Meeting Minutes

Notes from the meeting held at Institute of Education Library

Present: Christine Wise (ULL - Convener), James Anthony (UCL), Lyn Bowen (Westminster), Chris Brewer (IoE), Glyn Price (LSE), Jo Kilgannon (Courtauld Institute)

Apologies: Anne Barrett (Imperial College), Katie Sambrook (KCL)

1. Welcome and introductions

CW welcomed everyone to the meeting and introductions were made.

2. Minutes of the meeting of 22 January

Minute 5(ix): GP suggested that the action was amended to read "Group to work towards extending mutual agreements into other subject areas"

3. Matters arising

Minute 5(i) (membership) - James Anthony has joined the group. Jo Kilgannon is attending today as an observer and may decide to join. Colin Rennie at SOAS has agreed to join the group (will bring IT expertise).

Minute 5(v) (mailing lists) - There had been some glitches sending and receiving messages on the new Jiscmail list, but both lists seem to be fully up and running now.
CW had contacted M25 directors to solicit contact details of disaster contacts - she had had about 20 responses, and more were expected.

Minute 6 (website) - some small tidying up amendments had been made.

4. M25 Development Plan 2002/3 - 2005/6 - workplan to July 2003

The M25 Steering Group and chairs of working groups had met since the last meeting. Working groups were asked to present their interim reports on the development plan by 30th April. CW will draft our report and circulate it in advance for comment.

• the website
• training events
• mutual support agreements

ACTION: CW to draft and submit interim report.

5. M25 Development Plan 2002/3-2005/6 - revised plan for 2003/4

The group considered a new set of objectives. 

Mutual support agreements. Agreed to promote the existing global agreement (drafted in 1999) as awareness of it was probably not very high.

ACTION: GP to make original text available to CW for onward dissemination to directors and mailing lists.

Subject agreements.  Medicine had always been considered a candidate subject. JA agreed to sound out interest at UCL. CW suggested creative arts might also be a candidate, and would contact Doug Dodds, Convenor of the M25 Creative Arts group, to sound out interest.

ACTION: JA to consult UCL colleagues re a medicine agreement. CW to sound out interest for a creative arts agreement.

Performance indicators and income generation - the group felt that it was too early to build these into the plan.

The next meeting would brainstorm further ideas for next year's plan. Members should bear in mind the financial implications of any proposals, as the Treasurer has to be made aware of these (Joint training events with CPD25 are generally covered by CPD25's budget, anything else that has cost implications should be costed, e.g. using consultancy to update the disaster plan).

ACTION: Group members to be ready to brainstorm ideas at the next meeting.

6. Training events 2003/4

CW had spoken to Jean Yeoh, chair of CPD25, who are already firming up the training plan for next year. The group discussed possible training themes:

1. Writing a disaster plan
2. Adding IT procedures into a plan
3. Practical training on salvage
4. Large scale disasters
5. Linking library plans to main institutional plans
6. General exchange of information

Most of these would have to be charged for, although the exchange of information could be held free of charge. The group agreed to try to hold the exchange of information session this year, with "writing a plan" and "IT procedures" next year. For practical salvage training, more feedback on what would be required would be requested from institutional disaster control representatives.

ACTION: CW to work with CB on drafting the outline for the exchange of information event. CW to brief CPD25 on our plans for two session next year (probably during autumn and spring terms). JA to further investigate the topic of "writing a plan".

7. Website

The site had been restructured in line with other groups, but was still relatively bare in terms of content. Suggested that we build more links to resources - JA suggested Conservation Online (URL palimpsest.stanford.edu) as a vast resource of sample plans.

Confirmed that the main site is hosted with the M25 technical team at LSE, but the Disaster Control Plan is hosted at Royal Holloway.

There was some discussion about how to update the site. GP suggested that this should be coordinated by a web editor rather than any member sending amendments to the M25 Technical Team. GP agreed to take on the web editor role.

ACTION: GP to liaise with M25 technical team, and group members to pass all future website updates to GP.

JA reported that the DCP pages were incompatible with a Mozilla browser.

ACTION: GP/JA to investigate and if possible resolve with Royal Holloway.

8. Date of next meeting and venue

CW thanked all for attending and for taking actions.

Next meeting Wednesday 21 May 2003, 10h30, LSE Library.

March 2003