Members Absent: Kate Adams, Nicole Campbell, Billie Peterson

Committee Roster
Jack has received the new roster from Mary Helen Jones. We went over the roster and made sure that we knew who was continuing on the committee as well as those who are incoming. Rick has left the committee. Everyone else is either continuing or being reappointed.

Minutes
The minutes from the Midwinter committee meeting were reviewed and Jack asked for any amendments. There were none. Beth moved to accept the minutes as they stand, with Becky seconding the motion. The minutes were unanimously approved.

Discussion
Jack welcomed everyone to the meeting and suggested that we look over the liaison list. As several committee members were not in attendance, the liaison duties were shuffled as follows:

• Communications: Beth Reiten for Nicole Campbell
• Discussion Group: Monique Threatt
• Electronic Resources: Becky Sedam
• Guidelines: Jack Fritts
• Instruction: Beth Reiten
• Liaison: Marissa Cachero
• Membership: Monique Threatt for Nicole Campbell
• Program Planning 2002: Dropped
• Program Planning 2003: Becky Sedam
• Research: Jack Fritts for Kate Adams
• Statistics: Marissa Cachero
• Strategic Planning: Marissa Cachero

Becky suggested that we discuss a few things before we break apart to visit with our individual committees. That way we may be better able to answer any questions they may have of us.

First off, Becky pointed out that she is still section secretary, which means that she should be getting the minutes from each committee in that capacity. This gives the Web Committee a slight advantage, in that she can hopefully get minutes that may not have been sent to the committee's liaison. However, getting the minutes in a timely manner has been and continues to be a problem. She will be reminding everyone at the Executive Board meeting that they need to send their minutes to the section secretary. Jack then mentioned the sometimes overlooked issue of our getting the approved minutes in addition to the draft minutes.

Becky then mentioned that several parts of the section manual need to be edited/brought up to date. For example, several committees are not mentioned in the section manual, including the Web Committee. Perhaps we could request an addition to the manual that requires committees to send their minutes to the Web Committee as well as the section secretary by a certain date.

Jack pointed out that the minutes submission timeline is part of the calendar that's laid out in the section manual, and that the "date" is one month following the meeting. He then related some of the history of the section manual. Four to five years ago, the decision was made to stop updating the print version and only maintain a web version. Once this decision was made, it sort of wound up in an "organizational amnesia area" and no real updating has taken place. When the Strategic Planning Committee finishes today, the incoming committee chair's first job will be to review and revise the manual and then turn it over to the officer who has been designated to maintain it.

Monique suggested that we could pull the calendar out of the manual and put it up on the website as an assist to the committees. Beth then suggested that we could make the approved minutes due at the same time the next meeting's draft minutes are due; i.e. the approved Midwinter minutes and the draft annual minutes are both due one month after annual.

Jack suggested wording for the proposal he will make to the Executive Board: he will "request that the committee chairs submit their meeting minutes to the Web Committee and the section secretary no later than July 15."

Becky brought up the need for updating on the website; she reminded herself again that the logo needs to be updated. Beth indicated that she can easily provide the original images files if need be. We can talk about specific things later in the summer on the DLSWEB LISTSERV. August is probably a better time for most folks to start this discussion.

Jack brought up the possible need to find a new host for the ACRL-DLS website. Bill's situation at SWITCH has gotten much better, and he has no problems with continuing to host it. However, this would be a good time to discuss whether a new site is needed, as the Communications Committee is revising the section brochure, and it would be best to have the correct URL on the brochure when it goes out in about a year. Beth offered to talk with her Systems department to see if hosting it at OSU (and allowing remote FTP access to the server) would be an option. She will report to the DLSWEB LISTSERV. Jack is talking with his IT folks at Benedictine, but he's a little concerned about possible firewall problems. He will also report back. The DLSWEB LISTSERV is also still being hosted at SWITCH. We are set for the next year, but we might want to look at other options for this as well. Benedictine doesn't have LISTSERVs but Jack is trying to talk them into it. He will report back on this as well.

Beth asked about possible URLs for the website if it were moved, which led into a discussion about the ACRL-DLS domain name history.

