NASIG Newsletter

[Ed. note: Highlights from the January committee report to the Executive Board.]

NOMINATIONS & ELECTIONS
Gail Julian, Chair

Nominations were due by October 12, 2007.   A total of 65 names were submitted.

Vice President/President-Elect:  38 nominations for 19 individuals
Member at Large: 100 nominations for 55 individuals

Some persons received multiple nominations, and some were nominated for both VP/PE and MAL.  Five persons could not be considered because they are members of the N&E Committee or were not current NASIG members.  Continue reading 23:1 (2008:03) Committee Update: N&E…

[Ed. note: Highlights from the fall committee report to the Executive Board.]

NOMINATIONS & ELECTIONS
Gail Julian, Chair

A nominations form was included in the conference packet.  Thirteen completed forms were received with 51 nominations.  A call for nominations was posted on NASIG-L on July 5, August 7, September 7, and October 4, resulting in another 75 nominations.  So far we have a total of 126 nominations for 63 different individuals.  In addition, the call has been published in the September Newsletter and on the What’s New page of the website.  Forms used for nominee review are being posted to NASIGWeb in order to help demystify the process.  Nominations are due by October 12, 2007.   To date we have received the following numbers of nominations:

Vice President/President-Elect:  35 nominations for 19 individuals
Member at Large: 91 nominations for 53 individuals

Some persons received multiple nominations, and some were nominated for both VP/PE and MAL.

CALL FOR NOMINATIONS
Gail Julian, Chair, Nominations & Elections Committee

The Nominations & Elections Committee invites nominations for Vice President/President-Elect and three Member-at-Large positions.   Please place your nominations either through the green form distributed in the Louisville conference packet or online at http://www.nasig.org/members/forms/nomform.html.

The deadline for nominations is October 12, 2007. 

All current NASIG members are eligible except current members of the Nominations & Elections Committee.   For additional information about the N&E process, please see information in the NASIG Newsletter at http://nasignews.wordpress.com/2007/06/10/223-200709-nasig-nominations-elections-process-detailed/.

This year’s N&E Committee members are:
Gail Julian, Chair
Kathy Brannon, Vice-Chair
Christie Degener
Sarah Gardner
Susan Markley
Jenni Wilson
Tim Hagan
Denise Novak, Board Liaison

NASIG NOMINATIONS AND ELECTIONS PROCESS DETAILED

In the fall of 2006, the Executive Board formed a working group to write a document that would provide a clear explanation of NASIG’s nominations and elections process to the membership.  The working group consisted of the current chair of the Nominations & Elections Committee, David Burke, and three former N&E members, Anne McKee, Christine Stamison, and Kathryn Wesley.  The resulting document, revised in June 2007 to reflect changes to NASIG’s bylaws affecting the election process, follows.

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NASIG NOMINATIONS AND ELECTIONS PROCEDURE

Nominations and elections are governed by NASIG Bylaws, Article VII (http://www.nasig.org/public/bylaws.html) and are carried out by the Nominations & Elections Committee. 

COMPOSITION OF THE COMMITTEE

The Nominations & Elections Committee is appointed by the incoming president in the spring of each year. The number of members on the committee may vary, but there should be an odd number.  The term of service is one year.  Members may be reappointed for one succeeding term.  The chair may serve only one term as chair.  At least one half of the committee each year should consist of new appointees.  The past president serves as the committee’s board liaison.  Previous past presidents may serve as members of, or consultants to, the committee.  Committee members are not eligible to be nominated for office during their terms of service.

COMMITTEE CHARGE

The Nominations & Elections Committee will solicit nominations of vice president/president elect, secretary, treasurer and board members, review proposed candidates’ qualifications, prepare a slate of candidates, prepare the ballot, carry out the election, report the results to the NASIG membership and review any challenges to the election. The committee’s deliberations will be strictly confidential. The committee will adopt all necessary and proper precautions to ensure the conduct of a trustworthy election.

THE NOMINATION PROCESS

A vice president/president-elect and three members-at-large are elected each year.  Nominations for secretary and treasurer are solicited when appropriate.  The term of office for the secretary is three years.  The treasurer is elected during the second year of the sitting treasurer’s term, and serves for an ex officio training period of one year followed by a three year official term, for a total commitment of four years.

