Beverly Archive Project  Minutes

November 5, 2009

The Beverly Archives Project (BAP) held its regular meeting at 7 PM at the Beverly Public Library,  chaired by Charlie Wainwright. 

Present were:           

1. Welcome : Welcome to members.

2. Minutes:   There were a couple of typos in the October meeting minutes, otherwise they were approved.

3. Treasurers Report: The Treasurers Report was reviewed and approved.  The current balance is $1,130.16. 

4. 501c-3 Status:    John reiterated his concerns from last month re: paperwork, time etc..  Carol questioned the need for it.  Cristina indicated that in her past experience 501c-3 status is seen as a litmus test for legitimacy /eligibility for grants.   John said he would pull a copy of the application form from the web and start to rough it out.  Carol suggested BAP get a PO Box for mail, if we become a stand alone entity we would need one.  Cristina suggested we put a pro/con list together to help us sort out the issues, Charlie suggested we do it as part of next months meeting. Other concerns were the current lack of a constitution, by-laws, possible need of insurance for board members, updates to our 3/ 5 year plans, should we reexamine our goals.  Around the table it was agreed that we would reexamine our goals in December and take up the question of 501c-3 status again in January .

5. Wes Slate:  Wes, Judith Cronin (ward 6 councilor) and Sue Goganian (Beverly Historical Society) are a committee, under the direction of City Council President Tim Flaherty, looking at City Hall for A) it’s historical significance and its historical artifacts; some displayed, some not displayed and others displayed badly (for example there isn’t a plaque on the front of City Hall indicating it’s significance as a historic building)  and B) when people come into city hall how do they know where to go.  Wes suggested we come to a City Council meeting (1^st & 3^rd Mondays) and do a presentation on BAP. The meetings are televised on BevCam and it would be a great way to publicize BAP and the work we have/are doing.  Wes would like our help with their initiative and also volunteered his/the council’s assistance with our projects.  Wes suggested we wait until after January, when the new council is seated, to do our presentation.   Wes thanked everyone for volunteering their time to be part of BAP.  Barbara indicated she, John and Charlie had put a similar type of presentation together before and that could be used as a basis for the Council presentation. She suggested we use our January meeting to rehearse.

6. Web Site status.  Charlie passed around a number of graphs/charts representing various statistics about the BAP site.  Charlie will send them out in PDF format to the group under separate cover. Barbara suggested we include them in our annual report

7. Newspaper article / opportunity of a regular column. – As a result of John’s article being published in the Beverly Citizen, the paper’s editor asked Charlie if BAP would be interested in writing a monthly column. It wouldn’t have to be BAP related, it could be anything historical.  John suggested everyone write a one or two paragraph piece on something of interest (their organization or something that interests them). It would be nice if we could get an article in the paper to coincide with our presentation to the City Council

8. Grants – Beverly Cultural Council – John submitted a grant request, if received we could use it to help pay someone to publicize our work at City Hall.

9. Essex Society of Genealogists request – Barbara received a request from the Essex Society of Genealogists, they are looking to publish a list of materials that may be of interest to genealogists. She suggested that we just let them link to our website. If they want any hard copy material the can download it themselves from our site.   

10. Location of future meetings – Because we have a lot to do over the next couple of months we will keep the meetings at the library for the time being, in the spring we will look at potentially holding the meetings at our members’ sites or other places of interest.

11. Reports of Committees / Activities

1. The Library sent a request to Charlie for the topic of our Monday Morning Presentation

2. Everything in the vault at City Hall has been indentified and we are now trying to reorganize the material to benefit the City Hall Clerk and any future researchers

12. Our next meeting will be held Thursday December 3rd   at 7:00 p.m. in the Library. Charlie will be unavailable so someone else will need to chair the meeting.

Respectfully submitted:        Margaret Alfonso

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