MARS User Access to Services Committee Membership Minutes Chicago 2005

Minutes of the MARS User Access to Services Committee
ALA Annual Meeting, Chicago, ILL
Sunday June 26, 2005
Present: Jane Rutherford, Bryna Coonin, Cynthia Crosser, Chris LeBeau, Steven Vest, Patrick Weeks, Barbara LaGodna, Julienne Wood. Visitor: Marilyn Ochoa (University of Florida)
I. Welcome and introductions
II. Approval of minutes from Midwinter
  The minutes from Midwinter were approved
III. Debriefing the panel presentation
  1. The audience's evaluations were "middle of the road"--we received 30 from an audience of 110.  Mostly good responses, but not as enthusiastic as we had hoped.
  2. There was significant audience participation
  3.  Bryna suggested a follow up discussion program dealing with the nuts and bolts of working out the Public Services/IT relationship
  4. Chris suggested we look at best practices.
  5. Steven suggested that we should reframe the question--how to get things done in a bad situation.
IV. Current project
  1.Survey Questions
  • We agreed to conduct a survey of academic libraries
  • We agreed to survey head of reference/public services and head of IT/systems
  • We agreed to use Survey Monkey. Bryna, Cynthia, and Marilyn will work with Survey Monkey.
  • All committee members will send in "category" questions as discussed. Bryna will send out the categories via e-mail in the next few weeks, asking us to brainstorm suggestions for survey questions in those categories.
  • We agreed to send the survey to listservs. We will generate the list of listservs via e-mail and finalize at Midwinter.
  • We agreed to make the survey short with approximately 15 questions.
  • We agreed the survey will have sections on demographics, tensions between PS and IT staff, and possible solutions.
  2. Literature Review
Chris agreed to write the literature review.
  3.  Bibliography
Patrick agreed to be the keeper of the bibliography.
  4. Final Editing
Bryna agreed to do the final editing of the paper.
  5. Journal for Submission
We agreed to submit to RUSA Quarterly going through the editorial board, "From the Committee of RUSA" track.
  6. Schedule for Paper
  • We agreed to have the literature review by Mid-Winter meeting 2005.
  • We agreed to generate survey questions by Spring 2006.
  • We agreed to a double meeting for Annual 2006 to work on paper.
  • We agreed to try to be ready to submit in early Fall 2006 at the very latest.
V. Co-sponsoring program with RSS Catalog Use Committee (Annual 2006)
  1. We presented the program proposal to the MARS Executive Committee.
  2.  We received permission to jointly sponsor the program.
  3. There was alot of interest in the program.
  4. MARS Executive Committee suggested that we add a cataloger as a panelist.
VI Thanks to members rotating off committee.
  We thanked Jane Rutherford and Steven Vest for all their work.
Submitted by:
Cynthia Crosser, 7/19/05