Nominations may be made by committee, by petition, or by write-in.

Nomination by Committee
The committee solicits nominations from the membership in a number of ways.  A printed call for nominations form is included in the conference packet distributed at the annual conference.  Following the conference, the forms are turned over to the incoming chair of the Nominations & Elections Committee.  An electronic form is made available on NASIGWeb, with submissions directed to the chair of the committee.  Nominations may also be made by email, in writing, or by phone to any member of the committee.  The chair of N&E issues one or more reminders on NASIG-L to encourage members to submit nominations.  Members do not have to secure the permission of nominees before submitting their names, as the committee will contact them to determine if they wish to proceed with the process.

Nominee Requirements
Nominees must be members in good standing for the year of the election in order to be considered by the committee, i.e., dues must be paid for the next year’s membership before the committee may vet the nominee.  The chair confirms membership status of nominees with the treasurer.  No NASIG member may be denied a place on the ballot due to race, color, creed, sex, etc., in accordance with federal equal opportunity laws.

Nominee Profiles
When the deadline for nominations has passed, the committee contacts all nominees to determine their interest in running for office and to secure their permission to consider them for the ballot.  All nominees who agree to be considered by the committee receive a nominee profile form.  The form solicits information on their activities within NASIG, their relevant professional activities outside of NASIG, and a position statement regarding their potential contribution as a NASIG board member.  The committee also sends the nominee a link to a NASIG web page with a job description of the position for which he or she has been nominated, and gives a deadline for submitting the forms to the committee.

Nominee References
The nominee profile form also asks for the name of three references who can comment knowledgeably on the nominee’s previous work in NASIG.  For members who have served on committees, at least one of the three references should be the relevant committee chair(s).  For current or past committee chairs or co-chairs, two of the three references should be the appointing president and relevant committee liaison(s).  Current or past board members must include the presidents they served under as references.

Ranking Nominees
Each committee member reviews the nominee profile forms and rates nominees.  The nominee profile forms assign specific weights for the committee members to rate nominees on NASIG activities, other professional activities, and the position statement.  For vice president/president-elect, secretary, and treasurer, these are respectively 50% for NASIG activities, 25% for other professional activities, and 25% for the position statement.  For members-at-large, the weights are distributed evenly at 33 1/3 % for each category.  The chair and committee have leeway in deciding exactly how the review process is carried out.  The chair compiles results and the committee decides who the strongest contenders are among the nominees. 

Contacting References
References are asked a list of standard questions soliciting information on the nominee’s reliability, enthusiasm, and creativity.  If current board members are running for reelection or for other office, the chair contacts those references.  References remain confidential between the contacting member and the chair, though the chair may give a general summary of the tenor of the reference to the committee in the course of their deliberations.  If the chair contacts references, he or she will share the results of those contacts with one other committee member in order to ensure that the gist of those references is fairly conveyed.

All information regarding nominees, committee deliberations, and especially information obtained from references, is to be kept absolutely confidential within the committee.

Preparing and Announcing the Slate

Based on the nominees’ rankings and references, the committee prepares a slate of candidates.  They endeavor to choose at least two nominees for each open position.  In the event of a shortage of nominees who are willing to run for an office, the committee may solicit potential candidates.  The chair informs the president of the final ballot as soon as it is completed.  This notification is for courtesy purposes only.  The board does not approve the slate.  The board accepts the slate of candidates as named by the committee.  Before announcing the slate of candidates to the membership, nominees are notified regarding whether they made it onto the ballot.  The chair then announces the slate of candidates to the membership on NASIG-L.

Nomination by Petition
After announcing the slate of candidates nominated by the committee, the chair issues a call for nominations by petition on NASIG-L.  Petition nominees must agree in writing to run for the office nominated and must be members in good standing as described above.  The chair must receive petitions in support of the nominee from at least ten members in good standing.  Petitions may be handled by paper or by email.  Petitioners may sign or add their email to a single document, or they may submit individual messages to the chair as long as they clearly state their names, the name of the petition candidate, and the specific office for which the candidate is being nominated.  Successful petition candidates must fill out a nominee profile form, and will be included on the official ballot.  The chair must receive nominations, supporting petitions, and nominee profile forms within fifteen days of the call for nominations by petition.  Petition candidates will be designated as such on the ballot.

