Publishing SIG BOARD REPORT: Spring 2004

Name of SIG: Publishing

Mission statement: To develop and recognize professional skills, and facilitate networking and information sharing, among ACE members who work in print or electronic publications.

Officers (current year):
Chair: Diane Bowen
Vice Chair: Natalie Johnson (until resignation in November); Meg Ashman
Vice Chair-elect: Meg Ashman (until December); Glenda Freeman (as of April)

Officers (next year):
Chair: Meg Ashman
Vice Chair: Glenda Freeman
Vice Chair-elect: TBA

Did the SIG present an Award of Excellence this year? Yes

Please comment on the nomination and selection process itself.

The Publishing SIG's nomination and selection process (below) for the Award of Excellence was developed by Meg Ashman, who also carried out most of the duties.

Selection committee: The three PubSIG leaders (chair, vice chair, and vice chair-elect) will comprise the selection committee. Because of Natalie Johnson's departure, Meg asked Sue Keller to serve on the committee, so the committee ended up being Meg Ashman, Diane Bowen and Sue Keller.

Selection process: Each selection committee member completed an evaluation form created by Meg. Then they held a teleconference to discuss their evaluations and select a finalist.

Timeline:

• December: Article in PubSIG newsletter alerting members that they should be thinking of deserving recipients of the award.
• January: Formal solicitation of nominations sent to PubSIG listserv.
• February: Reminder e-mail message sent to PubSIG listserv
• February 27: Nominations deadline.
• March: Completed nomination forms faxed to other selection committee members.
• March: Selection committee's teleconference to discuss completed nomination forms and select the finalist recommended.
• March: Name and nomination form of finalist sent to Amanda Chambliss - to check the things that need to be checked.
• March: Name and nomination form of finalist sent to Virginia Morgan - after Amanda has confirmed that the nominee has met the criteria.
• April-May: Nominators of candidates who did not win notified - after the Board approves the finalist.

What successes did you have in reaching those goals?

1. Web page: Meg and Kim Parker updated the Website several times over the year. Sue Keller and Meg checked it monthly, and Meg sent all of the updates to Kim, who made the changes on the site. Among the additions to the site:

• Updating the Professional Development Opportunities section, which includes workshops and conferences sponsored by ACE, NETC and other pertinent organizations.
• Posting the SIG business meeting minutes, goals, newsletters and chair's reports to the ACE board as they were completed.
• Keeping the PubSIG leaders' names, titles and contact information current.
• Adding summaries of sessions from the 2003 ACE conference that were of interest to the members.
• Posting the names of C&A winners and entries as well as the entry forms for the Gold Award winners.
• Asking in the SIG newsletter for members to submit listings for the Professional Tools section of books, websites, reference works, etc., and adding those responses to that section.
• Soliciting, compiling and posting the summary of ListServ discussions.
• Highlighting new additions (those posted within the previous 2 months) with a "New!" designation.

• To help members with their entries next time, we posted C&A materials - the names of the 2003 award winners as well as the entries and entry forms for the Gold Award winners - to the website and alerted members to that addition.
• We also asked SIG members for suggestions and feedback on C&A criteria and judges.

• We solicited ideas from the membership for break-out sessions, workshops and speakers for the annual ACE conference.
• We reviewed evaluations of sessions at the Kansas City conference to use in planning next year's sessions.
• We collected and posted notes from selected conference sessions to make them available to all members.

• We enhanced the content of website (see Goal #1).
• We wrote and distributed five issues of our newsletter (August, September, October, November-December and March) and plan to send out another in May. The newsletters requested input from members, informed them of Web site updates, alerted them to professional development opportunities, etc. Diane wrote and sent the newsletters; Meg, Natalie and Glenda gave advice and input for the content and reviewed it before distribution.
• Meg generated three Listserv discussions among members and compiled the responses of them and other such queries. She also worked with Kim Parker to have them posted on our website. Our hope was to have at least one discussion every 2 months. So far, we've had four - Grammar and Punctuation Guides (10/03), Editing Journal Articles (10/03), Crediting Sources of Information (12/03), and Dictionary and Thesaurus Preferences (4/04).

• The aforementioned listserv discussions were the main way we accomplished this.
• We also encouraged members to propose breakout sessions for ACE 2005, in which they may share experiences and expertise.

We did not send a welcome letter to each new member (an action step for Goal 6). That was to be one of Natalie's tasks, and she was unable to complete it before she moved to a new job and resigned from her PubSIG position. Although Diane had planned to write a letter and begin sending copies of it to new members, she has not finished writing it. Larry Jackson of the Electronic Media SIG sent us a copy of his boilerplate letter and told us about his practice of requesting photos of the new members and including them in a "welcome newcomer" section of that SIG's newsletter. Great idea!

Other than Natalie's resignation, the main barrier to our reaching more of our goals has been time constraints caused by staff cuts and increasing responsibilities at our primary jobs.

What would you have done differently?

I would have acted more quickly to get a new vice chair-elect on board and ask her if she would take on the task of writing and sending the new-member letters.

Did you use the funds provided by the ACE board? No.

What can the board do to help SIG leaders in their responsibilities and to make the SIGs more effective?

I think the board does a wonderful job of training us and reminding us about upcoming deadlines. The SIG Leader Handbook is excellent; I used it to help me plan our monthly SIG leaders phone conference. The deadlines list and the SIG report templates were particularly helpful, but I used almost all of it at one time or another.

Virginia Morgan's telephone conferences, e-mail reminders (she can nag - er, nudge - in a most delightful way!) and general support were also helpful.

My main advice would be to continue to have the SIG leaders share their approaches to their tasks - Larry Jackson's welcome letter and newsletter idea for newcomers would probably be of interest to other SIGs as well, and the Leadership and Management SIG's monthly phone chats, as mentioned by Carol Whatley, sound appealing and interesting. Any such ideas - SIG practices, boilerplate letters, procedures, forms - that can be passed along at the training and/or in the handbook would certainly help SIG leaders get the most from the limited amount of time we have to devote to ACE.

What other concerns or thoughts would you like to share with the board?

1. The added SIG input to the ACE conference is welcome. Thanks!
2. If state budgets continue to be squeezed as expected, the time that people can spend doing ACE work will also drop. We need to keep thinking of ways that people can get the most from our organization in the time they have available.

Address comments to Meg Ashman. Last updated September 2004.