MARS Executive Committee Meeting III Tuesday, January 15, 2008 Philadelphia PA, Convention Center, Room 308, 8:00am 10:00am APPROVED MINUTES Present: Executive Committee Members: Mary Mintz, Chair; Rosemary Meszaros, Vice Chair; Kathleen Kern, Past Chair; Carolyn Strickland, Member at Large; Laura Probst, Secretary. Committee and Task Force Chairs and Representatives: Charles Cobine, Linda Friend, Alex Hodges, Jim Langan, Carolyn Larson, Marina Salcedo, Sam Stormont, Doris Ann Sweet. Dave Tyckoson RUSA President Dave was attending section meetings to deliver the message that its sections make RUSA successful. He reported that membership in RUSA is as high as it has ever been and that the budget is also in very good shape. He talked about several initiatives that he is leading: First initiative: How can we give more value to RUSA members who are unable to attend meetings? Continuing education courses have been more successful than anyone ever imagined, an indication that there is great demand for our materials. RUSA is planning a free, online event for member in April. Technology and topic have not yet been determined. The ideal format will be a live web cast with chat with the audience. The next choice would be a streamed webcast. Recommendations from MARS are welcome for technology to use or topics to cover. Second initiative: RUSA should be premier organization for reference and user services. We haven t been at the forefront of influencing and leading innovation. The RUSA Board is looking to create a fund to support work that will push the profession forward. Dave s goal is to have RUSA be the place that helps push research forward. Third initiative: Finding ways to reach out to local, state, regional organizations not competing with them but partnering with them to get content out to those librarians who chose to participate in professional organizations at the local level. Dave has formed a task force to look at how to move forward. A few RUSA announcements: The budget is very good. Increased membership has generated more money. The portion of budget set aside for investment has yielded interest that is available to support initiatives. RUSA Awards ceremony They would like to make it more of an event and streamline the ceremony to speed up presentations. There will be food and a cash bar. The Board would like to have section awardees present as well. (The MARS awards can still be
presented at the Chair s program, but they want the awardees to be recognized this second time.) They are creating a nice brochure featuring the awardees. Streamline Board meetings. They don t want to listen to oral reports, rather submitting written reports. Only action items will be covered on agenda. Committee representatives. There are some committees where the section liaisons are not fulfilling their role in communicating between the RUSA level committee and the section. Neal Wyatt is soliciting recommendations from MARS about MARS members who would be good for RUSA level committees. ALA Communities RUSA has been the only user of this service. The Communities will go away and be migrated to another service probably by the end of 2008. Attention should be given to preserve documents that are stored there. Discussion: The question was asked, if the online event is successful, is RUSA considering offering online participation at conferences as ACRL does. Dave wants to see how the online event goes before considering broader events. He would prefer looking at events/opportunities that are not associated with the conference, and that are moderately priced. The responsibilities of the RUSA Publications Committee has changed as the number of RUSA publications has dropped considerably. They are migrating the committee from publications to communication. The committee is considering ideas for a new charge, and looking at ways to do different types of publications Web based, less formal, more timely that get content out and improve our communication processes and pathways. There is a problem in that individual committees use multiple means of communicating and storing their documents (wiki, ALA Communities, individual institutional web spaces). Committee Reports (continued) Products and Services Marina Salcedo Two visitors attended the meeting. The committee discussed a couple of issues. They have developed a committee wiki and have a link to the wiki from the committee web page. It is a primary communication tool and has supported brainstorming activities. They are looking for a way to involve virtual committee members during the conference and are interested in piloting ideas that may be useful for other groups. They would need a laptop, a wireless connection, and a separate room that wouldn t have the noise of the all committee meeting space, an agreed upon common software. Mary Mintz suggested that Marina contact Barb Mann (co chair of the Preconference Planning Committee) to find out what software they are using. It may be too early to ask ALA to identify a standard tool, but MARS may request RUSA funding to support buying some tool. The joint sponsorship of Hot Topics discussion was very successful. Local Systems and Services Charles Cobine
The committee had a lively discussion of their upcoming discussion forum idea, Who is using our computers management of walk in users and public computing (public and academic libraries. They are considering joint sponsorship with the Public Libraries Committee. They could include related topics such as laptop checkout, filtering, and reservation systems. They asked the Executive Committee whether the discussion should be scheduled for Annual 2008 or for Midwinter 2009. Executive Committee approved scheduling the discussion for Midwinter 2009. They also discussed membership in the committee, and there was some confusion about length of terms and recruiting new members. Marina asked about the maximum number of members for committees. Mary Mintz indicated that the Handbook identifies the limits which vary somewhat by committee. Rosemary Meszaros can work with committee chairs to ensure that committees have continuity in their membership. Action item: Mary Mintz will resend to Executive committee and to committee chairs the information about conference scheduling deadlines. Outreach Jim Langan The Happy Hour was very successful with 40 50 attendees. The committee is considering other ideas for outreach in addition to happy hour (attending ball game, wine tasting event) probably holding it on Sunday. Kathleen Kern suggested looking at other sections and divisions who have ticketed events that aren t managed through ALA registration. The committee is looking at recruiting additional members. Best Free Websites Jim Langan Jim thanked those who helped with various glitches and problems over the past few months. In the next few weeks the committee will begin looking for new Websites, and Jim asked for recommendations. Action item: Jim will check with Diane Zabel on the deadline for submitting content to RUSQ for publication. RUSA Professional Development Linda Keiter General information: Jean Alexander is serving as the RUSA representative on the library staff certification project a three year project funded by an LSTA grant. They have identified areas of competency for library staff and they are now defining those competencies. They are also discussing how to assess those competencies, seeking ways that are as broad as possible. By the third year of the grant, they will be field testing the competencies in a variety of partner organizations. What other RUSA sections are doing: STARS had an ILL 101 workshop (half day, free) held at Penn Law school. They are considering offering the workshop again at the Midwinter meeting. BRASS Business 101 will be a preconference at Annual, and will be available as an online course. They are also looking at offering MBA in a Day as an online course History Will be offering an online course in genealogy (February March 2008) in addition to their preconferences. Continuing Education Task Force Linda Keiter