Nomination by Write-in
The ballot will include spaces under each office for write-in candidates.

BALLOTING

Ballots are distributed at least 60 days prior to the annual conference.  Names appear in alphabetical order on the ballot.  Nominee profiles with position statements for each candidate are made available to the membership.  Completed ballots will be accepted for 30 days after distribution.  Ballots returned after 30 days will not be counted.

COUNTING THE BALLOTS AND REPORTING THE RESULTS

The chair counts the ballots.  The ballot count is confirmed by another committee member or by a disinterested third party.  In case of a tie for any position, the committee decides the winner by blind lot.

When the count is complete and confirmed, the chair notifies the president, including vote totals.  The candidates are notified by phone.  The president communicates the election results, including vote totals, to the Executive Board, and the chair does the same with the committee.  All candidates must be notified by phone before results are communicated to the membership.  Phone calls should be followed up by notification in writing.  The results of the election are then announced on NASIG-L.  They are also posted on NASIGWeb, and announced in the next issue of the NASIG Newsletter.

RETENTION OF BALLOTS AND CHALLENGES TO THE ELECTION

All ballots are retained for 120 days following the close of the election in the event that a challenge is made.  Also, intra-committee correspondence throughout the year should be sent through the committee email list so that it can be archived.  Challenges to the election must be made in writing to the president within 10 days of the first publication of the results.  The Board will evaluate the merits of the challenge.  If it is determined that the challenge has merit, the Board will appoint two non-NASIG members to do a recount.

N&E Document Working Group
David Burke
Anne McKee
Christine Stamison
Kathryn Wesley, chair
Fall 2006; revised June 2007

NOMINATIONS & ELECTIONS
David Burke, Chair
 
Committee Members: Gail Julian, co-chair/web liaison, Michael Arthur, Christie Degener, Beth Holley, Lisa Macklin, Virginia Rumph

Board Liaison:  Mary Page, past president

NOMINATIONS AND CANDIDATE SELECTION

At the conference, a call for nominations using the forms in the conference packets was made.  This resulted in something less than success, considering no one returned a nomination form.  After the nominations submission page was activated on the NASIG web site, the chair sent calls for nominations via NASIG-L on June 1, July 27, and August 25 (last two dates approximate), as well as the Special Business Issue of the NASIG Newsletter.  The deadline for nominations was September 1.  In retrospect, I should have made the date later in month or even into October.

Through 30 submitted nomination forms, the committee received 16 nominations for vice-president/president elect (8 different people), 9 nominations for treasurer (8 different people), and 54 nominations for member-at-large (35 different people). 

Following an intra-committee conference call on September 11, each member of the committee called six to seven nominees for permission to forward their names through the nominee-review process.  Unfortunately, only 14 member-at-large nominees, 1 treasurer nominee, and none for vice-president/president elect opted to continue.  The committee contacted several other NASIG members to broaden the pool; this new pool yielded 1 additional member-at-large prospect, 1 additional treasurer prospect, and 1 vice-president/president elect prospect.  Some of these nominees removed themselves prior to the deadline for submitting a completed profile form.

A second intra-committee conference call was held on December 7 to choose the most appropriate candidates for the ballot (after overcoming some technical difficulties with Netspoke).   The committee then contacted those candidates’ references; no information emerged to eliminate any of the names previously selected.  So the committee announced this preliminary ballot on January 15, along with a call for petition candidates:

VP/President Elect:   Meg Mering
Treasurer:  David Bynog, Peter Whiting
Member-at-Large: Carol Ann Borchert, Abigail Bordeaux, Anna Creech, Sandra Hurd, Kim Maxwell, Jeff Slagell, Sarah Sutton

The committee chair received one completed and valid petition by the February 1 deadline.  Jill Emery was added to the ballot for VP/president elect.  The committee was also pleased to see that one of the accompanying bylaw changes would open the door to electronic voting.

BALLOTING

The printer mailed 631 ballots (to addresses specified in the submitted membership list) on February 12.  Only those ballots postmarked March 15 or earlier were considered valid.  However, an ice storm threw off the distribution, so many members received ballots well past the expected February 15 arrival—online voting cannot come soon enough!  Seven ballots postmarked after March 15 were received.

