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Present: Aric Ahrens, Paul Belloni, Julie Collins, William Cuthbertson, Rita Koller,

Kevin McClure, Tom Mikula, Bob Pruter, John Shuler, Lynne Smith,

Michaelle Stewart

Guest: Kathleen Bloomberg from Illinois State Library

We were welcomed by Bob Pruter of Lewis University.

Round Robin

Michaelle Stewart from Poplar Creek Public Library- They’ve recently celebrated their 40 th anniversary. There are also plans to double the size of the current library. They are in the process of a lot of document weeding also.

Rita Koller-Lake Forest College- They are busy getting their government documents online. They also have hired a new part-time librarian.

Lynne Smith-Northern Illinois University Law Library- They hired a new technical services librarian in September and are busy cleaning up their voyager catalog.

Tom Mikula-Harold Washington Library- There is a new, library user friendly website that is just about ready to go online (this spring). Tom will email the listserv with the website when it’s online. They have hired three new librarians recently.

Paul Belloni-University of Chicago- They are looking for a faceted browser currently. Because of a large building project, many journals have been put into deep storage and will not be able to be accessed until the building is complete. Those journals in storage are accessible by other means (for the most part). They are also getting City of Chicago information online, specifically census materials. They have hired a communications officer and are looking into hiring an assessment officer as well.

Aric Ahrens-Illinois Institute of Technology- They have just finished scanning their 1,000 report for the Contrails website (http://www.gl.iit.edu/wadc/ ) which houses reports from the Wright Patterson Air Force base from the 1950’s to the 1980’s. They were also part of the NTIS testing, making more materials available online.

William Cuthbertson- Loyola University- Their Associate Dean left and there is a lot of transition going on. The Gov Docs department has been moved to the General Reference Area. They are also in process of redesigning their website.

Kevin McClure-Chicago-Kent College of Law- This spring they are looking into Marchive records. Any input from those who have experience with Marchive would be appreciated. They have also started a Government Document Blog (http://govdocsblog.kentlaw.edu ) that is directed toward faculty, with information on Federal, EU, and UN documents.

John Shuler-University of Illinois- Chicago- There are significant changes at UIC. As of April 4,2007, the Docs, Maps, and Microform Department will not exist. Their map librarian is leaving to work at Northwestern, and Marge Bengtson will be retiring. John will be the last document librarian at UIC and will continue to be in charge of depository functions. Also, the Government Information Online website (http://govtinfo.org/ ) is going to get a boost with the Big 10 providing the administrative infrastructure and the GPO has signed on to the project as well.

Julie Collins-Mt. Prospect Public Library- They have updated their website from 1996 (http://www.mppl.org/ ) and have added a fiction department blog. Since it’s tax time, they’re busy with tax forms as well.

News from the State Library- Kathleen Bloomberg, the Associate Director of Operations for the State Library, is currently the Federal Documents Coordinator since Mike Ragen retired on January 31, 2007. The annual Federal Documents meeting that is usually held the first week of May is going to be held toward the end of May or in early June. She was not sure about the grants, but did not seem adverse to the possibility of NIDL pooling grant money for a project (no promises, of course). There was talk about whether meeting would be better if it were only one day ( 10am-3pm) or if participants preferred the two day meeting format. Reactions were mixed. Illinois Documents are also going to be included in the meeting. Also, Kathy asked that if anyone had any agenda items to suggest, or any questions about documents, that they contact her at the State Library (Kbloomberg@ilsos.net ). A few of the agenda items bandied about were questions about the new leadership at the state library and what direction the library was taking in regards to the Depository program? With a new public printer at the GPO, are there going to be any new initiatives? Other ideas were questions about digitization grants and whether they were going to be available (maybe). Also, in regards to Homeland security issues, are libraries going to be the place where the public accesses governmental help in case of Katrina-like disasters? If so, which libraries, and what kind of information will be available. Kathy also talked a little about the continuing education program (CLEO) the State library has online and the expansion of it (http://www.islcleo.org/ ).

ALA Midwinter-Seattle- Kevin gave us the highlights. There was a lot of talk about the promotion at the local level of public libraries as providers of government information in terms of emergency situations. Also, there was more information about the EPA libraries that have closed and the fact that the communication was bad from the federal end. There were people from the GAO at the meeting to hear the concerns/complaints. The GAO said they were aware of the impact these closures were making.

ILA Meeting Oct. 10-12 Springfield- On Oct. 11 from 9-10:30, members of NIDL will be presenting a talk on future choices facing libraries regarding federal documents.

Elections 2008 and beyond- Kevin and John have agreed to continue on as co-chairs for NIDL until the fall meeting. The fall meeting is scheduled for Sept. 14, 2007 at Lake Forest College. At the fall meeting, we will be making decisions on how formal our organization should be and any other changes we, as a group are wanting to make.

Training Team-The training team was identified as Julie Collins, Bill Cuthbertson, Rita Koller, Aric Ahrens, Maria Figuel-Krueger, and Sonya Nordstrom. They were asked to come up some ideas for training and modules by the next meeting.