MARS EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE New Orleans Convention Center-81 Tuesday January 13, 1998 Minutes Present: Executive Committee Lise Dyckman, William McHugh, Pat Reisenman, Marcella Stark, Amy Tracy Wells, Becki Whitaker, Paige Weston. Committee and Task Force Chairs and representatives: Sara Brownmiller, Susan Hocker, Naomi Lederer, Colleen Seale, Arlie Sims. Doris Ann Sweet. Visitors: Karen Diaz. Amy Wells called the meeting to order at 9:37AM. A. Announcements (Amy Tracy Wells) 1. MARS News. Amy Wells congratulated committee and discussion group chairs on a successful conference. Mid winter discussions forum sponsored by MARS attracted from 60 to 95 participants. Committees are requested to get their budget requests to Amy Wells ASAP. B. RUSA News 1. Concern was expressed about spamming on RUSA_L. Unsolicited email is an issue at many institutions. Amy Wells suggested that spamming is topic for the ALA Web Site Task Force. 2. Amy requests that members send her issues the ALA Web Task Force needs to deal with. One such issue is the the number of "cookies" that are set between the ALA page and the MARS page. 3. ALA has a budget surplus of $465,000. 4. Not all ALA Board members have signed the statement asserting that filters violate the Library Bill of Rights. 5. The Specturm Fund consists of $55,000. Fund is designed to support education of minority librarians. Some library schools, SUNY Buffalo and U of Texas at Austin will provide additional funding for Spectrum recipients. 6. ALA will experiment with becoming a virtual association . Committees will be encouraged to do their work electronically, and conference attendance will not be required for committee members. This change should enable many new people to participate in the organization. Divisions and sections are required to document virtual association activities. MARS has longed championed virtual participation and this dispensation provides an opportunity for us. 7. The copyright statement regarding committee members work has been revised. Members or their home institution retain ownership of their work, ALA publication retains the right to first refusal of all Committee work. C. Committee reports 1. User Access to Services (Sue Hocker). Working on bibliography "Current User Research Bibliography" to complement Chairs program at the Annual conference. Plans are underway to keep bibliography at current site but link it to MARS page and to publicize the work on MARS-L. Bibliography is a model evolving Web document. Committee was congratulated on developing the form for encouraging readers to bring new research to the attention of the committee. 2. Awards (Pat Reisenman) Had informal meeting at conference. Discussion now centers on publicizing MARS awards. Considering posting short biographies of previous winners on the MARS page. Also discussion of awards should be incorporated into the chair's orientation meetings at both Annual and Midwinter meetings. 3. Education, Training, and Support (Arlie Sims). Committee is working with LITA on joint Discussion Forum for Annual covering critical skills for evaluation in Web and virtual library sites. As Program scheduled on Saturday afternoon, it does not conflict with MARS Programs, co-sponsorship was approved. 4. Local Systems . (General Discussion) Both co-chairs have resigned. Paige Weston suggested committee might consider a project looking at the current state of integrated library systems. Consensus at conference that while many systems look promising, actual development lags. Paige will arrange a conference call with previous chairs and committee members to assist them defining a project that will attract new members to the committee. 5. Outreach Task Force (Naomi Lederer). Will sponsor an event at Annual Conference on Friday June 26. As four of five MARS members never come to conference, MARS needs means to reach these members such as using MARS-L to provide for continuing education. Mentoring programs for MARS members who come to Conference but are not active is MARS should be developed. 6. Management Committee (Colleen Seale). Developing a checklist for small and medium sized libraries to use for designing and managing reference web sites. As this is a product to be shared, committee should consider starting the publication process and how to get the product out to its intended audience. 7. Planning (Lise Dyckman and Naomi Lederer). Continued discussion on the Web version of the MARS handbook. Agreed that would be links from each section to pages. Doris Ann Sweet is reviewing MARS conference evaluation forms for the handbook. Began discussing a process of archiving electronic documents. Agreed that a paper copy of all electronic documents be retained by the archivist. General discussion as the appropriateness of the Planning Committee working on the policy. Becki Whitaker moved that an ad hoc group study the issue. The motion was seconded and carried. Becki Whitaker, Pat Reisenman, and William McHugh will consider the issues of archiving electronic documents and make a preliminary report at Annual Conference. 8. User Access to Services (Sue Hocker) Expect to continually update bibliography until summer. Plans are underway to link the bibliography to the 1998 Program Website. It was recommended the bibliography be publicized on MARS-L. D. Other Business 1. Becki Whitaker noted that MARS logo and the distinctiveness of the MARS column has disappeared from the latest Update and has deprived not only MARS but all RUSA sections of their identity. She recommend this concern be taken to the RUSA Board. 2. Amy Tracy Wells brought two requests for co-sponsorships of programs from ASCLA. MARS will not co-sponsor. One proposal dealt with adaptive technologies the subject of last summer's Public Libraries Program, and the second proposal conflicted with 1999 RUSA president's program. Meeting adjourned at 11:45 am. Minutes transcribed by Marcella Stark 2/25/98 Corrected 4/25/98