BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON

130th Annual Meeting, 20 May 2003

President Roy McDiarmid called the meeting to order at 11:00 a.m. in the Waldo Schmitt Room, National Museum of Natural History (NMNH). Council members present: Marilyn Schotte and Don Wilson (Elected Council), Rafael Lemaitre (President Elect), Richard Sternberg (Editor), Chad Walter (Treasurer), Carole Baldwin (Secretary), and Richard Banks, Stephen Cairns, Bruce Collette, Brian Kensley, David Pawson, and Storrs Olson (Past Presidents).
McDiarmid announced that due to illness, President Kensley would not be presiding over the meeting. McDiarmid noted that the Society had dealt with a number of difficult issues during the past year, including the replacement of long-time Proceedings Editor Brian Robbins and mail problems related to anthrax contamination of a postal facility in Washington, D.C.
Minutes of the 129th Annual Meeting were summarized by Secretary Baldwin. Those minutes did not appear in the Proceedings last year as usual but will appear in Volume 116(2). Following approval of the minutes, McDiarmid called on Chad Walter for the Treasurer's Report (Table 1). Income for the period 1 January 2002 to 31 December 2002 was $119,712.34, and expenses for the same period were $103,855.39. Total Society assets as of 15 April 2003 were $89,614.17. The value of the endowment fund decreased by $9,513.60 for the calendar year, a loss that includes fees paid to buy into the American Funds Investment Company of America as well as a net loss from stock-market fluctuations. The Audit Committee, Brian Kensley and Richard Banks, indicated that they had reviewed the books and ledgers of the Treasurer and found all financial records to be accurate and in good order. The Treasurer's report was approved.
Editor Richard Sternberg reported that four issues of Volume 115 were published comprising 69 papers and 909 pages. As of 20 May 2003, there were 27 submissions, down from 42 in 2002 but close to the 33 submissions at the same date in 2001. There continues to be no backlog for papers accepted in the Proceedings.
Sternberg announced that beginning with Volume 116(1), the table of contents and abstracts for the Proceedings can be viewed at www.allenpress.com in their "apt.online" section. Sternberg also noted that during the past year, a few authors had pulled manuscripts from the Proceedings at late stages in the publication process when they discovered they would have to pay page charges. Those authors indicated that they were transferring their papers to Zootaxa, a taxonomic journal available both online and in printed form that does not require contributors to pay page charges. President McDiarmid announced that he will appoint a special committee to investigate the effects Zootaxa and other largely online journals with rapid publication rates might have on the Proceedings. The Editor's report was accepted.
The Finance Committee (Stephen Cairns, Oliver Flint, Frank Ferrari, and Chad Walter) reported that three of the four recommendations approved last year by the Council had been put into effect (increasing the cost of reprints, increasing the cost of library subscriptions, and re-investing $55,000 of the Society's endowment funds into the American Funds Investment Company of America). Gift-fund categories for potential benefactors have not yet been defined.

Custodian of Publications Storrs Olson announced that the organized separates have been distributed to appropriate NMNH Divisions, and a plan to decrease the stock of bound issues of the Proceedings will be formulated once the Society's Web site is online. Steve Gardiner, Associate Editor for Invertebrates for the Proceedings, has been working on the Web site on behalf of the Society. He projected sample pages from the site for comments and discussion. The proposed name of the Web site is http://www.biolsocwash.org. Currently, the Web site can be found at http://www.brynmawr.edu/biology/BSW/biosocwash.html.

In response to suggestions made at the 2002 annual meeting that a single annual meeting be held in the future that combines the Council meeting and the annual meeting, a single meeting was held this year with Council members meeting fifteen minutes prior to the commencement of the annual meeting. The annual meeting was adjourned at 12:20 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,
Carole C. Baldwin, Secretary

^a - annual gain in value of Endowment

^b - annual loss in value of Endowment