Alumni Group Meeting
February 6, 2006, 4pm.
Attendees: Becky Knuth, Jodie Mattos, Tricia Brandes, Sunny Pai (recorder)
Guest: Junie Hayashi, 2005
1. This meeting was called by Becky Knuth, who asked Hawaii-based Alumni Group board
members and committee chairs to attend.
2. Junie Hayashi was presented by Becky as our new volunteer for the position of President.
Junie graduated in 2005 and is currently working at Kapiolani Community College Library.
Welcome, Junie!
3. Annual event:
Last year’s annual event honored Dr. Sarah Vann and was held at the Outrigger Waikiki
Club. Becky proposed that we hold the 2006 annual get together at Waioli Tea House in
Manoa Valley. It can accommodate more than 60 people, has a beautiful garden setting,
and a good sound system.
Becky proposed we hold it on a weeknight, and the group agreed that Tuesday evening
was a good first candidate. Due to scheduling we will aim for early April, soon after
April 4. Becky proposed that our honorees be Karen Maeda and Gail Morimoto, who
together have held the LIS program together since its beginnings in the mid 1960s. She
will propose the idea to both of them. Hopefully there will not be too much resistance.
Several ideas were discussed about getting other alumni involved and collecting
photographs of Karen and Gail’s years at LIS.
Action: Becky will contact Waioli Tea House about scheduling a day in April. She will
also contact Virginia about the possibility of publishing the Spring newsletter before
April so that everyone who subscribes to the newsletter will know of the event well ahead
of time. If it can be done, we will also ask that Virginia to include a request of alumni to
send any photographs of Karen and Gail to Junie for the purpose of putting together a
little slideshow.
4. General goals and objectives for the year:
Discussion centered around the need to work on the alumni group website. Sunny and Junie will
work on it together.
Sunny noted that regarding electronic communications, there has been a number of issues
raised. Recently alumnus Michael Whang suggested that there should be an alternative to
the existing listserv and he encouraged us to set up a blog or forum site. Joseph Yue has
had a longstanding project of a web alumni database. Jodie mentioned that the last time a
web database was discussed they heard from several alumni that they did not want their
names published on the web.
In regards to the Alumni Group/LIS hosting a social site or a web database, there are two
issues. One issue is having access to the software to host these services. Our site is
hosted by the University Information Technology Services. Currently UH ITS does not
provide access to social software applications. There are no immediate plans for LIS to
set up its own server.
The second issue is maintainability. The LIS webteam is already very busy supporting
the LIS program and its students. Currently it is easier for one person in the Alumni
Group to do the html work under the guidance of the Board and Committee Chairs.
A compromise solution that we could test out would be to try free public social software
sites such as Flickr and Blogger.com. This would give us the functionality of a social
website without the need for additional technical resources and maintenance workload.
The disadvantages are that we would not be in complete control of the content on the site
(meaning we should keep backups of anything we upload) and the content would
probably be scanned by the host company. There is no control over the possibility that
the site might suddenly decide to start charging for its services. In many such cases those
who wish to post to a site must also become members of that site, which in most cases is
a free subscription. Michael Whang also pointed out that it is unfortunate that traffic
would not go to the LIS site.
The advantages are that there is no system administration involved on our part, and
usability is very easy. Another advantage is given that we do not know what the
response of the community might be, it would be a cost-free way to experiment with the
medium. Sunny has already set up a trial Flickr site for the Alumni Group, and a few
alumni and one faculty member are already linked in.
Junie suggested that the Alumni website could link to the Flickr and blog sites. We could
monitor our community’s response from that point.
Action: Sunny will proceed with the Flickr site, look into setting up a blog site, and work
on a design for the alumni site.
5. Jodie reported on awards.
Currently there are three private award funds. The Ralph Shaw award, intended for paraprofessionals. That account still has funds. The Mary Edward Award gives two $500.00
awards a year to professionals. There are still funds in that account. The Margaret
Ayrault Award is the third private award fund and may be expended. Jodie will look into
this.
The LIS Alumni Group also tries to make an annual award to an LIS student. In the past
the award amount was $500. Lately this award has not been made due to lack of funds.
Actions: Jodie will check on the status of the Ayrault Award. Sunny will check if there
are funds to support the LIS Student Award for this year.
6. Sunny reported on the budget.
Sunny is a little concerned about our cash flow. She has noticed that in a few of the years
before the flood, our alumni donations averaged around $2,100 a year. From September
2004 to August 2005, a very active year due to the flood, we received $2,725 in nonflood donations. However, our last newsletter mailing bill totaled $1,400.00. With two
newsletter mailings a year we are looking at expenses of $2,800 a year for newsletter
mailings alone.
Sunny noted that in 2003 one of our mailings cost $663.00. This was during a time when
we were using the University’s Auxiliary Services and Cardinal Mailing Service. Since
then we moved our newsletter processing to Pacific Business Forms, and the bill for a
single mailing has steadily risen from $1,050 in March 2004 to $1,400 in December
2005. And this is before postage costs went up in January 2006. Jodie explained that the
move to Pacific Business Forms was in response to their prompt and reliable service.
The University’s Auxiliary Services at times were not able to meet printing deadlines due
to their own internal workload. However, it appears the cost of Pacific Business Forms
may not be sustainable.
We want to keep up paper mailing for those who do not have easy access to the Internet.
For those who do have access, we can send out, via our listserv, a url to the pdf version of
the newsletter on the Alumni Group website, something we did for the Fall 2005
newsletter.
Actions: Sunny will send an email to Virginia to include, in her next mailing, a short
explanation and request that all those alumni who can receive the newsletter
electronically to cancel their paper subscriptions. Sunny will also contact Janet Hesson to
find out if the database can handle printing out mailing labels for only those who want to
continue a postal subscription. (Editor’s note: As of Feb. 9, 2006, Janet has sent out an
email with additional information and insight into this question).
7. Status of flood funds
Currently we have $20,000+ in designated flood-relief funds in our account. Although Becky
will no longer be chair of the LIS program after May, she will continue to work on the
renovation of the LIS department. She is concerned that the department’s facilities are restored
to an acceptable level before the next accreditation review begins. She is very concerned that
FEMA will not come through with the necessary funds to purchase the furnishings for a new
department space, and she thought she may need to tap the Alumni Group’s flood funds for that
purpose. Anticipated timeframe for purchasing is one to one and a half years from now.
Sunny was a little concerned about how UHF would handle such expenditure requests, but
Becky and Jodie were confident that it would not be a problem.
Action: Jodie will send everyone the latest copy of the Group’s By-laws so that we can read up
on our fiscal responsibilities and powers.
8. In final discussion, everyone at the meeting expressed her appreciation of the Alumni Group
Committee chairs and volunteers who have been keeping the organization running. Many thanks
to Virginia Smith for turning out excellent newsletters, Janet Hesson for managing the database,
Joseph Yue for safekeeping our website and maintaining our listserv, Ihsia Hu for keeping track
of membership, Cora Eggerman, for hanging on to our website during the flood, and Stewart
Chun, who makes sure those graduation packets get done!
9. Meeting was adjourned at 5:15 pm.