Meeting of the General Assembly, Thursday, May 25, 2006, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
1. Welcome and remarks (E Boyko)
The meeting was called to order at 12:53, with circa 180 members present. E Boyko presented a brief overview of the structure and governance of the Association, with a focus on the function of the Administrative Committee and its role are a coordination of the committees, action and interest groups, and other activities of the Association. The Association has approximately 300 members, and 255 attendees at this conference.
A review of the Agenda: add the 2008 Conference.
2. Approval of the minutes of the 2005 Annual General Meeting
Moved that the minutes of the Annual General Meeting of May 26, 2005 be approved as circulated. Moved: L Ruus; seconded M Wright. CARRIED..
3. Business arising from the minutes
There being none.
4. Reports of Officers
4.1 President & Vice-president - E Boyko & M Wright
E Boyko thanked the immediate past president, A Green. In this new role he was invited to Moscow in Dec 2005, for a conference on secondary analysis of data, and with a focus on the archive.
M Wright explained that since the Vice-President has no official brief, the incumbent can largely set his or her own agenda. Recently she has been actively engaged with the Strategic Plan. One new initiative to further the goals of the Strategic Plan has been the establishment of a Strategic Plan Implementation Fund. Members of the Association can apply for funding for projects that forward the goals of the Association. Currently, the Association has excess funds largely due to the efforts of the past treasurer over a period of 9.5 years.
A gift of appreciation was presented to W Thomas. W Thomas thanked regional treasurers.
4.2 Treasurer - J Green
The Association has healthy balances in all accounts. She intends to continue the hard work the outgoing treasurer put in place. Thanks are due to the current assistant treasurers: R Boily, S Macdonald and S Mackay.
5. Reports of Regional Secretaries
5.1 Asia/Pacific: for S Holloway by M Wright
The Australian Social Science Data Archive (ASSDA) is establishing a distributed data service based on Nesstar. A fuller report will be available on the Association web site.
5.2 Canada – for B Wandschneider by S Giles
A fuller report will be available on the Association web site. Canada has just conducted its quinquennial population census, for the first time it was possible to fill in the census form on-line. The census included a question as to whether one gave permission for one’s nominative information to be released in 92 years time. Canadians are currently working on a proposal to form one ICPSR federation.
5.3 Europe - M Kleemola
A fuller report will be available on the Association web site. The European region now has a number of new members, and there a lots of Europeans here at the conference. Two major European Union projects have been completed: Madiera (Multilingual Access to Data Infrastructures of the European Research Area) and MetaDater (Metadata Management and Production System for surveys in Empirical Socio-economic Research). CESSDA is creating a new public data catalogue, and revising the web page. There is a new data archive in Macedonia. National reports were received from 15 countries – thanks to those who contributed. The future will see lots of organizational changes in Europe.
5.4 US – P Baxter
US institutions can still submit information for the regional report, and late submissions will be included in the final report which will be posted on the web site. Several members have received awards: I Einowski received ICPSR William H. Flanigan award, B Bordelon received 2006 Thomson Gale Award for Excellence in Business Librarianship, and J Linden the 2006 recipient of the NewsBank/Readex/GODORT/ALA Catharine J. Reynolds Award. She hopes to deliver next year’s report en français.
6. Reports of Committees
6.1 Education Committee – W Watkins
Report of the Education Committee will be available on the web. The latest IASSIST Quarterly issue is on statistical literacy. A workshop on the same topic is being held at this conference. The committee intends to test use of a wiki as a communication tool between conferences.
6.2 International Outreach Committee – P Lackie
Ms Lackie introduced the participants who received International Outreach funding, as well as a number of other first-time IASSIST attendees from Ghana Russia, and Japan.
The additional unspent funds allocated to International Outreach last year were rolled over to this year. Therefore it was possible to fund three participants this year, from . Ethiopia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. Thanks to L Detterman, B Gunter & M Vardigan, who helped extensively in the work of the committee; these three have agreed to serve on Outreach next year as well.
6.3 Membership Committee – S Giles
IASISST has the largest membership in its history, with 88 new members at this conference. The Membership Committee is turning its attention to the problem of non-renewals, and the underlying causes of non-renewal. She would like to hear from anyone planning to not renew membership.
There are upcoming changes to the membership database, as well as an FAQ to address questions regarding membership. She thanked the assistant treasurers, the regional secretaries, and especially J Weintrop for work on the listserv.
6.4 Nominations & Elections Committee – A Green
The upcoming year is an election year. A call for nominations will be issued in January, with the election to follow in February of 2007. Up for election will be the Administrative Committee positions of president, vice-president, regional secretaries, as well as several members at large: 1 in Canada, 2 in Europe, and 3 for the United States. The IASSIST election is an opportunity to get more involved in the Association.
6.5 Publications Committee – L Neidert
The Publications Committee is very large - Association communications is the brief of the Committee. It is actually an umbrella for a number of sub-committees. Call for SP award, after the conference. KB Rasmussen reported on the IASSIST Quarterly, and thanked all those doing proof-reading and especially the editors of the special edition on statistical literacy. S Cannon reminded those assembled of the IASSIST blog http://www.iassistblog.org; postings can be sent postings to her, or individuals can become editors. No special permissions are needed in order to comment on existing postings.
7. Reports of Action Groups
7.1 Data Documentation & Citation Interest Group – G Drolet & R Nakao.
One of the goals of the Interest Group is to promote citation standards. The meeting the previous evening focused on tools for DDI 3.0.
7.2 Strategic Plan - W Block
The Strategic Plan includes three strategic goals which drive Education, Outreach, and the IASSIST Quarterly. He urged those assembled to read the Strategic Plan and to get involved in its implementation.
8. Conferences (E Boyko)
8.1 2006 – E Boyko thanked the Local Arrangements Committee and the Program Committee for putting together a superb conference.
8.2 2007 – Montréal. S Giles and L Corti are the co-chairs of the Program Committee for the 2007 Conference in Montréal, Canada
8.3 2008 – Stanford – R Nakao is putting together a proposal to host the 2008 conference at Stanford University, California.
8.4 2009 & 20010 – The Association is seeking proposals for conference venues.
9. New Business - none
10. Adjournment
The meeting was adjourned at 13:41.