The board of publications met in person at the 53rd annual ACB conference and convention, held at the Riviera Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. Members present: chair Denise Colley, Ron Brooks, Marcia Dresser, Doug Powell; ex officio member Berl Colley; ACB staff/contractors Sharon Lovering, Annette Carter (via phone). Members absent: Bob Hachey, Ron Milliman, Larry Turnbull. Tom Mitchell and Adam Ruschival also attended the meeting.
Denise convened the meeting at 10:45 AM Pacific Daylight Time. Ron moved and Marcia seconded adoption of the agenda; the motion carried. The June minutes were approved as distributed; one spelling error was corrected.
Editor's Report
For the first time in history, Sharon completed the affiliate certification process in May, despite all the problems with the AMMS database. She received the CDs of the 2013 conference and convention in mid-June and sent them out to everyone who requested them. She recorded the 2014 pre-registration form and convention program for those who requested cassettes. (It's becoming very difficult to get cassettes and labels.) Sharon put the July edition of the Forum together in June, and implemented some of Annette's suggestions for large print (line and a half spacing and larger headlines). As a result of these changes, she had to eliminate half of the "Here and There" and "High Tech Swap Shop" columns, and omit an article. The total word count for July was 10,427, which is the equivalent of an old 32-page issue under the previous design standards. Sharon concluded her report by giving us the comparative statistics of how many issues of each format of the Forum were sent out in 2013 and 2014. The July 2014 Forum went out to 4,010 large print readers, 1,720 cassette readers, 860 braille readers, 172 CD readers, and 3,596 email subscribers.
Other Forum Issues
Everyone agrees that we must increase our distribution of the E-Forum. The question was raised: Now that the Braille Forum and E-Forum are easily available and accessible on Audio Now, should they continue to be on NFB Newsline? We need to prominently list all of the formats of the Braille Forum and E-Forum in the front of each issue. Doug will work with Sharon to streamline the content that is there now so that we'll have some space to do this.
ACB Lists and Web Site
Ron will draft some language, to be considered by the new BOP, to be added to the policy manual clarifying what is appropriate and what is not regarding announcement of candidacy on ACB lists. Annette projects that the new Web site will be up and running by the end of 2014. She's proofreading the files, cleaning them up, and re-entering them. There are 2,000 pages (not including the archives, the Mini Mall, and the donors page).
New Business
Beginning in August, Denise will announce the date, time, and agenda of BOP meetings on the ACB lists so that people can attend if they want to.
There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 12:05 PM PDT.
The next meeting of the board of publications will be held via teleconference on Monday, August 4, at 9:00 PM EDT.
Respectfully submitted,
Marcia N. Dresser, Secretary