East Suite, New York Hilton

Present: Sharon Domier, Sarah Elman, Bob Felsing, Wooseob Jung, Joy Kim, Gail King, William McCloy, Kuniko Yamada McVey, Hideyuki Morimoto, Zhijia Shen, Amy Tsiang, Karen Wei, Hyokyoung Yi, and Abraham Yu.

Abraham Yu, the new President, welcomed and introduced the newly elected Executive Committee members: Sarah Elman (Treasurer), Joy Kim (Secretary), and Bob Felsing (Member-at-Large). Other Members-at-Large, Vickie Doll, David Hickey, and Kris Troost, were unable to attend.

G. JEAL Online—Gail King

Gail King reported that all issues of the Journal of East Asian Libraries beginning from 110 (Oct. 1996) have been mounted on the Website of the Scholarly Publications Center (SPC) at Brigham Young University (http://spc.byu.edu). For the most recent year, only the tables of contents for each issue are visible. Following migration of the SPC to a new software system this summer, each issue will be searchable by author, title, and keyword.

Following the advice of BYU Legal Counsel, Gail has collected forms granting permission for electronic publication from contributors of past JEAL issues, with 70 more still remaining to be collected. In the future, the form will be included in JEAL and the release will be signed in advance. Gail hopes to add to the JEAL Archive to include issues as far back as possible. She will write a proposal to the SPC to scan past issues into the Archive. The question of making JEAL entirely online was briefly discussed, addressing the printing and postage costs, but no decision was made. Gail was thanked for her superb service as the Editor of JEAL for many years.

H. Electronic Reference Desk Task Force—Sharon Domier

The initial proposal for an electronic reference desk came out of the NCC Year 2000 Conference three years ago. Gail King suggested that the scope be broadened beyond to cover East Asia and asked the CEAL Executive for support. The Executive Committee agreed to the idea of a joint CEAL-NCC Task Force. Task Force volunteers discussed the various factors that needed to be considered in establishing a digital reference desk and looked for possible models. Sharon Domier and Gail King were funded by NCC to attend the Virtual Reference Desk conference in November 2000 and talked with the developers of Incubator software, which seemed like a good prospect for us. The Task Force members supported this proposal and NCC funded the customization. In exchange for beta testing, AskEASL received a free upgrade to the new version of the software. The new version is much closer to fulfilling the needs of academic librarians and seems to have solved most of the issues that task force members had.

AskEASL has now 80 volunteers, but the majority of questions are answered by a small number of volunteers. It has answered an average of 5 questions per week and many of the users are neither academics nor living in the United States, and therefore unable to receive traditional reference services. After discussions, the roles and relationship of CEAL and NCC for this cooperative project were defined as follows:

· AskEASL will be a part of Committee on Public Services’ regular responsibilities

· An NCC advisory committee will be created to oversee and provide support, encouragement, and funding when necessary

· Sharon Domier, co-chair of the NCC oversight committee, will work as a liaison between NCC and CEAL.

X. New Business

Equipment Coordinator for CEAL 2004—Abraham Yu

Sun-yoon Lee of USC agreed to continue as Equipment Coordinator for 2004. After discussing the roles of the Equipment Coordinator and the Committee on Library Technology (CLT), the EC made the following decisions:

The Equipment Coordinator will work with CEAL Committee Chairs and AAS before the Conference, and

CLT members will perform all on-site duties during the conference.

B. Asian Librarians Liaison Group (ALL) Meeting—Abraham Yu

Hideyuki Morimoto and Zhjia Shen will represent CEAL at ALL meeting.

JEAL—Suggestions for Feature Articles—Gail King

Gail relayed Frank Schulman’s suggestion that JEAL issues feature retired CEAL members and past leaders to document their significant contributions. This idea was enthusiastically supported.

D. JEAL—Should it be a Refereed Journal?—Gail King

Pros and cons of making JEAL a refereed journal —a recurring theme—were discussed again. Several members voiced their strong support arguing that the enhanced prestige would stimulate more contributions, while a few others expressed concerns that it may discourage the less-confident prospective authors from contributing. Gail will research on other journals that have made that transition in recent years and report on the findings to the Executive Committee.

E. Submission of CEAL Publications to AAS Archive—Abraham Yu, Bill McCloy

EC members were reminded that all reports and publications from CEAL should also be submitted to the AAS Archive.

F. Other New Business

Program Content Overlap Among Committees: Several members expressed their concerns about program content overlap this year. Committee Chairs were advised to refer proposals to other appropriate committees according to their content matter. Proposals that cannot be accommodated by annual meeting programs should also be referred to JEAL.

Membership Policy: Sarah Elman asked why inactive members are kept on the membership roster. She was advised that the method of maintaining the roster is up to the Treasurer, as long as the old rosters are archived.

CEAL Meeting Schedules: After reviewing the historical reasons and pros and cons of holding CEAL meetings before AAS, it was concluded that holding the bulk of CEAL meetings before AAS was advantageous because it gives us more freedom.

CEAL Directory: Jim Cheng and his committee did the initial setup and inputting of the online directory, but maintaining it would be the responsibility of Membership Committee if the proposed Bylaw revisions are approved.

Second EC Meeting: One EC member suggested changing the time of the second EC meeting to avoid a conflict with a major AAS event. Since not all EC members were present, this will be followed up by email.

(Recorded and respectfully submitted by Joy Kim, Secretary)