Dear SIBA community,

Our Board President, John Cavalier, stepped down this month to focus on his store, Cavalier House Books. Cavalier House Books just purchased their own building and are expanding operations, which is demanding more of John’s time. However, he will remain on the Board through 2022. We are so grateful for his leadership during a time of many transitions. 

I am honored to have been selected by the Board to serve as Board President for the remainder of 2022.  As the new Board President, I want to hear from you as the Board continues our work for you. The pandemic time vortex has made it seem like forever since the last time we were all together at a regional show. I hope you are making plans to join us in New Orleans this September. I am so grateful for technology that has allowed us to keep in touch and continue our learning through New Voices, New Rooms and other virtual opportunities that the SIBA staff have created for us. We also were able to meet some of you at our recent gathering in Winston-Salem, NC in April, our first in-person meeting in 2.5 years.

I want to assure you that, even though we may not have seen many of you face to face in a long time, your Board has been hard at work. Our priority this year has been to update our bylaws and policy handbook. The SIBA Board began this work three years ago but got a bit derailed (understandably) during the CEO transition from Wanda Jewell to Linda-Marie Barrett, as well as by the pandemic. 

In 2019, as part of the CEO transition, SIBA leadership re-incorporated the organization in North Carolina, which prompted a review of our bylaws. Some updates have been made to our bylaws already, such as ensuring we are not using any gendered language. One main issue we are still wrestling with concerns the new parameters for core membership. We need your feedback on this issue. We have had Board coffee chats with the membership about this topic over the past year—thanks to all of you who’ve talked this through with us. However, we need more feedback on this topic. We want to make sure that SIBA is as inclusive as possible to all novel model bookstores and to remove barriers that currently exist for those who wish to join. As we continue the work of updating our bylaws and policies, we hope you will send us your thoughts.

The current bylaws can be found here. We hope you will take a look and send any feedback you may have. We will be happy to discuss during the gathering in New Orleans and will dedicate time to this topic at the annual meeting and town hall which will be held on Tuesday, October 11 at noon EST.

I assure you that the Board always wants to hear from you so please do not hesitate to reach out with questions or comments to any of us. Here is a link to provide feedback. You can reach me via email at jamie@bookmarksnc.org.

Happy reading,
Jamie Rogers Southern
SIBA Board President