MEETINGS
o In the past year, PALA held quarterly all member meetings at the Polish Museum
of America and the Executive Board Meetings were held every second Tuesday of
the month, usually at the Eisenhower Public Library. I would like to extend an
invitation to all members to attend our future meetings and take an active part in
the organization.
MEMBERSHIP
o As of today we have 75 active members from 13 states (Illinois, Wisconsin,
Indiana, Michigan, Texas, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, South
Carolina, Tennessee, Kansas, California).
o We are proud to announce that three of PALA's members officially joined the
field of Librarianship.
Malgorzata Kot, Iwona Bozek, and Anna Demitraszek received their
Masters of Library and Information Science degree from Dominican
University January of this year.
o PALA members met during the 2012 American Library Association Conference in
Anaheim, California for a networking dinner and a visit was made to the Helena
Modjeska Estate. The report of this visit is posted on PALA's website.
o To help facilitate communication and collaboration of PALA's members, a
membership directory was developed.
The directory provides contact information and area of expertise of each
active member.
Access to the directory is through PALA's secure member's only website,
on which other documents are available, such as minutes of executive
board meetings.
o In the first half of the year PALA conducted two surveys to better serve its
membership and to develop future goals of the organization.
After the second Annual Meeting and Open House, PALA sent out an
evaluation of the event. Thank you to those who responded and hopefully
you can see some of your suggested implemented in today’s event.
The second survey was done in May to learn more about PALA’s members.
Respondents were mainly public or academic librarians, followed
The top reasons members decided to join PALA were: to support
by public library administrators, library students, librarians from
special libraries, academic library administrators, and other.
PALA’s mission, to network with other librarians, and to become
involved in the association.
Respondents were most interested in the following member
benefits: e-newsletter, followed by collection development
resources, a list of providers of Polish resources, programming and
outreach resources, an awards program, use of social networking
tools, scholarship and employment information, and a mentoring
program.
Direct e-mail, newsletter, website, and Facebook were selected as
preferred communication with members.
Most respondents were either extremely likely or very likely to join
or renew their PALA membership. All respondents would
recommend PALA to others.
Satisfaction with PALA was rated as high by a majority.
Organizing fundraising events and asking for donations were
selected by most as top fundraising approaches PALA should
consider.
ACTIVITIES AND DEVELOPMENTS
PALS’s activities and developments over the past year included:
o A Polish language collection development resource, which was one of the top
requested member benefits. The resources of the document were researched and
compiled by Aldona Salska.
o In June, revisions to the bylaws were proposed by the Executive Board and
approved by the majority of the membership.
o PALA’s website, developed by Marcin Terlik, was updated with additional content
such as the collection development document, updated bylaws, and the member
directory. This past year the website has received 1,789 visitors.
o The scholarship committee received a winning essay and will present the second
Vera May Barnes Zubrzycki scholarship during today's event.
o PALA is also planning to host a member event during the 2013 American Library
Association conference in Chicago. Ron Stoch, PALA's Vice-President, has been
successful in securing an exhibit booth for PALA free of charge and connected
with the Ethnic & Multicultural Information Exchange Round Table (EMIERT)
for a possible ethnic tour; including the Polish Museum of America.
COOPERATION WITH OTHER ORGANIZATIONS
PALA’s cooperation with other library and education organizations continued this past
year.
o PALA became an affiliate member of IFLA, the International Federation of
Library Associations.
o We are in contact with the Polish Librarians Association (SBP,
Stowarzyszenie Bibliotekarzy Polskich)
o In May, members of PALA attended the Polish Teachers’ Association
Conference to promote the association and to start developing a working
relationship with Polish educators.
CAMPAIGNS SUPPORTED BY PALA
During this past year PALA has joined two important campaigns, which you will hear
more about later during this event.
o The first is the Jan Karski campaign implemented by the Karski
Educational Foundation.
o The second is the All of Poland/All of Polonia Reads to Kids lead by
Barbara Bilszta.
Thank you very much for your attention and support. This concludes the Annual
Report.
Submitted by PALA Board
Presented by Joanna Klos at the 3 rd Annual Meeting on February 24, 2013