Annual Report of the Special Projects Committee
David Kantor
June 2000

Special Interest Groups

The primary undertaking of the Special Projects Committee this past year has been the development of an organizational capability to offer and manage a variety of Special Interest Groups. This project has been fostered by Lee Smith. Beginning in February of this year we began offering a sign-up page on the website whereby interested persons could respond. In May we completed installation and testing of the software which will support Internet-based groups. This includes the ability to host real-time chat sessions for registered users. We anticipate significant usage of this resource to develop over coming months.

Study Group book donations

A project currently being mobilized is an effort to challenge every study group to donate at least one book each month to international distribution. This is being done in liason with Paula Thompson and individuals from the IFC.

Oral History

The oral history project remains incomplete. Barbara Newsom took charge of this project two years ago. She indicated that she would use Ticky Harries and perhaps Carolyn Kendall as adjuncts to help her with this. To date nothing has been provided to the committee in terms of developed materials and for the past year Barbara has failed to return any correspondence. I suggest

formally dropping this project until someone demonstrates interest and ability to bring it to some degree of completion.  A substantial amount of historic materials have been gathered and published as part of the website project.  This will continue to develop as a reader resource. 

Committee

Both Tony Finstad and Lee Smith are past members whose terms expired but who desired to stay on as adjuncts. Tony’s participation has been minimal due to personal health problems. As chair, I did not install replacements when positions became open, preferring to wait until a project was assigned and then to find individuals qualified and interested on a project basis. There

are thus three open positions including that of the chair whose term has expired.

Respectfully submitted,

David Kantor