ELECTRONIC DATA SERVICE

MINUTES OF THE MEETING, JULY 5, 2000

Absent: Shabiran Rahman

1. Minutes of Previous Meeting, May 10, 2000:

Accepted.

2. EDS Service During Vacation (Susan)

Susan asked for suggestions on the best way of providing EDS service during a 2 week period in August when Richard, Shabiran and herself are on vacation. It was concluded that, as a temporary staffing situation, data requests might be sent to other members of TDR (Bo?) Jack offered to serve as intermediary to forward the requests and he will discuss the issue with Bo. Susan, Shabiran and Richard will put messages on their voicemail and email notifying clients to contact Jack.

3. OMG Report (Richard)

Richard reported TDR OMG and Trellis OMG will hold a joint meeting on July 11. The meeting will provide an opportunity to explore issues of joint concern, discuss operational practices, establish communication and simply learn a little about each group's responsibilities.

Richard also provided the following highlights from the TDR Steering Committee meeting held in the early part of June:

a) Data Inventory: Doug Horne will provide a url to the data inventory list.

b) Web Survey: additional elements to provide better user identification were determined. Michele Edwards has created a page and added the survey.

c) Determining how to prioritize work is recognized as a large task. d) Encouragement of pilot projects and innovation. It was suggested potential pilot projects should be an agenda item for the next meeting.

4. CD-ROM Inventory (Richard)

Astra Goodhue will begin to update the CD-ROM inventory on the TDR website. There is a need to add a message or make links more interactive rather than simply informing the user that we have the resource. The page will contain a listing of in-house resources only (cds available on the web will be removed)

5. Web Look on TDR Site (Richard)

Richard discussed the proposed redesign of the TDR page and the issue of whether it should have a local or TUG look. He reported the navigational bars have been decided (to give it a local look) but the content is still an issue. It still needs to be clarified with Doug Horne (who designed the page) as to what direction he is taking. Richard will also speak with George Loney about how to add the UW navigational bar to the top of the TDR pages.

Points of interest that arose from the above discussion:

a) it has been discovered that with the e-journals page - depending on whether you access it through the TUG level or Library level - two different looks are retrieved. The pages are not the same. This problem will need to be addressed.

b) a search on the TDR site failed to retrieve all the data sets available for the Canadian Travel Survey. The most recent data was not on web retrieval but, rather, listed on the

c) directory tree on the server under "raw data" Richard has notified Bo.

6. Other

Richard asked the group for suggestions of potential pilot projects for discussion at the OMG level. He noted the need for feedback on datasets we are lacking that would enhance what we have. A survey of data needs could be scheduled for the fall.

The target date for the distribution of Data Links is the first week of September. Richard will check with Shabiran to determine if this deadline can be met.

Next Meeting: to be scheduled in September