ALABI

The 2012 ALABI meeting will be held June 6-7 before the annual Baptist History and Heritage Society meeting.  ALABI will meet at Southeastern Baptist Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina.  The theme of this year’s meeting is “Listen Up!  Discovering, Sharing, and Preserving Our Stories.”  Dr. Stephen Sloan, director of the Oral History Institute at Baylor University, will present the pre-conference workshop on June 6.  More information will be available soon on the meetings page.

ALABI members who attended the 2011 meeting were treated to a variety of sights and sounds in Texas. Below are images of some of the learning and hilarity that ensued.

ALABI members,

The email below went out to many of you two days ago. All of the forms for this year’s meeting can be found on the Meetings page, as well as directly below.

2011 ALABI Registration Form
2011 ALABI Program
2011 ALABI Accomodations

March 30, 2011

Dear ALABI Members –

Greetings!  We hope this correspondence finds you well.  Please read this message carefully as it contains important information about this year’s annual meeting.

Please find attached a program, information on lodging and accommodations, and a registration form for the ALABI annual meeting, Wednesday – Thursday, May 18-19, 2011, at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Dallas Baptist University.  Please complete the registration form and return, along with payment, to Bill Sumners, ALABI executive secretary-treasurer, by May 4.

The administrations and staff at Southwestern and DBU have gone above and beyond the call of duty in accommodating our requests to meet at their facilities.  The theme of this year’s meeting is “Archives in Jeopardy:  Maintaining Our Mission in an Uncertain World.”  Sessions cover a variety of library and archive topics unique to our group.  We invite you to reflect on two questions before and during the meeting:  (1) What techniques and strategies can be implemented in Baptist libraries and archives to help better manage and preserve collections? and (2) What resources are lacking in Baptist libraries and archives and what are some ways those materials can be documented and acquired?

Some additional information about the meeting:  (1) For those who may plan to arrive early on Monday or Tuesday (May 17 or 18), Baylor University has offered to provide tours of their electronic library.  Please contact Kathy Hillman (Kathy_Hillman@baylor.edu) to coordinate transportation from DFW to Waco.  (2) Individuals who stay at the Riley Center at Southwestern will receive a complimentary breakfast.  Riley Center guests should pick up a breakfast voucher at the registration table.  Guests who do not stay at the Riley Center will be responsible for covering the costs of their own breakfast.  Lunches, Wednesday evening dinner, the pre-conference workshop, preservation tour, and botanical gardens tour and dinner are included in the conference registration.  (3) For individuals who do not plan to rent a car for the meeting, Southwestern is providing vans to transport our members to the tour at the Belfor Tech Center and Fort Worth Botanical Gardens.  (4)  The physical address to Joe T. Garcia’s Mexican Restaurant is:  2201 North Commerce Street / Fort Worth, TX 76164.  The address to the Belfor Tech Center is:  2425 Blue Smoke Court, South / Fort Worth, TX 76105.  The address to the Gardens is:  3220 Botanic Garden Boulevard / Fort Worth, TX 76107.  (4) Please take a moment to view the online interactive campus maps at Southwestern, http://www.swbts.edu/campus_tour.cfm, and DBU,http://www3.dbu.edu/campusmap/.

We hope this information is helpful.  Please let us know if you have any questions or if there is anything else you need.  We appreciate your work in collecting and preserving Baptist history and look forward to seeing you soon.

Kind regards –

ALABI Arrangements Committee

Taffey Hall, Chair

ASSOCIATION  OF LIBRARIANS  AND  ARCHIVISTS  AT  BAPTIST  INSTITUTIONS

MINUTES of Business Meeting, June 3, 2010

Anna Ashcraft Ensor Learning Resource Center

Georgetown College

Georgetown, KY

President Kent Millwood brought the meeting to order and called for reports:

Audit Committee:

Mary Fox and Kathy Hillman reported that the financial records were in good order.

Executive Secretary/Treasurer:

Bill Sumners presented a printed financial report to those in attendance.  He added that  following the income and expenditures for the current meeting, the balance in our account would be about $9,088.00.  ALABI has 36 paid members so far for 2010, about the same number as for 2009.

Southern Baptist Periodical Index:

Eldonna DeWeese reported that as a result of excellent data entry support, the 2007 volume was completed and ready for distribution in March of 2010 in addition to data entry completed for the 2008 volume by the end of May.  Editing will be completed on the latter during the summer, enabling two volumes to be issued in 2010.  In addition, a retrospective year of data was included with the 2007 online update, so that coverage online is now for 1984—2007. There are around 70 current subscribers, with about a third of those being online subscribers.

President Millwood extended a special thank you to the presenters for this year’s conference and to Mary Margaret Lowe and her staff for the work of hosting the meetings.

New business:

A follow-up discussion to the morning presentation on digitization and the possibilities this presented resulted in the formation of an ad hoc committee by President Millwood entitled, Baptist Digital Library Task Force, consisting of the following members: Laura Botts, Jason Fowler, Taffey Hall, Kenette Harder, Kathy Hillman, Alan Lefever,

Anne Marie Martin, Bill Sumners, Naomi Taplin, and Elizabeth Wells.

The committee was charged as follows:

1. Explore the viability of a cooperative digital Baptist library and the role of ALABI and its member institutions
2. Set standards
3. Do a pilot project

Sandra Brown moved that we accept this charge and look forward to a mid-year report.  This was seconded and carried.  A web application will be set up on the ALABI web site to track the project. Steve Jones and Natalie Edwards will work with Jason Fowler on maintaining the blog.  Alan Lefever will serve as chair and Kathy Hillman will serve as vice-chair of the task force.

Next year’s meeting:

Details will be worked out later, but it will be in the Dallas/Fort Worth area May 18 and 19, 2011.  Bill Sumners reported that we had 28 registrants for the current meeting.

Election of officers:

The nominating committee consisted of the current ALABI officers, who presented the name of Taffey Hall as Vice-President/President Elect. There was a call for nominations from the floor.  There being none, Kathy Hillman moved that Taffey Hall be elected by acclamation.  The motion was seconded and carried.  Eldonna DeWeese agreed to continue as recording secretary for 2011 and was re-elected.

The gavel from outgoing president, Kent Millwood, was presented to incoming president, Jason Fowler.  There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned.

Respectfully submitted,

Eldonna DeWeese

The registration form and accommodations information for the 2010 ALABI meeting are now available on the meetings page. Please notice that the preconference workshop is

The agenda should be released sometime later this week. The following topics will be addressed at this year’s meeting.

Preconference workshop: Records management

Basic digitization techniques

Using social media for outreach and promotion in archives

Cooperative digitization

Assessment in academic libraries

We look forward to seeing you in Georgetown this June!