TABLE OF CONTENTS

Meetings & Minutes

Attendees: Margaret Carty (MLA Ex. Dir.), Bill Wilson (UMD CIS Coordinator), Antonietta Villalobos (Baltimore Sun), and Mario A. Ascencio (DCPL).

Although the meeting was extremely small, I decided to nevertheless hold the meeting. It was Antonietta’s first meeting and I wanted to take the opportunity to meet her and introduce her to REFORMA.

I. Membership Update
A. I informed the group that we have approximately 40 members. To be more specific we have 49 members. 30 are DC Chapter members and 19 are At-large members.

II. Chapter Survey
A. I spoke about the survey that I would like our chapter to conduct. The survey would allow our chapter to get some basic information about our member’s strengths, affiliations, and schedules. In a previous meeting we discussed the survey and said that we should meet separately to go over it. If I recall correctly, Maria Elisa, Elissa Miller, and Elena Tscherny expressed an interest in working on the survey. I gave a draft of the survey to Antonietta and asked her to assemble a sub-committee to work on the survey.

III. Update Fiesta Musical
A. As a direct result of 9/11, Fiesta Musical was postponed. Since I never heard back from the coordinator of the event, I believe it’s safe to assume that it has been cancelled.

IV. Outreach to REFORMA and ALA Spectrum Scholarship recipients
A. According to the latest REFORMA Newsletter, we have at least one recipient of the REFORMA Scholarship attending Catholic University. In addition, there are three non-Latino ALA Spectrum recipients pursuing their MLIS at the UMD College of Information Studies. Bill Wilson has been kind to provide me with their names and contact information. I suggested that we outreach directly to these students. Suggestions as to who to outreach to them are welcomed.

V. Chapter Web page
A. Does anyone want to work on our Web page?

VI. REFORMA Financial Recommendations
A. Recently, the REFORMA Executive Board has been discussing financial recommendations made by our new bookkeeper. Although many points were discussed by the EB, I only discussed what I thought would have the biggest impact on our chapter.

VII. Maryland Library Association Conference (May 2002)
A. Our chapter has agreed to co-sponsor a program with the MLA Diversity Task Force, Marketing Committee, and Membership Committee. The title of the program is “Creating Multicultural Work Environments: Building Effective Communities.”
B. Both Margaret and I strongly believe that REFORMA should hold a program on developing Spanish language materials. Therefore, I hope to get our group to do a program/workshop on developing Spanish language collections. You will see emails about this soon.

VIII. Schedule Next Meeting
A. The next meeting is scheduled for Monday, February 11, 2002 (3-5pm) at the Montgomery County Public Library (MCPL). The MCPL director, Ms. Henderson, will address REFORMA members with the Library’s achievements and goals. Ms. Henderson will probably spend the first 15 minutes of our meeting with us and then we will continue with business as usual.
B. I am working on scheduling a meeting with the director of the DC Public Library, Ms. Raphael, in April. The ALA Exe. Board meets in April and there is another important meeting that she must attend. Therefore, I will wait until after ALA Mid-winter in New Orleans to set a specific date. I have asked Ms. Raphael to address REFORMA with DCPL’s goals to serve the Latino and Spanish Speaking community. She’s also interested in hearing from us about how DCPL might expand services to the Latino/Spanish speaking community.

The meeting was adjourned at 5:00pm.

Respectfully submitted,

Mario A. Ascencio,
DC Metro Area Chapter President