MAC Messages Number 98:
March/April 2003

Message from the Chair
By Russet Hambrick, 2002/03 MAC Chair

The MAC Executive Board held its winter meeting on February 21^st in Charlottesville, Virginia. A thank you goes to the MAC members at the Claude Moore Health Sciences Library for hosting the meeting. A special thank you to Patricia Vaughn who reserved rooms for us and arranged for the food.

MAC has been busy since the annual meeting in October! Let me summarize the activities of the chapter as well as business items that the executive board acted upon during our meeting.

With assistance from Diane McKenzie and Gabe Rios, I submitted a nomination to MLA for the Chapter Project of the Year Award. We submitted the 50^th anniversary multimedia presentation as the MAC project. Unfortunately, we received word right before the board meeting that the project was not chosen for this year's award. So, let's all put on our thinking caps now for next year's nomination!

The Executive Board also prepared the mid-year report to MLA and the 2003 goals and objectives for MAC. The goals and objectives may be viewed on the MAC Web site at http://www.cbil.vcu.edu/mac/goals/goals0203.html

The Executive Board has been investigating the feasibility of accepting credit card payments for membership and annual meeting fees. I will be sending a message out in the next few weeks to the MAC listserv to obtain feedback regarding the value of this service to the members. Please take a few moments to reply when you receive this message. Your input is needed as we try to determine the costs and benefits of providing this service.

The Annual Meeting Task Force has completed its work for MAC. The task force was charged to investigate the costs, benefits and liabilities of using a meeting/program planner. The task force recommended that MAC Local Arrangement Committees routinely engage a meeting planner to help with hotel contract negotiations, work with a planner located in the geographic area of the meeting and consider fees for service agreements with meeting planners for additional services when the meeting is held in a location where few MAC members reside. The Executive Board moved to support the recommendations made by the task force. I wish to thank the members of the Annual Meeting Task Force for their contributions. They are Pat Hammond (Chair), Donna Flake, Julia Shaw-Kokot and Lynne Turman.

The new Strategic Planning Task Force has been appointed and held its first meeting during the executive board meeting on February 21^st. The task force is charged to "Assess the organizational structure for MAC in order to fulfill its new vision and mission and to effectively respond to member expectations." The task force will make recommendations to the MAC Executive Board by the Fall 2003 Board Meeting. The task force reviewed documents created last year by the former Strategic Planning Task Force and discussed how to move forward with its charge. The task force will start by conducting inventories or surveys with MAC committees, officers, ex-officio members of committees, and past task force members. Former committee chairs and officers will be included in this process. It is the hope of the task force that these inventories will help us gain insight into organizational structure issues that work well and those that do not work well. After collecting this information, the Strategic Planning Task Force will look at ways to obtain feedback from the entire membership. I wish to thank the MAC members who agreed to service on this task force: Susan Craft, Dan Wilson, Jonathan Lord, Ann Sasser, Claire Meissner, Diane Fuller, and Beverly Murphy.

The Executive board also heard reports from the 2002, 2003 and 2004 LAC and/or Program committee members. Jane Blumenthal provided the final report of the 2002 Annual Meeting in Washington, DC. The meeting had 155 attendees and 50 CE participants. The meeting evaluations were overall very positive. Thank you to everyone who made the 2002 meeting a great success. Beverly Murphy reported on the 2003 Quintessential meeting preparations. Please see her article on page 3 in this issue of MAC Messages for additional information. Betsy Adams, Co-chair of Local Arrangements Committee for the 2004 Annual Meeting, reported that she and co-chair, Rick Peterson, are close to identifying a meeting site in North Carolina. Negotiations are underway with a hotel in the Raleigh area.

MAC Chapter Council Representatives want to remind everyone to attend the Chapter Council-sponsored Roundtables Luncheon at the MLA annual meeting in San Diego. If you are interested in volunteering to be a facilitator or note-taker at your table, please contact Ginny Dupont, Chapter Council Representative, at ginny.dupont@hq.med.va.gov.

For the first time, MLA's Chapter and Section Councils are co-sponsoring a program at the MLA Annual Meeting. The program will be called "Mentoring: Sharing Experiences for Professional Growth" and is scheduled for Wednesday, May 7^th at 9:00 am. MAC members are encouraged to attend.

MAC committees have also been very busy. The Professional Development Committee (PDC) has updated its pages on the MAC Web site. The PDC is investigating the possibility of offering additional CE courses in the region and developing an online CE course on the topic of marketing. The PDC is planning to contact library schools in the MAC region to identify candidates for a MAC student internship.

The Publications Committee will be conducting a user survey of the MAC Web site. Watch for opportunities to provide feedback to the committee in the next few months. The publications committee will also be developing a planning calendar that includes due dates for chapter business and events. This calendar will be located on the MAC Web site.

The Membership Committee reported that MAC currently has 128 paid members, 14 of which are new members. The committee is sending membership brochures to public library career centers and placement centers in universities and high schools throughout the region.

The Honors and Awards Committee will again have committee members assigned to each of the MAC states to recruit nominations from throughout the chapter. The Web-based nomination form found at http://www.cbil.vcu.edu/mac/forms/nominate.html may be used to submit nominations. It is never too early to nominate one of your colleagues for an award!

Lastly, the Executive Board approved a motion to provide a financial contribution to the Medical Library Association Lindberg Research Fellowship Program. This fellowship program is "aimed at extending the underlying knowledge base of health sciences librarianship and informatics". The first fellow will be announced at the 2003 MLA Annual Meeting in San Diego. Additional information about the fellowship may be found at http://mlanet.org/pdf/grants/lindberg_fact_071002.pdf.

As you can see, your chapter has been busy! Until next time…………

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