United States Federation for Culture Collections

Minutes of Executive Board Meeting held May 30, 1999

At Chicago, Illinois in the Executive Board Room of the Omni Hotel

Present:  Barry Bochner, Jay Grimes, George Huang, Marianna Jackson, Gina Koenig and Cynthia Wang

Call to Order: The meeting was called to order at 1:05 p.m. by Gina Koenig, USFCC President.

Approval of Minutes of the previous meeting of the Executive Board held May 17, 1998, in Atlanta, Georgia: Correction was made to Minute 13 covering the 1998-1999 budget to give a total not to exceed $10,050.  With this change the minutes were approved.

Secretary -- No report

President's Report

Gina Koenig thanked David Boone for maintaining a web page for USFCC. Dave will be asked to do a survey to determine members' preference for electronic or paper copies of the Newsletter.

President Koenig appointed Barry Bochner to head an Audit Committee. The committee will review the treasurer's books and report at the next Board meeting.

Gina wants to activate the Publicity Committee.  One function of the committee would be to obtain advertisers for the Newsletter.  Barry Bochner suggested targeting companies that sell supplies to culture collections.  Cynthia Wang suggested having banners for sale.  She was asked to seek costs.  Can the USFCC web page be used as a source of revenue in return for offering links to sponsors?  Dave should be asked if USFCC can be linked to ASM and AIBS. 

Committee Reports

Program

Jay Grimes reported he had attended a meeting in Tokyo of a committee of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development that was addressing the challenges facing curators of culture collections.  A report was issued from this meeting and a task force was created.  Jennie Hunter-Cevera, Ron Atlas and Jay are on the working team for the United States.  Jay said links to other countries are important in contemplating culture collections in the 21^st century.  He said Rachel Levinson is the Assistant Director of Life Sciences in the White House and represents biotechnology for NIH, NSF and USDA.

The next WFCC Congress is August 2000 in Brisbane, Australia.

Gina and Jay will talk to Keith Bostian about a joint ASM-USFCC program for this meeting.  Gina said WFCC would be happy to have a program from the U.S.  Gina will talk to Alan Doyle about a hands-on workshop for the Brisbane meeting.  A roundtable on packaging and shipping has also been proposed.

Editorial

Commendations were made to Alma Dietz for the excellent Newsletter. An on-line Newsletter will be investigated but no changes will be made now.

Membership

George Huang reported that Mary Meeker drafted a letter to send potential Corporate Members.  A discussion of where to find new members ensued with suggestions of ATCC, USDA and the E. coli Genetic Stock Center.

Porter Award

Wolfgang Lugwig is the 1999 recipient of the Porter Award.  His topic is "Bacterial Phylogeny: The Role of rRNA as a Phylogenetic Marker in the Context of Genomics."  The annual USFCC business meeting will be held following Ludwig's lecture.  Jay will ask Jim Tiedje to become a member of the Porter Award Committee.  Nominations for the Porter Award are always needed.

Old Business

Logo -- an update was not available.

Archives -- Marianna Jackson reported that the Board had given approval by mail vote for the archives to be sent to the University of Maryland library.

Budget -- in the absence of the treasurer, the budget discussion was postponed.

The meeting adjourned at 4:05 p.m.

Submitted by Marianna Jackson