The ACB Board of Publications met via teleconference on Monday, November 4. Members present: chair Denise Colley, Ron Brooks, Judy Jackson, Doug Powell; ex officio members Berl Colley, Bob Hachey; ACB staff/contractors Sharon Lovering, Annette Carter. Members absent: Marcia Dresser, Ron Milliman, Larry Turnbull.
Chair Denise Colley convened the meeting at 9:05 PM EST. Bob moved and Ron seconded adoption of the agenda as distributed; the motion carried. Ron moved and Doug seconded approval of the October meeting minutes; the motion was adopted.
Editor’s Report
Sharon’s report primarily consisted of sharing information on the bids she has received for braille, large print, and audio production of the ACB Braille Forum. Ron moved, and Doug seconded, that Chair Denise Colley and Editor Sharon Lovering be authorized to negotiate final bid prices with all proposers, and to recommend to the Board of Directors those businesses in each category who offer the best final pricing to ACB. The motion carried. Ron moved and Doug seconded acceptance of the editor's report; the motion was adopted.
Internet Oversight Committee
The committee last met in early October and spent the bulk of the meeting working on the best practices document. Ron will draft an additional guideline to be included in this document regarding an individual's rights and an affiliate's responsibilities when infractions occur or disputes arise. Ron suggested that the list rules be attached to the best practices document so that affiliates will have a template that they can customize. Bob will send the list rules to the BOP, and we will discuss this again next month.
Oral History Project
Berl has emailed everyone who has agreed to be interviewed, and he hopes to conduct these interviews within the next two weeks. The goal is to edit and compile this new set of interviews and make it available through the ACB Store.
Leadership Training
The committee will next meet on November 11. They are working on the agenda and finding presenters. This leadership training, to be held on July 11 in Las Vegas, will be advertised in the ACB Braille Forum, the E-Forum, and on ACB Radio.
Web Site Task Force
Following reorganization, this committee met for the first time this morning. Ron Brooks is the BOP liaison. They discussed policies for submissions to the Web site and worked on standardized procedures people will use for submissions, e.g. what the submission is, its purpose, when it should be posted and when it should be taken down, etc. Each submission will go to the Web Task Force chair and Executive Director and then on to the Web Administrator. Discussion also centered around urging affiliates to publicize their conventions and other events on the site as well as how to entice ACB members to visit the site often to find out what's going on nationally and locally. The task force will verify pricing for creating podcasts of the audio version of the ACB Braille Forum, and this will be put into the budget as an operational expense. The long-range goal is to create an app for the iPhone and Android platforms to play these podcasts as well as other content.
The "What's New" and "Coming Events" sections will be on the front page of the new site. Annette said that because she is in the process of getting the scholarship and auction information up by December 1, it will probably be January before the new site will be ready.
Social Networking
The Twitter team is doing very well. Additional help is needed on the Facebook team. There are 240 "likes" on the Facebook page. Francine Patterson is posting pictures and advocacy information to this page.
Doug commended Ron Milliman for his excellent and timely Public Relations Committee report. Ron moved and Doug seconded acceptance of the committee reports; the motion was adopted.
Policy Update
After lengthy deliberation, the BOP decided that we will not make any significant changes in 2014. Before making substantial changes, particularly with regard to implementation of the CCLVI best practices, we need to do research to determine what we can and cannot do. Our publications must be accessible and readable, but also as economical as possible. A group is studying the CCLVI recommendations and their ramifications, and this will take time. We must determine what people truly need for accessibility, as well as the things that would be nice to have but would be difficult or impossible from a budgetary standpoint. We also need feedback from the ACB membership, and we will get the survey disseminated as quickly as possible. Even so, however, it will take time to collect and process the results of the survey. The BOP members are well aware of and sympathetic to the concerns of the large print and braille readers.
There will be six issues of the ACB Braille Forum and six issues of the E-Forum in 2014; we may be able to make small changes in format that do not impact the budget. The BOP must submit its budget at the end of this week. The BOP can make recommendations, but the Board of Directors approves the final budget, which they will do in December. Next year, after doing our research, the BOP will make recommendations. However, the Board of Directors will ultimately decide what will and will not be implemented.
Denise asked Doug, Marcia, and Judy to update the policy manual; Doug will take the lead on this. The other BOP members will submit their suggestions for updates to Doug.
BOP Budget
Denise was unable to draft a budget for the BOP to discuss tonight because she did not have all the necessary information. Ron will come up with a rough draft using Denise's information and the figures Sharon provided earlier in this meeting. Paul Edwards also offered to assist. Ron will send the draft to the other BOP members for comment. ACB President Kim Charlson said it was fine to submit the BOP budget on Monday or Tuesday, since Denise's state convention is being held this weekend; Denise just needs to inform Melanie Brunson of this.
New Business
The Board of Publications holds two face-to-face meetings a year. The midyear meeting will take place on February 21, 2014, at 7:00 PM at the Holiday Inn/National Airport. Annette suggested that the BOP members have a group picture taken to be put up on the Web site.
Each BOP member must sign a confidentiality statement and a statement regarding conflict of interest. We can either mail these to the ACB national office or sign them at the midyear meeting.
The meeting was adjourned at 11:15 PM.
Respectfully submitted,
Marcia N. Dresser, Secretary