The chair counted 288 ballots (a disappointing 46% return rate), which were recounted by Jutta Seibert (another librarian at Villanova University).  Three names were submitted as write-in votes—one for vice-president and two for member-at-large. 

On March 23, the chair reported the election results to the president and contacted all of the candidates.  The NASIG was notified of the results through NASIG-L on March 28, and the results were posted on the NASIG website the following week.  They will also be reported in the May issue of the NASIG Newsletter.

The winners of the election are Jill Emery for vice-president/president elect, Peter Whiting for treasurer, and Anna Creech, Kimberly Maxwell, and Jeff Slagell for member-at-large.

COMMENTS ON PROCEDURES

Many members of the committee had concerns regarding the reference process.  A number of references gave very brief or incomplete answers to the questions because they were not especially familiar with a given nominee.  Also the information gained in the references could be useful in choosing the top candidates if it was available sooner.  The committee recommends future N&E Committees have the option whether to call nominee references before or after they choose the top candidates (depending on the total number of nominees in a given year). 

Some members also expressed concern with the petition process in its current form.  Considering the extensive review process the originally slated candidates go through, gathering ten signatures seems comparatively easy.  Perhaps as NASIG moves to online elections, both the vetting procedures and the petition process should be examined.

In closing, the chair would like to thank every member of the committee and Mary Page, our board liaison, for the hard work and good ideas they contributed to the process during the last several months.  This election would not have gone so smoothly without them!  The chair would also like to thank Anne McKee and Kathryn Wesley (N&E chairs of the past two years) for their advice along the way.

[Ed. note: Excerpted from the January committee report to the Executive Board]

NOMINATIONS & ELECTIONS COMMITTEE
David Burke, Chair

Through 30 submitted nomination forms, the Committee received 16 nominations for Vice-President/President (8 different people), 9 nominations for Treasurer (8 different people), and 54 nominations for Member-at-Large (35 different people).  All are active NASIG members.  Following an intra-committee conference call on September 11, each member of the Committee called six to seven nominees for permission to forward their names through the nominee-review process.  Unfortunately, only 14 Member-at-Large nominees, 1 Treasurer nominee, and none for Vice-President/President opted to continue.  The Committee has contacted 10 other NASIG members to broaden the pool and will contact others.  So far, this new pool has yielded 1 additional Member-at-Large prospect, 2 additional Treasurer prospects, and 1 Vice-President/President prospect.  Some of these nominees removed themselves prior to the deadline for submitting a completed profile form.  Unfortunately, despite calling several other experienced NASIG members, no additional Vice-President/President nominees agreed to pursue the position.

A second intra-committee conference call was held on December 7 to choose the most appropriate candidates for the ballot (after overcoming some technical difficulties with Netspoke).   The Committee then contacted those candidates’ references; no information emerged to eliminate any of the names previously selected.  So the Committee will announce this ballot on January 15, along with a call for petition candidates:

Vice President/President Elect:
Meg Mering Treasurer:
David Bynog, Peter WhitingMember-at-Large:
Carol Ann Borchert, Abigail Bordeaux, Anna Creech, Sandra Hurd, Kim Maxwell, Jeff Slagell, Sarah Sutton 

Petitions are due February 1, with the final ballot then announced to the membership.  Ballots will be sent out on February 15 with a March 15 deadline for completion.  Ballots will be counted and the winners announced immediately afterward.   

NOMINATIONS & ELECTIONS COMMITTEE
Anne E. McKee, Chair 

Committee Members: Carol Ann Borchert (University of South Florida, Tampa), David Burke (Villanova University), Karen Jander (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), Susan Markley (Villanova University), Virginia A. Rumph (Butler University), Gracemary Smulewitz (Rutgers University), Martha Spring (Loyola University, Chicago), Susan Williams (University of Colorado, Boulder), Steve Savage (Board Liaison and Past President). 

NOMINATIONS AND CANDIDATE SELECTION 

1) Calls for nominations were made in 2 separate modes. The first call was the paper nomination form that was stuffed into each May 2005 conference packet.  Due to the change-over of chairs for the committee, President Mary Page issued 2 separate calls for nominations over NASIG-L in late October and early November 2005.   A call for nominations was not published in the NASIG Newsletter (as is customary) since the Newsletter’s fall deadline occurred amidst the change-over in chairs. 