They will present their final report at Annual 2008. Their survey had 131 respondents to the paper survey distributed at chairs program at annual and 101 responses to online survey. Their next task will be take the data and make some recommendations on actions. The committee is talking about delivery methods for continuing education content, and one recommendation will probably be to have a MARS group keep an up to date Web page of continuing education opportunities within MARS and from external organizations. They may propose a new continuing education committee within MARS, maybe looking at how Education, Training and support plays into this effort. Planning Doris Ann Sweet The committee discussed the section review and has feedback for the section review group. They suggested that the part of the section review document on the future could be a bulleted list, and a map for MARS goals. It could also form the basis for the next section review. They discussed the MARS name, expanding the mission/name of MARS. They felt that we need to expand the mission of MARS to encompass the ideas raised in the Executive Committee discussion on Monday: Emerging technologies and how they relate to users (as opposed to RSS which deals with traditional technologies), Expanding reference concept beyond the one on one interaction making resources discoverable, usability, user interfaces, advocacy for users in the development of systems, next generation opac, user centered design all representing the userperspective and the reference point of view, Expanding the concept of reference to include knowledge creation. All of these ideas would open opportunities for collaboration with other ALA groups. We also need to be aware of potential overlap with existing committees in RSS and other ALA groups. Another bullet in the section report would be to look at the RUSA strategic plan in order to align MARS goals with the broader RUSA goals. After redefining the mission, it would be appropriate to consider changes to the name, perhaps seeking RUSA funding to hire a consultant to work on selecting a new name and branding MARS. They talked with Rosemary Meszaros about goals for her term as chair: Recruitment Continuing education (preconferences and online delivery of content); covering gaps (generation, technology, training); reference technology 101 Exploration of virtual Midwinter meetings (related to discussion of making Public Libraries Committee a virtual committee as a pilot to test the concept) New web technologies being implemented by ALA maintaining continuity and ensuring that content isn t lost in the migration. (Rosemary announced that Shannon Jones will continue working with Keshia Garnett for the coming year to help with this transition.) Continue Mary s goal to address needs for the MARS Archive, especially the paper archive now housed in Pat Riesenman s garage. Will also continue any remaining goals from the current year s goals.
Planning is interested in investigating grant possibilities for funding work on the archive, perhaps finding a student intern to work on processing. They would like to look at the future, building from the current online options (wiki, Communities) to make this the archiving tool for the future. They discussed the virtual movement and talked about the possibility of having a virtual component for the 2010 Preconference. The budget proposal for this would have to be submitted at Midwinter 2009. Recommendation for the Virtual Reference Committee and Virtual Reference Discussion Group: Doris Ann made a motion to make the Chair of Virtual Reference Discussion Group an ex officio, non voting member of the Virtual Reference Committee. Seconded by Rosemary Meszaros. Motion approved. Action item: Change the Handbook and Web site descriptions of the committee and discussion group to reflect this change. Recommendation for keeping minutes during joint meeting of MARS and RSS Executive Committees: Trade responsibility across two groups to keep minutes, and approve minutes at the following meeting. Motion from Doris Ann. Second by Rosemary Meszaros. Motion passed. Publications (Approval of Web Guidelines) Carolyn Larson The emphasis of the committee continues to be the MARS Web site. Individual committee members will contact committee chairs to review their content and discuss compliance with the new guidelines. The guidelines were updated slightly in response to discussions at Annual 2007. Carolyn reviewed the changes that have been made since Annual. The committee requested approval by the Executive Committee so that it can be distributed to new committee chairs at Annual 2008. Motion by Carolyn. Second by Kathleen Kern. Motion passed. RUSA Access to Information Carolyn Larson The committee is working on a statement on access to information. The committee is seeking information from RUSA sections on how access to information affects each committee, and what each section would like to see in the statement (maximizing user access to library information). They are talking about barriers (technical, physical, cultural, legal, ethical, etc). Access to government information is particularly problematic. Action item: The committee needs a response from MARS soon. Carolyn will forward the information to Mary Mintz for discussion by email to prepare the MARS response. MARS Recognition Carolyn Strickland The committee selected an award recipient and forwarded the name to Mary Mintz. Chair s Program Alex Hodges Alex will distribute his report by email.
Section Goals Mary Mintz had proposed a competition to solicit new names for the section, with member voting on the proposed names, and an award to the winning name. Mary asked if Planning was recommending that we review the mission of the section before considering new names. Planning felt that it would be better to review the mission first, and it is likely that the RUSA Board would question the name change without reviewing the mission. It was recommended that the Executive Committee meeting on Friday at Annual 2008 include a discussion of a revised mission, using the data gathered in the SWOT exercise as a starting point. Meeting adjourned at 10:15am. Minutes submitted by Laura Probst, MARS Secretary 11:00 am Joint meeting of Executive Committee members and interested committee chairs with the RSS Executive Committee (Room 105A Convention Center). Minutes to be kept by RSS Secretary.