1. Welcome  

   1. Lee Yaffa stopped by for a few minutes to give a pitch for the Lynch Park Committee for the Restoration of the Carriage house.  At the carriage house,  foundation support work is done and flooring has been put out to bid and they expect it to be completed by June. The carriage house could then be used by people who have a function at the rose garden and want something inside.  On Thursday May 6^th at 7:15 p.m.  the committee will be holding an event at  the performing arts center at Endicott College.  The event will have ‘President Taft’ holding a press conference and taking questions. The press conference will be covered by WBZ Radio, the Salem Evening News and one additional TBD new outlet and moderated by former Lt. Governor Kerry Healy. Mayor Scanlon will present Taft with a key to the city. Upfront seating and attendance at a reception costs $100.00 Other seating is $40.00 

    

2. Minutes:   The minutes to the February meeting were approved. Carol wasn’t sure all of the comments attributed to her were hers but let the minutes stand.

3. Treasurers Report: The Treasurers Report was not reviewed.

4. BAP Business Cards - Charlie showed examples of the BAP business cards he had made up.  They were well received by everyone present. He will be happy to make cards for anyone who wants them.  Charlie will document the colors he used in case someone wants to make their own.

5. Library Presentation Debrief -  About 40 people attended.  Robin, from the library, sent thank you notes to Cristina and Carol and said she would be glad to have them back. A representative from the library in Hamilton, who had attended the presentation, asked Cristina if she would be willing to do one there. Nancy thought the Farms library would be interested in hosting a presentation.  Cristina is doing a write up of the event for the Citizen.  In the BAP room in the library there are copies of the Gaylord Guide to Collections Care catalogue  and a catalogue  from Archival Methods, the Archival Methods catalogue is offering a 15% discount until the end of May.

1. Charlie is working on a new member for the group. He has been in email communication with someone from an organization from Salem. The organization itself would like to remain anonymous but is interested in learning how to preserving its archives/history.  Charlie was asked if he knew if any of the city’s non-religious groups have ever contacted BAP for help with preserving their archives.  Nancy mentioned the Black Cats, the Italian American, Franco American and Veterans groups. Barbara mentioned the Union Club.  Charlie said that some records from the Beverly Female Charitable Society had been given to his church.  Carol suggested that an idea for a Citizen article might be to reach out to groups such as the ones mentioned. Not that BAP would be volunteering to do any work for them but to help the organization once it got all of it stuff together.  If we do a presentation at the Farms library Nancy volunteered to reach out to city organizations she was familiar with to invite them to come to the presentation.

6. Tour of the First Parish Archives -  was held at the end of the meeting

7.  Grants  

a.      Beverly Cultural  Council, grant awarded – $2,500.00

b.      Essex Heritage Partnership grant application -  the original application John submitted was sent back, it was resubmitted after some edits from Cristina, who has grant writing experience. If received, some of the money will be used for the city hall documents labeled as ‘ugly’ by Browns River and some will be used for interpretation of the city hall documents.

c.       NEH Preservation Assistance Grant -  Kobi identified this for us. Charlie asked if anyone had the bandwidth to do the grant application, it is due in May.  He thought an idea for the grant would be for the identification of documents across BAP member organizations in the most need of preservation.  Assessments and surveys are grant eligible but conservation treatments are not.  Since this grant comes up every year it was suggested we target this for next year.  We would pick the project and have it all planned out before we even complete the application.  It was suggested that either next month or in the May meeting we have a big brainstorming session. We could come up for ideas for projects and be ready to apply for grants when they came up.

8. BAP Website review  -  Carol thought that something should change on the front page on a regular basis, 3 or 4 times a year.  Charlie asked if anyone had pictures of their organization they would like to put up. As long as there are no objections, he is going to remove the “In Memoriam’ from the front page. He is going to put a copy of the library presentation on the web site but would like to have an audio file to go along with it. A current events section was suggested.  Charlie is going to experiment with the web site and then send out a note when he has made changes.

a.      The elevator speech will be added to next month’s agenda.  

9. Reports of Committees/Activities

a.      City Hall project  - no update

b.      BAP writing project –  Charlie still has some work to do on Barbara’s article on Fay Taylour so it hasn’t been submitted to the Citizen yet.  Cristina will write something up about the library presentation.

c.       Kobi was supposed to drop off some folders in the BAP room at the library.  Margaret needs to return the BAP DVD she borrowed.

d.      Nancy handed around a flyer for the Open Space walks, details are at www.beverlyma.gov/Public_Documents/BeverlyMA_Recreation/OpenSpace

10. There are some changes to the meeting schedule for our next 3 meetings. Our next meeting will be held Thursday April 8th at 7:00 p.m. Location TBD, we are hoping to have it in the Farms Library.   The May meeting will be held on the 13^th and our last meeting before our summer break will be June 10^th.  Charlie will confirm meeting locations as soon as he has secured them.