S-USIH Minutes 1.11.2012
S-USIH Executive Committee Meeting
Prepared by Andrew Hartman
January 2, 2012
January 13, 2012, 11:00 a.m. (EST), via teleconference (organized by Ray Haberski)
- Reports from ExComm Officers (make sure everyone re-reads minutes from November meeting before preparing your reports)
- Andrew Hartman, President
- Mike O’Connor, Treasurer
- Ray Haberski, Secretary
- Ben Alpers, Publications
- David Sehat, Conference
Proposal: Keynote honorarium ($250): Discuss and vote.
- Proposal: Book prize—discuss/vote on whether to form an ad hoc committee to implement a book prize.
Discuss/vote to approve revised budget (attached) (as prepared by Treasurer, Mike O’Connor).
- Proposal: Nominating committee—discuss/vote on whether to form an ad hoc committee to seek out nominations for this year’s S-USIH elections.
- Proposal: Working Group on Gender and Women in Intellectual History, as proposed by Lillian Barger. Discuss/vote on whether to form an ad hoc committee—or else proceed differently.
- Diversity survey: the membership committee would like to survey existing membership on how they would like Society to proceed in terms of diversity. How to proceed?
MINUTES TO EXCOM MEETING: JANUARY 11, 2012
Add review of minutes
Add Ray between points 5 and 6
Review of minutes: strike Menand from David’s statement about possible speakers for the next conference
Waive Robert’s rules
Did we post minutes from business meeting in November?
Minutes approved with revision
Andrew’s report: President
In touch with ad hoc committees, but no one has done much since the conference
Membership committee—David Weinfield—sending out emails to grad programs. Collecting data but not done anything with it.
Julian Nemeath is creating a database and survey on historians who graduated from IH programs
Diversity survey is in the mix here as well.
Discuss the other ad hoc committees later in the meeting
Put an ad out in Perspectives and other journals to announce the existence of the committee
Mike’s report: Treasurer
We lost $500 on the conference because of the reception at Brendan’s
Brown bag was a big hit–$1000 to pay for everyone’s lunch
Not a cash generator
Not able to rent rooms without raising fees for the conference
Sponsors for social events would help offset cost for society
Need advertisers for newsletter and journal
CUNY will give $2740.00 to the society—Fund partially from 2010 conference
Did not use membership dues to pay for the conference
The budget is solvent as presented
$1000 left over
Outreach and promotion of the society is paramount
Mike has not submitted paperwork for non profit status
Ben: brown bag—charge people small fee for lunch
What different ways to charge money for lunches, plenaries, etc.
Ray’s report: Secretary
Membership total (126) and unpaid conference goers ~ 20
Ray will send the list of those who didn’t pay to David
Changes to constitution—Ray will send out new formatted version
Website is bigger than this office
Ben’s report: Chair of Publications Committee
New blogger and publications person—Lora Burnett
She will be a weekend blogger
Ronnie Greenberg as a new blogger as well
Diversify bloggers
Three women bloggers in the group now
Other kinds of diversity: age, field, time period
Ben would like writers who can speak to earlier periods
Peter Wirzbicki and John Fea are leads in this regard
Blog policies: make official by posting them
Blog is responsibility of the publications chair (and committee)
Bloggers had made decisions regarding policy, but the chair is really constitutionally empowered to do this
Ben will run the policies by the bloggers in the process of formalizing these policies with the publications committee
Mike: should we require a minimum number of posts?
Ben: List of regular bloggers and list of occasional bloggers
Won’t invite more occasional bloggers but regular bloggers could become occasional bloggers
Migrating to wordpress for the blog
Hosting site on wordpress.com
Relationship between blog and website
Archiving and storing old posts
Tabled the migration to wordpress
Discoverynet proposal not impressive
Smithsonian proposal is still there but need to solidify the web presence of the group before any negotiations begin
Newsletter: pass along society news to members, constitutional changes also might include:
THAT camp summary
President’s column
Re-publication of posts and book reviews
Member news and news from the field
Solicit news from members
Wrap up of conference of 2011?
Mike: not interested in doing this.
Standardize workflow for newsletter
Ben layout editor; Tim and Lora are copyeditors
Distribute out through the membership list
Book reviews: increase and make more substantial
Book review editor who will assign reviews
Need a small budget to send books to people
e-journal: a platform to publish peer-reviewed scholarship
Journal of Jonathan Edwards is one example, as is Commonplace
Work with university presses?
