MARS EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
Pennsylvania Convention Center Room 304
Tuesday February 2, 1999

Members present: Lise M. Dyckman, Chair; Linda Friend, Vice-Chair/Chair
Elect; Andrea Copeland and William McHugh, Members-at-Large; Lori Morse,
Secretary; Pat Riesenman, Historian; Karen Reiman-Sendi, Publications;
Carole Richter, Hot Topics Discussion Group; Sara Brownmiller, Scheduling
Coordinator; Colleen Seale, Management [of Reference Services]; Helena
VonVille (for) Education, Training & Support; Becki Whitaker, Ad-hoc "MARS
Best of the Web" task force.

Visitors present: Marianna Fitzgerald, Cuyahoga County Public Library;
Linda Keiter, incoming chair of Hot Topics Discussion Group

Meeting was called to order at: 9:35am

Committee Reports:

Awards Committee-- (Bill McHugh)--discussed changing the name of the
committee from "Achievement Recognition Certificate Committee" to the
"Awards Committee."  Had more than one nomination for the award this year.
Working on revising the handbook entry; changes will go to the committee,
then planning and finally Excom to vote on. Noted that nominations are good
for three years.

Education, Training and Support--(Helena VonVille, reporting for Alesia
McManus) Has a program for Annual 1999 "Riding the Merry-go-Round: Coping
with the changes in the electronic reference environment." (Saturday, June
26, 2-4) Focused on publicity of program; has speakers lined up. Also
discussed co-sponsorship (perhaps with BI) Chair suggested just ask for
publicity at this late date. Has asked speakers for an abstract of their
presentation, which will then be put on MARS-L.
Publications would like them to consider this as an occasional paper. Group
also discussed the "Best of Reference" web page MARS is working on, talked
about criteria.

Managers in MARS--(Colleen Seale)--Committee discussed changing name to:
"Management of Electronic Reference Services." Excom voted and approved the
change.

Nominating--(Lise Dyckman)--work is done

Program 99--(Lise Dyckman)--"Technological Censorship" is the title;
speakers are still being confirmed. The program will consist of a
presentation and panel discussion. More will be posted once speakers are
determined. There will be a post to MARS-L soliciting questions for panel
discussion portion of the program.

Outstanding Web Sites--(Becki Whitaker)-- Group will develop a list of best
reference web sites. This creates many questions/issues: What is best? What
is Reference? (Excom asked that the project focus on websites that are used
by reference librarians.) Is this a one time project, or will it be an
annual event? If an annual event, who will be doing this?

15 people showed up at the meeting at this conference, including 8 public
librarians, 2 publishers. Becki has also received a number of email
responses expressing interest in working with this task force. Becki will
set up a listserv for the project; all work will be done electronically;
Lise and Publications Committee members will lurk on the list.

Initially proposed to start with ready reference, but group decided to
nominate best sites. Each person will submit 5 sites with an annotation. By
June 1st will have the final list of about 30 sites; the task force will
then vote on their preferences, to choose 15 among this list. Participants
will be evaluating the procedure to determine viability for a continuous
project. Gail Schlachter will publish the list in Reference and User
Services Quarterly. Found out from RUSA Board that we can post on ALA
website with active links to non-ALA sites. Lise suggested that an article
could be produced about the process. An announcement will be made at the
MARS program about the web site.

Motion made to approve this process-approved.

Hot Topics-(Carole Richter)-new co-chair introduced. Co-sponsored a meeting
with ALCTS: "How to Win Accounts and Influence Librarians." Had four
panelists for this meeting's group, Sara Brownmiller stepped in at the last
minute as an emergency replacement, there was an hour's discussion after
the panelists, with about 100-140 people in attendance.

At Saturday's discussion group, about 35 people attended. Will post summary
to MARS-L to solicit further discussion, as the topic was well received.

Other Business

I. MARS is co-sponsoring a program at Annual with CODES. Everything is
going okay.

II. How do we orient new chairs? Traditionally, the first meeting of Excom
at Annual has been the orientation meeting for incoming chairs; run by the
Vice Chair/Chair Elect. Need any ideas on how to make this work better;
ideas should go to Linda Friend.

III. Email votes - the question came up of do we use, count, and record
email votes that occur outside of meetings at ALA conferences, and if so,
how? Decided to allow these to happen, and ask that any email votes on
ExCom business (i.e., of a similar nature to what we discuss at conference
meetings) should be reported/disseminated to ExCom, Planning, and the
Publications Committees. Email votes should be noted in the minutes, as
addenda, so we have an archival record of these decisions.

Meeting was adjourned at 11:30AM.

Minutes transcribed by
Lori Morse
Secretary
February 19, 1999