Meeting information

Date and Time: 8 March 2021, 4-5:30 PM (UTC)

Meeting link: See Outlook invitation

Attendees

• Laurie Arp
• Pascal Becker
• Allan Bell
• Kirsty Lingstadt
• Kristi Park (meeting facilitator)
• Michele Mennielli, guest

Note-taker?

Notes:

Old Business/catch up

• Notes from last meeting can be published in the wiki.
• MOU: will be discussed in next Steering Group Meeting. Currently all are fine with the last version.

Eligibility and selection of Leaders

• Current status:
  • Every Platinum and Gold member has a seat in Leadership.
  • 1 seat for every 4 silver members
  • 1 seat for every 8 bronze members
  • 2 member nominated by the community at large, voted by members
  • Representatives from Registered Service Providers
  • Ex-officio and/or emeritus members
• Discussions:
  • Last year Lyrasis got a seat with a vote in Leadership and Stearing
  • Mic: In the past we wanted the Leadership Group to grow to get enough people involved. We always had in mind that we might need to change something one day.
  • Currently we have a Leadership Group of 20-25 members.
  • We made adjustments by the end of 2020 to handle with that.
  • We'd like to have every region world wide represented. At the same time we want free votes of the members and not a complicated system about who can run or not.
  • Currently the system gives an incentive to pay higher fees to have a better chance to get into the Leadership Group
  • We can ask the members to have a representative of every area in mind when voting.
  • Having a membership level that guarantees a seat in Governance is helpful.
  • Maybe limit the number of total seats for each levels?
  • These rules will have direct impact on the membership fees DSpace earns.
  • We should mention the possibilities of consortium memberships without declaring all the rules
  • Leaders are people who wants to be involved. That's a pool of people that can be engaged for different kind of activities. The more leaders the better?
  • Shall we keep the current ratio? Shall we suggest one seat per every second gold member? Would that give an incentive to anyone to upgrade their membership?
• Consensus:
  • We need to add language about the Lyrasis seat
  • We want to add some language about the desire for diverse representation, but no strict rules
  • We want to add some language about consortium membership as an option without going into to much details
  • Consensus of having a structure that institutions that pay higher membership fees have a better chance to get a seat in the governance
  • Leave the seat/members-ratio as it currently is.
  • We should talk with each gold member. Reminding/Informing them that normally it is a ratio of 2:1 members/seats. We should ask them if they feel strong about the ratio of seats to members they currently have.
  • The working group reminds the Leadership Group that it always can invite people to seats in the Leadership Group.
• Timing
  • We need to change the timeline. We currently have to make the votes when it is often not clear which member is renewing or if some drops out. We also are very late with the community at large memberships.
  • Archive Space is doing the votes in May. That brings up a situation were members can vote for a year where they are not a member any more, while other might not be able to vote for the first 9 months of their membership.
  • We suggest to change the membership term and the governance term. Membership goes from July to June, Governance goes from November to October. Elections will be run by October after summer vacations are over in the northern hemisphere.
  • The last Leadership Group meeting should be used to discuss the members at large members for the coming term.

Leaving Steering kind of mid-term

How shall we deal with people leaving Steering mid term? Terms for Steering are three years. People are voted into steering, not institutions. The working group recommends to Steering/Leadership to clarify again that people are voted to Steering, not organizations. While clarifying also make clear that a seat in Steering would not end if an institution drops out or Leadership or membership. Leadership Group has to vote on a replacement.

Next Meeting

Next meeting will be about orientation for new leaders.

Kristi sends out a doodle.