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Dear RISS (Reference and Information Services Section) members and other interested parties:

The conference in Indianapolis is fast approaching, and I am writing to get your thoughts on what you think should take place at the RISS meeting on Sunday, April 19 from 12:30-2.  If you wouldn't mind glancing at the minutes from Denver: http://www.arlisna.org/news/conferences/2008/proceedings/sec_ris.pdf , and offering any thoughts to me directly.  There were 32 of you who attended this meeting.  I can collect all comments and send back to ARLIS-L.  We also did not elect officers, but I think we still need to discuss this process: shall we have a moderator for a one-year term, with a vice-moderator to take over the following year, and what did we decide about the News Editor?  I see that at least one other group, the Museum Library Division, still has a designated "News Editor" who doubles as the session recorder, and most if not all of the other Sections and so forth, are continuing to elect new moderators each year.  I can envision a role for the News Editor, in terms of gathering and/or reporting news relevant to the group, and recording minutes.  I see from the minutes in Banff that the News Editor was replaced by a Web Content Editor.  The content on our section of the ARLIS website may be (is) out-of-date at this point.

Would you like our "business meeting" to involve a series of short, informal presentations on various topics?  Would anyone like to step forward and offer to enlighten the group on a current issue or trend, or speak about something relevant to us all in the art library of 2009??  Is there one project that this group ought to tackle for the coming year (some possibilities have been discussed in the past)?  Is there still a need for our Section, or is what we do in the library really becoming more fluid - such that other groups are also just as relevant to us, e.g. the Collection Development SIG, or the Academic Library Division--see minutes from Denver - many of the discussed topics are surely of interest to us as well.  For example, if I recall correctly, there was some discussion awhile back about adding “instructional services” to our mission, but there is now a very lively Teaching Librarians SIG, so there is obviously some overlap between the two groups.  Is anyone interested in leading the RISS meeting or have ideas to share??  I was very happy to see the following session will be taking place: "If You Sit There, Will They Come? The Changing Reference Landscape," which was spoken about at the Denver RISS meeting - kudos to the RISS members, I think, who are organizing this session.  Please send any thoughts or comments to me directly and I can summarize.

Thanks very much - Rebecca Friedman; [log in to unmask]
(former "News Editor" who became Moderator in Denver b/c Moderator and Vice-Moderator were unable to attend)