced continuing education; learn from speakers inside and outside of our profession; and take time to think about what we do, in new and sometimes very different ways. On last year's survey of PNC/MLA members (and on past PNC surveys as well) benefits of the annual meeting, such as continuing education and networking, ranked highest in what members wanted and expected from the organization.
Each year fewer and fewer of us attend the annual meeting. Our membership has typically been at about 175, including our Life Members. Meeting attendance hovers a little above, and sometimes below, 50%. There are understandable reasons for this: the cost of travel, the cost of the meeting, little institutional support for attending meetings, having to choose between a national, regional or state meeting since all three will not be funded, no personnel to staff the library while you're gone, no time to be away from the library. The reasons are many.
Each year a small group of stalwart members from the "designated state" for that year's annual meeting puts heart and soul, and much time and energy (close to two year's worth) into planning and producing our yearly gathering. As you probably know it has been the practice in this chapter to rotate the site of the meeting among four (Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington) of the five US states and the two Canadian provinces that comprise PNC/MLA.
It was always thought that there were too few members and the distance between them too great for folks in Alaska (10 members) or in Canada (17 members) to host an annual meeting. Or was it our thought of the cost of traveling to the meetings in such far flung places as Anchorage or Fairbanks or Banff that kept those members from ever having to plan an annual meeting? This is not to say that sometimes those folks haven't stood up and said "Let's have the party in my backyard". We had a marvelous meeting in Vancouver, BC several years ago, and Vancouverites would have been asked again had their city not been tapped for MLA's meeting in the year 2000. Needless to say they'll have their hands full for a while. And a meeting in Alaska will only happen once in a millennium. So plan for Anchorage in the year 2000! The only reason that special meetings at special places happen is because members in that area express an interest in hosting. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find members who are willing to take on the task of the annual meeting.
Even in Oregon (47 members) and Washington (65 members) recruiting for annual meeting Chairs and committee members is like the proverbial pulling of teeth. In the states of Idaho and Montana, where we have 13 and 14 members respectively, our membership changes little. The same people are being asked over and over to spend much time and energy every few years to produce the meeting, often to have a disappointingly small number of people show up.
Maybe it's time for a change. The Board has been discussing new ideas for how we hold our annual meeting and I'd like to present some of them in this message. I hope to start an on-line discussion on the HLIB-NW listserv and follow it with an open discussion of this topic at the chapter business meeting in Boise. If you are unable to attend Boise and would like to send e-mail or a letter to any Board member to be read at the meeting please feel free to do so. You are also welcome to call any Board member or me and discuss your thoughts on this topic.
So, some suggestions.
#1. We have designated sites for 1999, Seattle, Washington and 2000, a resort outside Anchorage, Alaska. We can consider after those years that we rotate the meetings between Portland and Seattle. There are several advantages to this. These areas do have the largest number of members and, historically, meetings in these cities have been better attended than those in smaller cities and resorts.
We could negotiate with particular hotels in each city, for
instance the Benson in Portland, to meet there every other year.
We would have a standardized contract for each hotel. The hotels
would learn our needs for meeting spaces and guest rooms. Less
decision-making and work for the committee and less surprises
about what we would be getting. Of course we can interupt the
schedule for special requests. States or provinces will be able
to request that the meeting be
held in their state.
That is what happened in Alaska. And yes, there are some drawbacks. Members from around the region will have to come to Portland or Seattle each year with the expense of travel and hotels. Of course Alaskans and Canadians have faced these costs for years. Members can apply for funding from the chapter to help defray these expenses.
Members in Seattle or Portland will feel the responsibility for the meetings more than those in other locations, even with the help of the Conference Planning and Professional Development Committees (see below).
#2. The newly organized Conference Planning Committee can be made up of members from all states and provinces. While it is recognized that there must be a contact person in the host city to do some of the leg work, many tasks for the meeting can be done from a distance. Program ideas and speaker suggestions can be discussed via e-mail. Vendors can be contacted from anywhere. Registration and some publicity are long distance naturals. Continuing education is already a cooperative effort between the Annual Meeting Committee and Professional Development Committee.
#3. We could simply have a banquet or dinner rather than someone having to plan a "special event" for our final evening of the meeting. What we often want to do at that meeting is talk with friends and colleagues. While it is lovely to do this on a boat or a train or in some other special setting a banquet dinner is easier to plan and it still allows us to do what we all say we want to -- network.
#4. Periodically we could meet in conjunction with other groups: other MLA chapters, other library organizations like SLA, ASIS, PNLA, etc., other professional healthcare organizations who may have interests in common with us, like health educators or health information managers. More attendees draw more vendors, perhaps some who don't normally come to our meetings because they don't know about us. More attendees can attract bigger name speakers. We can benefit from a new perspective.
Certainly we would not want to do this every year. Once in a while it would seem healthy to open ourselves to new people and new ideas and share ours as well.
The Board and your colleagues would like to hear from you. After all, it is your chapter and your annual meeting. Let us know what you think!
MAB
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