2) 71 individuals were nominated by the new November 14, 2005 deadline (171 in total as many people received more than one nomination, some had several). Two were eliminated as ineligible (1 was already on the board and ineligible to be nominated for the same position and the other was not a NASIG member). The total number of nominations received was 23% higher than last year (2004-2005:139 total) but the number of individuals nominated was 7.8% lower (2004-2005:77). Numbers of nominations per office were:  

Vice President/President-Elect, 19
Secretary, 19
Member at Large, 53 

3. As the committee calendar was shortened (due to the chair change-over) each committee member (including the chair, who does not ordinarily contact nominees) contacted at least 6 people. Some committee members contacted a few more due to the committee members’ work commitments at that point in time. The breakdown on who submitted forms is as follows: 

Vice President/President-Elect, 4
Secretary, 3
Member at Large, 26 

4. Because of the relatively small number of nominees who agreed to be considered for office, all committee members read and evaluated all nominee profile forms. Based on the initial evaluation, the committee identified the strongest contenders for each office and contacted their NASIG references. Each committee member contacted references with a standard list of questions for each office. As the chair also contacted some references, one other committee member also read the references to ensure impartiality. 

5. The final slate was determined by the committee and sent to the President on January 13, 2006.  Please note that the President and Executive Board are always informed strictly as a courtesy. The President and/or Executive Board simply accept the slate as developed by the N&E Committee. There is no vote on “acceptance” from the Board.  

The NASIG membership was notified of the official slate by an email to NASIG-L on January 15, 2006 by Chair Anne McKee.  

Vice President/President-Elect: Christie Degner, Char Simser
Secretary: Kay Johnson, Joyce Tenney
Member at Large: June Garner, Sarah George, Emily McElroy, Meg Mering, Alison Roth, and Bob Schatz 

6. The Chair contacted all slated nominees by phone and unslated nominees via letter by December 29, 2005. 

7. The call for petition candidates went out on January 18, 2006, over NASIG-L.  Each potential petition candidate had to have 10 NASIG members “in good standing” (as of January 5, 2006) support his/her petition. The petition and nominee profile form had to be returned by January 25, 2006, 5:00 pm, Central time. Three petition candidates had the requisite number of current NASIG members supporting them to enter the ballot. However, it was determined that one of the petition candidates was not a current 2006 member. Therefore, two petition candidates could be voted upon. These petition candidates were:  

Vice President/President-Elect: Jill Emery
Member at Large: Rick Anderson  

BALLOTING

1.  The ballots were mailed on February 4 with a postmark deadline of March 4, 2006.  Ballots were mailed to members active as of January 30, 2006.  A total of 405 ballots were returned by the March 4 postmark deadline.  Seven ballots postmarked after March 4 were received. 

2. The Chair counted the 405 ballots and then Carol Ann Borchert, a member of the N&E Committee, verified the count.  There were no write-in candidates for any of the elected positions. 

3. The Chair notified the President of the election results by March 27.  The Chair then contacted all nominees by March 29.  The N&E Chair notified the NASIG membership over NASIG-L on March 29, 2006.  The results were posted on NASIGWeb and announced to other listservs the following week.  The results were also published in the NASIG May 2006 Newsletter. 

ELECTION RESULTS

Vice President/President-Elect: Char Simser
Secretary:  Joyce Tenney
Member at Large: Alison Roth, Bob Schatz, and Rick Anderson 

The N&E Committee would like to stress that with the 2006/2007 Executive Board, we have one of the most diverse Boards since the earliest days of NASIG. The Board will include 1 publisher, 2 subscription agents, 1 book vendor and 7 librarians.  This truly does represent all segments of the NASIG membership. 