Survey what is out there in e-journals: six months of survey time
By early summer we would have a formal proposal
Mike questions: when can we get to a better blog site; nice to have it on the website
Ben: one possibility to do a wordpress.com for the blog and the publications
Mike: do we need another position for the book review editor?
Ben: no, the book review editor falls under the pub comm can delegate work for book review editor
David: when we create a journal we would probably need to create a new position for publications editors. Could appoint ME Lennon to an administrative position for editing the reviews for the blog
Ben: agreed. A new journal will need a new position.
Andrew: all society publications are under the pub comm. But all new publications will need to be approved by the excom of the society
Ben: we have no official editor for the blog; all new publications need to go through the excom.
Andrew: need to get this report done before the next round of elections
Ben: yes a report will be done before the elections
David’s report: Chair of 2012 Conference
Working with CUNY, and a date is close: November 1 and 2, 2012
No conflicts that David can see with these dates
Will move quickly to get the keynote: but needs to know the honorarium
Or move to a presidential address and forgo a keynote address
Will announce CFP with a number of new regulations:
No individual papers; only panels
Participate on only one panel
Cannot specify a date and time for participation
Net effect: fewer graduate students; fewer big names because of scheduling conflicts
Mike: can we do more to help people assemble panels?
David: grad students need to be able to do this
David: wants the entire conference to be successful for the two days with people committed to the conference
David: no shuffling with times and slots and one point person who takes care of looking for replacements
Ben: a problem with committing to the entire conference—there might be a higher number of drop-outs once they no longer get the time slot they wanted
Andrew: supports the new regulations to increase commitment to these new rules
Keynote Honorarium $250
Ben: if we have a keynote address, we pay $250, not if there is a presidential address
David: need tax form for the honorarium
Vote: Andrew: yes; Ben: yes; David: yes; Ray: yes; Mike: yes
Book prize
Form ad hoc committee to give the prize
David: a lot of work
Ben: happy to serve on the ad hoc committee to create the committee that will serve on that committee
Mike: the report will need to address all the work that David has pointed out will entail
Andrew: vote to create an ad hoc committee
Vote: Andrew: yes; David: yes; Mike: yes; Ben: yes; Ray: yes
Andrew is empowered to staff the committee
Revisions to Budget
Andrew: changes to help make a reserve of $1000 (money from CUNY)
Increased one-time seed money for conference
Book prize and keynote are now line-items
Andrew: yes; Mike: yes; David: yes; Ben: yes; Ray: yes.
Creating of ad hoc committee for a nominating committee
David: concern over appointing people who might be our successors; understand the need to make the election viable and a true contest
Andrew: this election few will probably care about a nominating committee; but in the future it might be quite necessary. If Andrew appoints committee, then only he has direct involvement adding members with the stipulation that he will not run for president
Ben: will candidates nominated by this committee be candidates? Should not this committee try to encourage people to run?
Mike: We need people to be encouraged to run for office. But we want to avoid the excom to do this.
Ben: nominating committee cannot run for office; and we need many people for other roles in the society
Ray: we are doing this prematurely, we should let the society grow
Andrew: no one will run for anything if any of us run again or if any of us decides to step down.
David: establishing another committee to get people to run for office doesn’t seem to do the job we hope the committee will do.
Mike: value in having people on the slate
David: the committee will not nominate people that disagree with them—in short it won’t do the thing that excom would hope it would do. We don’t have enough bodies.
David: send out email to all members to accept nominations including self-nominations.
Ray: I am the contact person. I will draft announcements, notify members, set nominating period, collect nominations, set election for first week of May. Nominating period closes; address gaps; and then put the vote forward.
Table nominating committee
Andrew: yes; David: yes, Mike: no; Ben: yes; Ray: yes
Raising Capital
Ray: raising capital for the website
Ben: need to look at competitive bids; neither SUSIH nor HistoryIT can do an e-journal; we need a university press to do our e-journal
Mike: proposal to raise capital doesn’t seem to go forward to any one place
Andrew: need to raise capital, but look for competitive bids; do not tie an ejournal to an IT company; secretary can’t do this by himself;
David: agree that we need a good website; it will cost money to do it right; financially conservative so we need to do something but we are not there yet.
Mike: we need a website but we don’t have money to pay for it
Ben: HistoryIT is a package deal but we need something that goes beyond what we’ve got now.
Take last items at next meeting, and distribute HistoryIT proposal. Set up conference call for three weeks from now, after January 30.
…..meeting adjourned, 1pm EST