Evergreen DokuWiki

Attending: Grace Dunbar (Equinox), Ron Gagnon (NOBLE), Rogan Hamby (Equinox), Kathy Lussier (MassLNC), Meme Marlow (Worch Memorial Public Library), Amy Terlaga (Bibliomation)

The Outreach Committee had not previously elected a chair. The group unanimously voted to elect Kathy as chair.

We received some positive feedback on the annual report. It was noted that we may not have received more feedback because many people probably have an expectation that that project would naturally generate an annual report every year. People particularly liked the information that came from the survey, and Rogan has been contacted by a few people looking for aggregate numbers.

Rogan has started a planning document to ensure we have a better timeline for the report next year. We had a decent response given the compressed timeline, but if we do the survey earlier, we should have a chance to follow up with known Evergreen libraries that did not complete the survey. We'll begin planning sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas with the goal of launching the survey the first week of January.

We also discussed the idea of making the printing of the report a sponsorship opportunity for this year's conference. We could incorporate the sponsor's logo in the program as the benefit. Grace and Meme are planning to contact printers to price out the report.

Kathy, Grace and Elizabeth Thomsen (NOBLE) volunteered (or were volunteered) to work on the program for the Meetup at ALA.

Rogan has done some preliminary work on creating an kit that people can use to promote Evergreen at conferences. As a starting point, he used the handout Ron created for use in the ALA Exhibit Hall last year. He will share this work with the rest of the committee for feedback.

Part of this discussion focused on ramping up merchandising to raise funds for the project. Although a membership might be worth exploring, there were concerns from some members that it might be challenging for our project. More details regarding the merchandising discussion are below.

We also discussed the idea of generating more revenue for the project through the conference.

Ron and Amy volunteered to look at other models for using memberships to raise funds for the project.

Rogan volunteered to be subcommittee chair for Merchandising. Grace and Amy also volunteered to help out. Ruth was also previously a member of the committee, but was not on the call to volunteer.

Rogan noted that one of the challenges was the the items are very expensive because the project wanted them to be ethically sourced. We could reduce costs by 1) not requiring that everything be made in the USA or 2) buying in bulk.

Rogan also noted that we are missing an opportunity by not selling merchandise directly to attendees at the conference. We agreed that the project should reserve a table at the conference and that we should consider selling merchandise at that table. The Merchandising subcommittee will explore these issues further and report back to the Outreach Committee.

Amy volunteered to send out a Doodle poll for our next meeting, to be scheduled in July.