MARS Executive Committee

Minutes

June 26, 1998

Holiday Inn on the Hill

Executive and Judicial Rooms



PRESENT:  Executive Committee members, including incoming members: Nancy
Bodner , Andrea Copeland, Lise Dyckman, Linda Friend, William McHugh, Lori
Morse, Pat Rieseman, Marcella Stark, Amy Tracy Wells, E. Paige Weston,
Becki Whitaker, Committee Chairs, including incoming Chairs: Ellen Bosman,
Sara Brownmiller, Elliot Kanter, Sue Hocker, Naomi Lederer, Stan Lyle,
Julia Rholes, Nicholas Rosselli , Arlie Sims.



Lise Dyckman presided.



A. Orientation.

1. Hints for success in MARS.



a. Chairs need to attend Executive Committee meetings at least once during
conference and report on their committee's activities. If the chair cannot
attend the meeting, they need to designate a committee member as
representative.

b. Take attendance at meetings and distribute the committee roster forms
for corrections. Send updated roster to Lise ASAP.

c. Submit a committee report about committee's conference activities to
Jian Liu for RUSA Update and for MARS-L.

d. Keep in touch with your committee liaison and as the liaison serves as
your mentor in MARS.

e. All Executive Committee members are available to help.



2. Lise Dyckman's Goals for MARS during 1998-1999



a. Electronic participation by committee members. MARS will offer such
memberships, keep a record of the participation and contribute the
anecdotal evidence requested by RUSA.

b. More collaboration among MARS Committees and Discussion Groups. MARS is
moving in that direction with compilation of the User Access to Services
Bibliography for Program '98, and with Committee and Discussion Groups
co-sponsoring of open forums at MidWinter '98.

c. Continue to develop a dynamic MARS Website. (Prospective Web
Coordinators are being interviewed at this Conference.



B. Announcements



1.MARS meetings at Conference

a. Conference Program: What are They Doing: Understanding Patron Behavior
in the Digital Environment.

b. Hot Topics: Web Page Design and the Visually Challenged.

c. Education, Training, and Support: Education, Training and Support
Committee: Critical Skills for Evaluating the Web and Virtual Library
Sites.

d. Managers in MARS: Values in a Digital Age.

5. Public Libraries Committee: Train in Vain: Is Your Public Internet
Training Working?



2.  NonMARS meetings of interest to Martians

a. RUSA President's Program: Books, Bytes and Bots: Reference Librarians
and Users Confront the Information Age.

b.  ASCLA-Libraries Serving Special Populations Program: Universal Access:
Putting a New Spin on the Web.



3.  ALA Web Task Force (Amy Tracy Wells) MARS members were invited to the
Sunday night meeting. Issues to be discussed include: why so many cookies
at the site, guidelines for posting documents, rosters, guidelines for
keeping materials current.



C. Committee and Task Force reports



1. MARS Outreach Task Force (Naomi Lederer) Meet Mars social hour

follows this meeting.

2. Awards (Nancy Bodner) Is developing a checklist for committee use.

Awards committee consists of the Members at Large and the last's years
recipient of the "My Favorite Martian Award." Awardee will receive the My
Favorite Martian Citation at the Sunday MARS program.



D.  Other Business

1. MARS Website Coordinator Task Force.: (Eliot Kanter). Interviewing
candidates for the position of MARS Webmaster on Sunday.



2. Discussion Groups. (Lise Dyckman) Discussion follow-up between
conferences. Are Discussion Groups of the moment only? No, Discussion
Groups should report of activities and try to maintain a post-conference
discussion. Electing chairs is very awkward. Many participants at Group
are not MARS members. Becki Whitaker noted that MARS elects chairs to
insure open participation in MARS.



3. MARS Outstanding Reference Web Sites. (Amy Tracy Wells introduced
topic). MARS has been approached by RUSA to consider working on a product
similar to the 700 Best Web Sites for Kids. Jo Bell Whitlach, incoming
RUSA President has proposed that RUSA develop "Reference" Album."



QUESTIONS:

* Should this be a RUSA-wide project. CODES members as collection
development librarians has an interest.

* What form would this take? Comprehensive guide or just the award winning
sites.

* Would it include just "free" sites or might it include commercial sites.
Who is going to establish criteria?

* Should project be assigned to committee? No, we need a task force from
all committees to make is a section project, a model of the section of
working together.

* How would the project be managed for the long term? For the short term?



* Print models of this type of publication have editors and contributors
have been compensated contributing to the publication.



ACTION: Committee chairs were charged with taking the concept to their
members. They were also to identify committee members who might want to
work on such a project. Project will be the subject of continued
discussion at Executive Committee meetings at this Conference.





Minutes transcribed by

Marcella Stark

MARS Secretary

7/15/98

rev1/3/99