RECOMMENDATIONS 

Due to the unforeseen circumstances which resulted in removal of one chair and the appointment of another chair, the committee had to literally compress their usual 9 month working calendar down into a very JAM PACKED 4 months. This created a very high stress level and even more condensed actual working days. While this was not the timeline the committee had envisioned when they were asked to serve, the committee worked together as a team and performed admirably and, frankly, above and beyond the call of service.  The Committee would like to make the following recommendations: 

• Electronic voting MUST be implemented immediately. If the N&E Committee had been able to count on electronic voting, much of the stress level and intense periods of work could have been alleviated. Benefits to electronic voting are (but certainly not limited to) the following:
  • The ballot could be created extremely quickly-rather than the weeks it takes to order the letterhead/envelopes from the printer, wait for delivery, copying of all material, folding, stuffing and mailing.
  • Mail expenses AND delivery time would be instantly negated
  • The chair discovered that much has changed in printers agreeing to copy, fold and stuff the ballots.  Every printer the chair contacted stated that this is now the type of labor they would now outsource to other countries (such as Mexico, India and
    Ireland.)  The chair could not identify one printer in the 5^th largest city in the
    U.S. who was willing to do this work locally in the timeline required by the Bylaws.
  • Errors like printer’s mistakes, ballots that didn’t have the “official” envelope, packets that didn’t include the “official” ballot etc (all problems that occurred this year) would be negated as well.
  • Any question on voting irregularities (while never happening in the past) could be instantly confirmed or denied.
  • There are many turnkey solutions in the marketplace. This would not need to be a NASIG- generated new project
  • Voting percentages would increase as it would be much easier to do from either each member’s work or home. I’ve been told by members that the time it takes to manually fill out the form, send it in the correct envelope and then remember to stamp it (with their own stamp) is too time-consuming and difficult. Indeed, ALA realized a sharp increase of voting when they went to all electronic voting.
• IF paper balloting will remain, then a procedure must be implemented to insure that each member only votes once.  The committee recommends adding the member’s unique identifier to each official ballot return envelope. Thus, the ballot counters could check off each identification number as the envelope is opened. The verification lists would not have to be identified by member’s names-but just have the members numbers in numerical order
• On the ballot, it would be more informative to state that it is permissible to vote for less than the number required in each office.  The chair had to field at least 3 separate questions from members who wanted assurance that the ballot did not have to be completely filled in (1 vote for VP, 1 for Secretary, 3 for MALS) for the ballot to be “verified.”  Perhaps adding wording such as: “can vote up to 3 people” etc.
• The committee recommends eliminating any specific date references in the Bylaws. For instance, in the petition candidates’ section of the Bylaws, it states that the petition candidates must have all paperwork in by February 1.  Wording could be changed to something like “Petition candidates must have all paperwork in 10 working days prior to the mailing of ballots” etc.

CLOSING

The chair would like to sincerely and enthusiastically thank each member of the 2005/2006 N&E Committee for his or her dedication, perseverance and teamwork in accomplishing a 9-month calendar of work in only 4 months.  One of the committee members said it best, “We’ve always had the best interests of NASIG uppermost in our thoughts and actions.”  It was truly an honor and a privilege to have worked with this committee.  

Additionally, The chair and committee could not have accomplished their work without the able assistance of Kathryn Wesley. Ms. Wesley, the 2004/2005 chair of N&E was invaluable in her assistance to the chair of sending all the different forms, ballot format suggestions etc. This created much less work for the current chair. Kathryn was also an excellent brain to “pick” and could help alleviate confusion in different steps in the process. Kathryn also readily agreed to just accept all the ballots (never opening them but just sending them in batches); when the printer made the mistake of putting last year’s address on the return-ballot envelope. The election would have probably failed to meet the Bylaws-specific date requirements without Kathryn’s willingness to step in and be the official “mail collector.” 

Finally, the chair and committee would like to sincerely thank and applaud Steve Savage, Board Liaison. He was our consoler, cheerleader, positive thinker, and the largest shoulders we could have had to lean on. We appreciate and thank him profusely.

NOMINATIONS & ELECTIONS COMMITTEE
David Burke and Gail Julian, Co-Chairs 

Do you know fellow NASIGers who are brilliant, inspiring, or just all-round good people?  Why not nominate them for the NASIG Executive Board? 

The offices up for election this year are President/Vice-President, Treasurer, and three Member-at-Large slots.  All current NASIG members are eligible (except current members of the Nominations & Elections Committee).  Simply fill out the form found here: http://www.nasig.org/members/forms/nomform.html. 

There has been much talk lately regarding the future of NASIG. Nominating someone for its leadership is a great way you can help shape that future.