Please write a brief bio of yourself and your interests to help us all know each other a bit better.

MARS Products and Services Roster.doc (2007)

MARS Products and Services Roster 2008

MARS Products and Services Roster (2009)

Current Committee Members

Helene Lafrance (2007- )

Hi! I work at Santa Clara University in California, where I am the Head of Research Services. I am also the subject specialist for social sciences . I am interested in all new ideas related to the delivery of reference services. Right now at Santa Clara we are offering virtual reference (through Tutor.com), instant messaging, and very soon we will be involved in a Second Life project. I am originally from Quebec, Canada, but I have been in California for many years. I have served on one other RUSA committee before (Notable Books, 2002-2006) and it was a terrific experience. I am looking forward to working with you all on the MARS Products and Services committee.

Elliot Kanter (2007- )

I've been at the University of California, San Diego since 1982, where my current role is

• Bibliographer for Communication, Judaic Studies and U.S. History
• Reference Librarian
• Member of the Libraries Website Committee and also the various groups now redesigning it

I became a member of MARS in 1984, originally because of my role as coordinator of "computer assisted reference" in the Social Science and Humanities Library. I haven't been in that position for several years, but have stayed involved with MARS: all reference is computer integrated now. My other current ALA committee is the ACRL/EBSS Committee on Electronic Resources for Communication Studies. I'm a member of the UCSD Libraries Reference Shelf team (since it was begun as a gopher service in 1993). Since 2006 I've been participating in our Questionpoint-based University of California-wide cooperative chat reference service. Here's a link to the library page giving more details on my background http://sshl.ucsd.edu/services/people/kanter/

Former committee members

Marina Salcedo (2006-2008)

Hi, I'm an Information Services Librarian at Borland Health Sciences Library, University of Florida. I have been at my current position for just a little over 6 months. It's been a great learning experience to be exposed to the medical library profession after working with incoming freshman at the main Univ. of Florida libray for the past 3 1/2 years. My work involves reference, instruction, and now cataloging and collection development, I get to do a little of everything. I'm always interested in new products and services that can improve our users experience with information seeking and gathering. I look forward to working with the rest of you in looking at and evaluating new products and services.

Mimi Pappas (2006-2008)

I am a Virtual Reference Librarian with OCLC's Question Point. If any of your institutions have Question Point chat, I am 24/7 Librarian Jen. I work from home at night and stay home with my 3 kids (ages 5, 3 and 1) during the day. I have been doing this for 4 years and I really enjoy working with public and academic patrons from all over the US and the UK. Before I started working for Question Point I worked as Instruction Coordinator, Email Ref Coordinator, and Co-Director of Chat Ref at the University of Florida. Prior to that I taught ESL and Freshman English at Daytona Beach Community College. In MARS, I was Co-Chair of MARS Best Free Reference Websites 2004-2006. I am very excited about Products and Services Committee, as all the hard work of the MARS committees has kept me current for my job.

Julie Patton (2006-2008)

I have been at Northwestern University Library for almost 15 years serving in a variety of public services positions, most recently as the head of a small branch on the university's Chicago campus that serves evening adult learners. I left that job about a month ago and am currently back in Evanston working on some special projects in IT and public services until I go on maternity leave in mid-October. When I return from leave I will be a member of the library's new Digital Collections department, working primarily on issues relating to public interfaces. I've worked on a number of interface projects--both short-term and ongoing--over the years, including our OPAC, SFX and Metalib implementations, and a couple of overhauls of the library's web site. I'm interested in how we as librarians can work with vendors to develop better off-the-shelf interfaces for their products and look forward to working with this committee.