UW Library Electronic Data Service | Library

MINUTES OF THE MEETING, MARCH 7, 2005

Present: Christy Branston; Sandra Keys; Judy McTaggart(Recorder); Neil Patterson; Richard Pinnell(Facilitator) Mark Polger

Regrets: Shabiran Rahman

1. Minutes of the Meeting of February 7, 2005: Approved.

2. Business Arising:

Item 4, Joint DLI/RDC Collaboration: The mini conference will be held on Friday, April 29th.

Item 5, E-Data Link: Christy noted the new homepage will be ready for September.

Item 6, EDS Office: Sandra’s action to give Christy the updated list of cd’s to be installed on the EDS machine is still an action.

Item 8, Around the Table, last paragraph: Mark noted that his comment should read “he would take a look to see where the e-data link should go on the EDS page”.

3. Report on Faculty Response to Advisory Meeting and Next Steps: (Christy)

Christy reported that the deadline has passed for faculty to respond to the email notice of the Advisory Committee. She received 7 responses and noted that 13 people did not respond. It appears that Monday, April 25th is the best date for everyone. She asked the group how they would like to follow-up with the non-responders. It was agreed that personal contact (phone call) would be the best approach and the date of April 25th would be offered. Action: Christy will divide the list of the non-responders’ names and email them to EDS members for follow-up. The agenda will be finalized at the next EDS meeting.

4. Beyond 20/20: How to Manage this on Campus: (Christy)

Christy noted the version of the browser Beyond 20/20 that is installed in the undergraduate labs on Campus is not current. This is preventing users from accessing data produced by Statistics Canada. She said the software gets updated periodically; however, we don’t know how often or when and it is important that the updates are installed in the labs as they become available. She asked Neil for a recommendation on how to best have this software added to Nexus in the labs and who to contact. Neil suggested Ray Wright (Engineering) might be the appropriate person as he could add this to a list of regular lab updates that are distributed. Action: Christy will follow-up with Ray Wright when new updates are needed.

5. TDR-OMG Report (Meeting of March 4): Richard

Richard gave an update on Nesstar. To date, 260 datasets have been published to Nesstar, representing approximately half of the total to be processed. None of the Census has been moved yet. Bo was going to try for today (March 7th) to go live with the system and users will be given a choice of either the current link or Nesstar.

The suite of help viewlets created by Michelle Edwards and Carol Perry is still under development. Michelle or Carol should be contacted if we identify a Nesstar related function or feature that we think requires a help document. There is download software available that we could use to develop our own viewlets. Guelph uses Carbon’s Viewlet Builder to create these documents and all that is required to view them is a web browser with Flash plug-in.

A phase-in plan for Nesstar was discussed. Richard noted we can notify our clients to start using Nesstar as soon as Bo has completed the changes – probably sometime this week. We can decide how to do any initial promotion although Michelle will draw attention to Nesstar on the TDR website. The “official” launch will be at the end of April (posters, flyers, handouts, etc.). After that date, all newly acquired datasets will be published to Nesstar only; the current TDR system will remain available following the launch but will not be further developed - it will remain static. Datasets are not being removed and will not be removed from current TDR as they are published to Nesstar. The current TDR system and Nesstar will operate in tandem until the end of August, after which date the current TDR system will be taken down. Sandra suggested a message or notice should be posted to the current TDR page notifying users that new datasets are not being added. Action: Richard will take the suggestion back to TDR.

Publicity for the late April launch was discussed. Bo will talk to Carol about preparing a brochure which will double as a poster when enlarged several times. TDR budget will be used to print enough copies of the brochure and poster for each site. Sandra noted she will work with Rachel Caldwell on the content for an article in “News at Your Library”. Neil suggested an article be run in the Daily Bulletin.

The Winter issue of DataLinks will be dedicated to the launching of Nesstar and Carol will attempt to have it published by the end of March. Sandra noted she will prepare an article about “Tuition and Living Accommodations”; Christy said she will prepare an announcement about the new EDS members (Mark and Neil); and, Shabiran stated she will do an article about “Data Day”. Richard noted they should submit these directly to Carol.

The issue of cataloguing versus metadata descriptions was discussed. We are continuing to catalogue datasets providing full MARC records but it is questionable whether we should continue to do this. It means we need to go back into all those that have been done and adjust the old url’s. Guelph thinks MARC cataloguing of TDR datasets could be discontinued and Laurier favours the creation of a skeletal MARC record with an 856 link to the metadata. More information is needed about how users access TDR data before a decision is made. We don’t know how many use TRELLIS to search for data and how many go directly to the TDR site. TDR will continue to discuss the issue and Richard noted that a usability study or focus group may be necessary.

Next Meeting: Monday, April 4th, 2005; Porter 407; 1:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Facilitator: Christy

Judy McTaggart

August 3, 2005