Technical Services Section
NARRATIVE REPORT
One of our Members-At-Large, Chrissy Rissmeyer of BPL, resigned from the TSS Executive Board at the
end of October 2012, as she accepted a new job out of state. Nick Szydlowski, the Digital Services and
Institutional Repository Librarian of Boston College Law Library, was appointed for the vacated position
until the end of the current term, June 2013.
Two regular meetings of the Technical Services Section Executive Board were held since our last MLA
Board meeting (October 14, 2012), i.e., on October 24 and respectively December 10, at MIT Libraries in
Cambridge. Two main points were on the agendas of the two meetings:
1. the revision of the current TSS bylaws, and
2. programming for the annual conference.
Bylaws revision: The bylaws were discussed and updated article by article, and a final draft will be soon
submitted for examination and endorsement to the Legislative Committee, prior to the approval by the
membership.
Conference: TSS is in process of putting together four sessions at the 2013 MLA Annual Conference. The
programs will be:
1. RDA Workshop (presented by Steven Arakawa, Yale University), a back-to-back double session;
2. New Bibliographic Framework/Linked Data/Semantic Web (presented by Eric Miller, Zepheira);
3. Special Collections and Technical Services (presented by Stephen Skuce of MIT, Raymond Schmidt of
Wellesley College and, possibly, someone from Concord Free Library);
4. Weeding/Collection Analysis (by Thomas Crane Public Library in Quincy and, possibly, Rick Lugg of R2
Consulting).
The board also took notice of the date change of the MLA Annual Conference.
Section membership: TSS requested and received from Elizabeth Hacala an updated list of our members.
The list will serve as basis for a mailing list in order to send out invitations to our next membership
meeting. The board also decided to try to reach out to current Simmons College GSLIS students in order
to attract new student members.
Requests to the MLA Executive Board: 1. Our secretary, Heather Edmonds, to be given editing
permissions of the website (such as: posting minutes); 2. Who is in charge with updating the online
“Calendar of Events”? (we would like to announce our next meetings); 3. Our membership chair would
like to receive updates from the MLA’s Membership Committee.
Daniel Saulean (12/12/12)