22:2 (2007:05) Committee Annual Report: D&D

May 21, 2007 at 11:55 am | Posted in Committee Annual Reports, Database & Directory | Leave a comment

DATABASE & DIRECTORY COMMITTEE
Buddy Pennington and Lisa Blackwell, Co-chairs

Committee members:  Alice Bright, Heather Cannon, Ann Ercelawn, Marty Gordon, Smita Joshipura, Julie Kane, Greg Matthews, Bob Persing, Mircea Stefancu
Board liaison: Adam Chesler

Members rotating off the committee after the annual conference: Smita Joshipura, Buddy Pennington, Mircea Stefancu

New Chair: Lisa Blackwell
New co-Chair: Marty Gordon
New Committee Members: Cecilia Genereux, Tzu Jing Kao, Suzanne Thomas
New Board liaison: Jeff Slagell

ACTIVITIES
• NASIG transitioned from a paper-based renewal system to an online-only renewal system for the 2006 renewal cycle.   A contract was negotiated with Paul Seeman to make programmatic updates to both the public and committee renewal pages.  Major updates included:

o Adding in a component to allow NASIG members to make donations.
o Adding an email manager component to allow the committee to edit the automated emails that are sent out to activated and renewed members.  Previously members had to manually send emails to members.
o A new “view blank membership” line was added so that the committee could more easily delete the blank membership records. These tend to be created when someone repeatedly clicks on the submit button on the online forms.
o Streamlining the renewal process so that a member can be renewed with a single click.  Previously, committee members had to manually edit a number of fields in the record and submit the changes to renew the member.
o Streamlining the activation process so that a member can be activated with a single click.  Previously, committee members had to manually edit a number of fields in the record and submit the changes to renew the member.

• The open of the renewal season was announced on November 15, 2007 and repeated throughout the winter.  The renewals lagged behind previous year’s figures.  Below are some thoughts on why this might have occurred:

o Late announcement.  The committee should work on opening the renewals in mid-September to give members plenty of time to renew before the ballots are sent out.
o Members may not be reading their email or the email may be blocked or treated as spam.
o Perceptions that online renewals meant members had to pay online.  Some members voiced a concern about paying online.
o The announcement did not include membership numbers and some members may have had problems getting their number or didn’t want to deal with it if they did not have it in-hand.

• Board set voting renewal deadline to 1/26/2007 5 p.m. EST.  Mailing label data was collected for 625 eligible members and sent to the Nominations & Elections Committee.

• In March, non-renewed members were deactivated.  The inactive and active email lists were sent to ECC to update the NASIG-L email roster.

• The committee continued to run monthly new member reports and announce the new members on NASIG-L.  The committee began to send contact information for individuals who had applied for NASIG membership but who were not activated to the Membership Development Committee so that they could follow-up with those individuals.

• Janet Chisman resigned her position on the committee and was replaced by Greg Matthews, Serials and Electronic Resources Cataloger at Washington State University.

• The committee website was revised and given a new look.  Several procedures have been revised and the committee plans to continue that process of revising procedures to streamline steps and ensure accurate and timely processing of membership information.

RENEWALS
Online renewals first announced on NASIG-L: November 15, 2007.

Active members for current year (as of April 19, 2007): 781 active members.
Active members for previous year (from previous annual report): 1,038 members.

323 2006 members were deactivated on March 21, 2007.

MEMBERSHIP PROFILE
Active NASIG members in database: 781 (as of April 19, 2007)

Membership by library/organization type:

Library/Organization Type	Number	%
A. University Library	428	55%
B. College Library	60	8%
C. Community College Library	7	1%
D. Medical Library	34	4%
E. Law Library	32	4%
F. Public Library	18	2%
G. Government, National, State Library	32	4%
H. Corporate or Special Library	32	4%
I. Subscription Vendor or Agency	37	5%
J. Book Vendor	4	1%
K. Publisher	22	3%
L. Back Issue Dealer	2	0%
M. Binder	2	0%
N. Automated Systems Vendor	6	1%
O. Library Network, Consortium, Utility	8	1%
P. Professional Association	3	0%
Q. Database Producer	3	0%
R. Student	18	2%
S. Retired	7	1%
T. Other	26	3%
TOTAL	781	100%

EXPENSES
The committee requested $3,000 to cover programming work contracted to Paul Seeman.  The work involved making improvements to the online renewal form, including adding in a new form to allow NASIG members to make donations, as well as improvements to the web admin tools used by the committee.

The committee also requested $50 to cover potential printing of renewal forms for members by request.  The committee did not use any of this money as no forms were requested.  NASIG members could easily print out the renewal form themselves.

ANNUAL DIRECTORY
While the printed Directory was discontinued after the 2004/2005 year, the NASIG Board has made the decision to maintain a PDF version of the Directory and make that PDF version available for download to current NASIG members.

The latest PDF version was updated January 4, 2005.  The committee is planning on providing an updated PDF version in time for the 2007 conference in Louisville.

OTHER ISSUES AND RECOMMENDATIONS
• Committee considerations for contract work with Paul Seeman:

o Add an admin component to update the activation and renewal features.  This is especially critical for the membership type field.  Currently, the automated features use n07 and r07.  Those will need to be changed after July 1.
o Add a “renewed date” field to the membership database and have the date automatically entered when the committee renews a member.  This will help in providing statistical reports to the board.
o Remove unused fields from the Admin Tool and provide formatting and validation (such as phone numbers, etc.)
o Add pulldown menus to ensure consistent entry (country, state, ILS, etc.)

• Should the committee and NASIG Board consider letting members make updates to their membership profiles themselves?  A considerable amount of time was used making updates that members could easily update themselves using an online form.  If this were to occur, some mechanism would have to be developed to ensure that:

o Email changes were forwarded to ECC to update NASIG-L.
o Title changes were forwarded to the Newsletter editor.
o A minimum level of formatting and validation is used.