IUVSTA Procedures Manual

The Records of the Union

The Record of the activities of the Union shall be maintained by the Recording Secretary

Recording Secretary

Although the Recording Secretary is not an Officer of the Union (i.e. he or she does not have an ex officio vote on Union matters) the role is an important one.

The Recording Secretary is appointed for a three year term by the President after consultation with the Secretary General Elect. The principal duties are:

To attend all General Meings, Executive Council Meetings, any Extraordinary Meetings and any formal meetings of the Officers which take place during the triennium up to, but not normally including, the Triennial General Meeting.
Before the start of any Executive Council Meeting, to confirm with the Secretary General his or her availability for the next meeteting. (Note that such meetings are generally arranged two in advance, i.e. about a year).
To inform all relevant Officers, Committee Secretaries and Division Chairs of the deadlines for submission of electronic copies of minutes, papers and reports relevant to the current meeting This may take the form of a printed notice distributed at the meeting or by email sent immediately after the meeting, or both.
To take the minutes of all the meetings (except meetings of Officers) listed in paragraph 1 above.
To prepare an electronic draft of such minutes and to circulate it by email to all Officers for comments and corrections within the specified timescale .
To make corrections recommended by the Secretary General and other Officers and to prepare a final electronic version of such minutes.
The Recording Secretary at his or her discretion may agree to act as the Secretary of any Standing Committee if requested to do so by the Chair of that Committee.
To receive electronic versions of all minutes, reports and papers which are associated with the meetings, specifically those of the Standing Committees and the Scientific and Technical Directorate and to format and collate all those which have been received by an agreed deadline.
To ensure that all documents are numbered according to the IUVSTA Numbering System .
To place all such minutes and documents on the restricted area of the web site set up for such purposes. The layout and indexing of the site shall be agreed in consultation with the Secretary General.
To circulate an email announcing the posting of the minutes to a mailing list agreed with the Secretary General.
To ensure that a secure electronic backup of the minutes is retained.
At the end of the Triennium to prepare a full printed copy of the minutes of all meetings held during the Triennium, starting with the General Meeting, and all associated documents, to collate these chronologically and pass the resultant bundle to the Past President to be placed in the Archives of the Union, together with an archival quality electronic copy of all the documents (e.g. a CD or DVD).
Where financial support is being provided by IUVSTA, to keep a careful record of all expenses and submit this to the Treasurer at agreed intervals.
It is helpful for background information if the Recording Secretary can arrange to:
1. Attend as many Committee and Division Meetings as possible, and
2. Receive copies of the agendas of all meetings.

Time Line for Recording Secretary

Format of Minutes, Reports, etc., which form part of the IUVSTA Record

General

All minutes, reports and papers for the Record (“documents”) are to be prepared according to the following guidelines.
All documents are prepared mainly in electronic format so that they can be distributed easily and at minimal cost to the Union.
Although any word processing software can be used, all text-based documents sent to the Recording Secretary shall be fully compatible with Microsoft Word™. Spreadsheets shall be compatible with Microsoft Excel™ and presentations with Microsoft PowerPoint™.
Archival copies shall be in Adobe Acrobat™ format.

Document Formatting

Formatting shall be a simple as possible, compatible with good legibility. Where colour is used, compatibility with monochrome printing for hard copy should be borne in mind when choosing the palette.
Text fount and size shall preferably be Times Roman, 11 pt, with headings in 12 pt bold.
Paper size shall be ISO A4 portrait with margins: top 2 cm, bottom 3.75 cm, left 2.5 cm and right 2.45 cm (ensuring broad compatibility with US letter size photocopying)
Each page of a document shall have a header displaying the document number according to the IUVSTA guidelines. This number shall appear twice, aligned with right and left margins respectively and shall preferably be in Arial Bold, 14 pt.
A footer shall be optional, but may be used to provide descriptive information, such as the date of printing. For long documents, it is recommended that page numbering in the form “Page m of n” be used, aligned centrally. The fount shall preferably be Times Roman, 8 pt.

Document Numbering System

Guidelines for document numbering are to be found in the document Numbering System for IUVSTA papers.

Documents on the Web Site

All documents placed on the IUVSTA Minutes web site shall be in Adobe Acrobat™ (pdf) format.
Each document shall be protected against all operations apart from “Open” and “Print”. Standard security is quite adequate, since this is simply to ensure that all copies made are identical.
It is recommended that each document be given the name ECMnn_abcdef.pdf, where nn is the number of the meeting (e.g. ECM92) and abcdef is a short descriptive title for the document (e.g. Minutes or EdComm or PSTD, etc). No spaces should be used to ensure maximum cross-platform compatibility. Underscores (i.e. _) may be used for clarity instead of spaces
All documents relating to a particular meeting shall be placed in a single folder or directory named to identify the meeting (e.g. ECM92 or GM15).

Structure of the Minutes Web Site

The minutes web site is maintained on an external server. The webmaster will provide details of how to log onto the server via ftp.
Access to the minutes web site by others is through the password protected “Members only” section of the website.
The minutes web site shall be arranged in a moderately organised fashion as a hierarchy of folders. All folders have titles which make the contents obvious.
The top level shall be a folder which contains the file for the basic home page of the Minutes web site (index.html); the IUVSTA logo (iuvsta.jpg) and a style sheet (iuvsta.css). It also contains folders for each Triennium.
1. index.html is the page which is opened when a browser accesses the web site. It provides the basic navigational table to the sets of minutes for each triennium (starting with 1998-2001).
2. iuvsta.jpg is a graphics file containing a picture of the IUVSTA logo. All other files in the structure which use the logo shall refer to this file. Hence if a new version is required, simply replacing this file with one named identically will change it everywhere it appears on the site. (Note that this does NOT apply to logos embedded in the pdf files which should embed the logo appropriate to the time of publication.)
3. iuvsta.css is a style sheet which here does little more than apply uniform colours to page backgrounds, etc. Again all pages refer to this style sheet so that a change may be propagated everywhere by altering this one file. It is a simple text file.
The second level of the hierarchy resides in a set of folders or directories at the top level, one for each Triennium. Each of these folders contains a folder for each Executive Council Meeting, one for the General Meeting and an index file index.html. These index files contain the basic navigation tables to access the documents from the individual meetings of the triennium
All the individual pdf files, one for each document are at the third level and are contained in the folders noted in paragraph 5 above. There is also an index file ECMnn_index.html which provides for navigation around the documents in the folder.