The committee then split apart to visit the other committees. We returned after about 15 minutes and began to report:

Reports on Liaison Activities

Communications Committee (Beth Reiten for Nicole Campbell)
Beth reported that the Communications Committee was discussing the section brochure revision. She threw out the question of how to improve awareness of the ACRL-DLS website, and got several suggestions from the committee: they would like to start using the news section more -- updating it more often, etc. When content is updated, someone could send an email to the Off-Camp LISTSERV. A teaser email with links back to the section Newsletter. Jack had suggested that a listing be compiled of all groups that have anything to do with distance learning, which could be used to expand our “advertising” to. The committee took that idea and were going to discuss it after Beth left. Jack pointed out that he talked with Maryhelen Jones and she suggested that we could also involve the Liaison Committee in this project.

Discussion Group (Monique Threatt)
Monique couldn’t find the group, so she will try to email them and find out what they are up to.

Electronic Resources Committee (Rebecca Sedam)
Becky checked with this committee, and they indicated that their Midwinter minutes had been accepted as they are now. In addition, she’ll receive a list of links from them sometime in July.

Guidelines Committee (Jack Fritts)
Jack reported that the Guidelines Committee was continuing their ideas from Midwinter to develop a form to send to the Web Committee so people could report presentations, etc. using the ACRL guidelines. They would like to have us set it up so the responses are being sent to a database. They are going to look at posting report requests to other LISTSERVs. Their Midwinter minutes are approved as is.

Instruction Committee (Beth Reiten)
The Instruction Committee chair, Michele Reid, wasn’t in attendance, so Beth talked with Patrick Mahoney. He indicated that they would get the Annual minutes to us as soon as possible, and that Michele would be in contact with Beth about any new projects.

Membership Committee (Monique Threatt for Nicole Campbell)
Monique indicated that their Midwinter minutes have been approved. Becky hasn’t received them in her role as section secretary, so she asked to have them sent again. The committee isn’t happy with the “How to Join” page. One suggestion they had was an online submission form. Becky indicated that we’d be happy to put up whatever they would like to have on that page, but that the content needs to come from them. They also suggested that all charges be posted – this is an ongoing project of ours. They will be sending us a new project called Learning Partner Initiative in both HTML and PDF. Someone also mentioned that they’d like to have the email addresses in the committee membership lists clickable. Becky indicated that as far as she knew, they all were. Monique will check the email links to make sure they all will send to the correct person. Becky also asked Monique to remind them that if there are things that need to be taken down, they need to tell us.

Program 2003 Committee (Becky Sedam for Kate Adams)
Becky indicated that the committee isn’t keeping minutes because they don't have a formal mandate. They will, however, send along a copy of the program proposal. Steve Schafer is doing a lot of the work involved in putting together a website with the conference material on it. Becky pointed out to them that this is the type of information that needs to be on the section website. She then reminded all of us that we need to get things up in a timely manner. If we don’t respond to our committees’ needs quickly, the website won’t serve their needs well and they will begin to create independent sites.

Research Committee (Jack Fritts for Kate Adams)
The Research Committee finished up and left before Jack could visit them. He’ll contact them later and make his report.

Statistics Committee (Marissa Cachero)
Marissa said that they will send their minutes along. There’s not much new, but they’re planning on expanding on what they already have available on the site. She also has the roster updates in hand.

Strategic Planning Committee (Marissa Cachero)
This committee was in lock-down in an unknown location, so Marissa will get into contact with them later.

Website Survey
Jack is pretty certain that he sent the original message to Off-Camp in February and he processed the responses he received. Unfortunately, that file appears to have gone on walkabout during his recent move, but he should be able to find it and send it out to the DLSWEB LISTSERV. Because of this, he resent the survey to the Off-Camp LISTSERV and brought along printouts of the answers he received.

Questions:

1. How often do you visit the DLS web site?
2. What are your top three reasons for using the DLS web site?
3. What would you like to see on the DLS web site that is not currently there?

Jack then read out the answers he had with him. A depressing number of these were along the lines of “I didn’t know there was a website.” But as several people at the table pointed out, the subscribers to Off-Camp aren’t all members of ACRL-DLS. Which makes this list a very good starting point for any advertising projects.

Other Business:
It was suggested that we should have a link to Off-Camp on the “Join Us” page.

Becky and Monique will get together online to discuss the Membership Committee’s concerns.

Jack asked all of us to think about the home page as we begin to discuss the site redesign. What should be on that page, and how deep do we want to place things? What about the Strategic Plan? Or the ACRL DLS Guidelines? Should the banners be a link to the homepage? What about utilizing a floating footer?

Another suggestion was to add the names of the committees each Web Committee member is liaison for to the Web Committee page. Beth offered to add that coding to the page and send it to Becky.

The meeting adjourned at 11:20 a.m.