The ACB Board of Publications met via teleconference on Monday, April 1. Members Present: chair Paul Edwards, Nolan Crabb, Denise Colley, Marcia Dresser, Judy Jackson; ex officio members Berl Colley, Bob Hachey; ACB staff/contractors Sharon Lovering, Annette Carter, Larry Turnbull. Members absent: Ron Milliman. Several guests also participated on the call.
Chair Paul Edwards convened the meeting at 9:05 PM Edt. Marcia moved and Denise seconded adoption of the agenda as received; the motion carried. Nolan moved and Denise seconded approval of the midyear meeting minutes; the motion was adopted.
Editor's Report
The May edition of the ACB Braille Forum will be published in the conventional manner; the June and July issues will be electronic. Sharon continues to enter all the affiliate data into the new database and hopes to have the membership count by the end of May. Despite some minor kinks and bugs, Sharon finds this database very efficient and easy to use.
Leadership Training
Nolan reported that Crossroads, hosted by Kentucky, was one of the best conferences he has ever attended. Six states participated. Plans are in the works for the next Crossroads conference in March 2014, probably at the same location. Berl reported that the Midwest training seminar will be held in St. Louis in late August. Jim Jirak is vice chair of the leadership training task force, which is an ad hoc committee. Berl will check with the candidates for ACB president to see if this task force would remain in place under their administrations.
Oral History Project
Two interviews were conducted in March, with three more scheduled in April. The gathering of data is ongoing.
Marcia moved and Judy seconded acceptance of three committee reports--public relations (as emailed to the BOP), leadership training, and oral history. The motion carried.
ACB Radio
ACB Radio has just moved to the new, permanent server, and Larry is in the process of moving all of the archives to this new server, which has a huge amount of disk space. ACB is saving a great deal of money because we are getting three times the band width for a quarter of the price. California will stream its convention April 4-11, with Nebraska to follow April 19-21. Florida will stream its convention in May.
Website Task Force
In December 2012, the BOP decided that the main format of ACB documents on the Web would be rtf. However, pictures require a great deal of space in the rtf format. Nolan, Annette, and Paul held several meetings to discuss this, and they proposed that ACB use doc and txt files. Pictures are easy to produce in doc and docx files, and txt files can be easily downloaded to electronic devices. Judy moved and Marcia seconded adoption of this change; the motion carried. Larry committed to having the podcast links to the ACB Braille Forum repaired by April 23. Updates to the convention page are proceeding on or ahead of schedule, and the pages for the ACB Mini Mall (formerly the ACB Store) are progressing. The task force concluded that every ACB affiliate will have one page on the Web site (as opposed to multiple pages) to display their information because information is much easier for people to find when confined to just one page. Marcia moved and Denise seconded acceptance of Nolan's report; the motion carried.
Report from the Web Administrator
Through training, Annette will address the formatting inconsistencies in the Forum. Work will resume on the large print project after the convention. Annette will do the large print convention program, and she is working with Janet Dickelman and Lane Waters on formatting.
Executive Session
The five voting BOP members will hold an executive session via teleconference to discuss the BARD bids on Thursday, April 4, at 11:30 AM EDT.
Convention Programming
Marcia, Judy, and Denise will write the Forum article regarding the candidates' page. Annette will discuss changes and updates to the ACB Web site at the BOP meeting in Columbus on Saturday, July 6, from 10:30 to noon. The other BOP meeting will occur on Wednesday, July 10, from 1:15 until 2:30, when we will discuss the ACB E-Forum and describe methods of producing an audio newsletter easily and inexpensively. Nolan will participate remotely because he cannot attend the convention.
The meeting was adjourned at 10:38 PM EDT.
The next meeting of the BOP will take place via teleconference on Monday, May 6, at 9:00 PM EDT.
Respectfully submitted,
Marcia N. Dresser, Secretary