Minutes of the board of Directors
October 1st 2005 , Tartu, Estonia

Present: Ligia Ribeiro (Chair), Jean-Francois Desnos, Jens Doerup, Yves Epelboin, Markku Kuula, Viljan Mahnic, Martin Price, Andrew Rothery, Kristel Sarlin, Andres Salu. Sirje Üprus also attended to discuss arrangements for EUNIS2006.

Apologies: Bas Cordewener, Ivan Vrana.

1. Review of actions from previous meeting on 20 June 2005
  • The agreement with University of Tartu for organising EUNIS2006 was signed.
  • The Gartner agreement would be advertised to EUNIS members.
  • The TERENA agreement had been signed and would be advertised to EUNIS members.
2. Elections to the Board.

At the meeting of Council in June 2005 Yves Epelboin (France) Viljan Mahnic (Slovenia) and Kristel Sarlin (Finland) had stepped down from their elected positions on the Board. In the annual election Markku Kuula (Finland), Viljan Mahnic (Slovenia) and Andres Salu (Estonia) had been elected to serve for three years until 2008.

3. eLearning Task Force

Jens Dørup and Andrew Rothery reported that the idea of a snapshots survey had been discussed and received positively at the session during EUNIS2005 in Manchester and they would be taking it forward. The questionnaire is qualitative at the moment. It was suggested it should be circulated to EUNIS members only at first, with an invitation for ‘teachers’ to participate in the survey. More than one response per institution would be accepted. Essentially this would be a pilot survey. Results would be restricted to EUNIS members only. If this stage worked successfully it was hoped to widen the remit of the survey to include to non-members later. If so, results would be shared with contributors but not made publicly available. But it might be feasible to produce a summary report for wider access. Jens and Andrew hoped to launch the questionnaire after a meeting early in 2006, probably in Oxford, UK. It was intended that the first results would be presented at EUNIS2006 in Tartu.

3. JISCinfoNet survey

Yves Epelboin suggested the report of a survey in the UK of environments to support eLearning would be useful to EUNIS members. The survey had been commissioned by JISC and had been described by Jacquie Kelly of JISCinfoNet in her presentation at EUNIS2005. Martin Price agreed to contact Jacquie Kelly for details.

4. ITBOL

In August 2005 a joint proposal from EUNIS, UCISA, CSIESR, EUA, and ZKI entitled “ITBOL – INFORMATION and TECHNOLOGY INFRASTRUCTURE for the BOLOGNA PROCESS” had been submitted for Socrates funding from the European Commission. The proposal had been acknowledged by the EC but there was no further news of its progress.

If the bid is successful the Board recognised that the project will need senior people to work on it full-time. It might be necessary to sub-contract the work to other organisations.

The Board also discussed whether it needed a policy on supporting similar bids from member organisations. It was agreed it would be difficult to formulate a rule and that each case should be considered very carefully on its merits.

5. EKMA agreement

The Board discussed the draft agreement between EUNIS and EKMA (European Knowledge Media Association) circulated by Ligia Ribeiro on 22 July 2005. Martin Price was asked to revise the draft.

It was agreed that both organisations should advertise each other’s activities.

6. Rectors Seminar, Paris, Spring 2006

Following on from earlier discussions about a second Rectors Seminar on “Bologna” issues in 2006.. The aim would be to cover all costs of the seminar and one night’s accommodation, leaving delegates to pay their own travel costs, extra nights etc.

7. EUNIS Elite Award

The Board discussed the future of the EUNIS Elite Award. This been running in its present form since 1999. It is clearly a highly valued EUNIS activity – especially by the winning institution! But there are indications that both the quality and quantity of entries are dropping slightly. The Board agreed the Elite Award should continue, but that its scope should be broadened in future years, though it would be important to retain a link with information systems. It should be possible to include subjects such as eLearning, portal integration, and identity management within the Award’s remit. Martin Price and Ligia Ribeiro were asked to liaise over the development of a new framework for the Elite Award.

8. Future Conferences

The Board discussed potential hosts for future EUNIS conferences. Jean-Francois Desnos agreed to investigate whether EUNIS2007 might return to Grenoble (France). Jens Dörup would look into hosting EUNIS2008 at Aarhus (Denmark). It was agreed that members of Council should be asked to suggest possible hosts for EUNIS2009.

 

Martin Price , EUNIS Executive Secretary 7.3.2006