Ad Hoc Committee on the Continuing Education Fund
Minutes of Meeting
San Francisco Hilton, Union Square Room 13
June 29, 1997
1:00-2:00

Members Attending: Trisha Cruse, Greta Marlatt, Jocelyn Tipton, Amy Spare, Sherry DeDecker, Mae Schreiber, Andrea Morrison: Guests: Elizabeth Cowell

We welcomed the new members, Greta Marlatt from the Legislation Committee, Mae Schreiber from the Program Committee, and Sherry DeDecker from the Federal Documents Task Force.  

We reviewed the work of the committee and discussed the web page located at http://ruf.rice.edu/~govhelp/godortcef.html. 
 
Review of actions taken since the midwinter conference:
Amy Spare discussed information she received at the RUSA/MARS program "The Art of Teleconferencing: How to Plan, Implement, and Deliver a Teleconference for Staff Training." From this we learned that we could contract with Dupage to produce a teleconference and will further investigate this possibility. Sherry DeDecker discussed distance education programs at the University of Arizona and shared sample web pages from their program.   We also discussed GPO's plans to develop a GPO Access training facility.  Member discussions with T.C. Evans indicated that no teleconferencing equipment will be available at this time. Andrea Morrison discussed  a state library's participation in a teleconference program.  

Ongoing Concerns with meeting the goals of the charge:
The Committee began a discussion of concerns about utilizing distance education technologies including: Libraries unable to afford the hook up fees that would be necessary for a polished teleconference; Libraries in need of this training may not have the equipment in their area necessary for full participation in a distance education training program; A preconference or a teleconference would be a one time event and may be quickly outdated; Videotaping a preconference or teleconference would have the same problems with timeliness and the additional problem of the cost of production and distribution.  With these concerns in mind we began to look at other options for delivery.

After this discussion it was the sense of the committee that web instruction may be the best vehicle for presenting the material in the modules in an easily accessible and ongoing manner. 

Future work of the Committee:
The term of this committee ends with this conference and additional work remains to be done, the committee feels that it should become a working group of the Education Committee for implementation of the charge.  We anticipate continued participation and input from the current members.

The Committee plans to cost out the various delivery options and report its findings to the chair of Education at the midwinter conference.