ELECTRONIC DATA SERVICE

MINUTES OF MEETING, OCTOBER 11, 2000

PRESENT: Judy McTaggart (Recorder) Richard Pinnell Susan Moskal (Facilitator)Shabiran Rahman

ABSENT: Jack Cooper

1. Minutes of Previous Meeting September 13, 2000:

Accepted.

2. Business Arising:

Susan reported the change for the Trellis location for the EDS office has been made.

CD-ROM Inventory: Susan obtained the list from Astra and will examine it. Richard commented this issue had been discussed at the last TDR meeting and it was suggested TDR should stop maintaining the list. It was thought everything should be on web retrieval and the list could be customised to indicate only those datasets available to users.

TDR Site Visit: Richard will send the group a list of date options and a visit will be arranged.

Shabiran has not yet spoken with Bo about downloading data sets.

Susan spoke with Marina Wan about the EDS activities proposed at the last meeting.

Printing of Code Books: Susan discussed the issue with Susan Routliffe. The Department's photocopying account covers office maintenance materials and photocopying for EDS. It was noted there is a need to be selective in what is printed and the general guidelines used for copying other electronic material should be observed. The general policy is users should pay for items they request to have photocopied. It was suggested there is a need for a written guideline to be formulated. The following statement was drafted and will be submitted to Susan Routliffe for approval: "Printing of electronic documentation (eg. codebooks, questionnaaires) is the responsibility of the user"

3. Additional Agenda

Add "Survey of Faculty Needs" as agenda item 8.

4. TDR OMG Report (Richard)

TDR OMG has been asked by the TUG chiefs to develop a budget detailing all costs (capital, operating and other) The recommendations put forth by Ernst & Young will then be acted on. The two measures of activity to be used for TDR are: 1. number of hits on the TDR web pages, and 2. number of script runs (account of number of downloads)

The method to be used for surveying who's using TDR resources was discussed. User registration will be tried. On the first access, the user would need to log on, identify himself, provide a user name and password and fill out specific questions (Dept., name, etc.) On subsequent uses there will only be a need to enter a user name and password. This will be prototyped to see if it is workable.

There was discussion concerning the distribution date of Datalinks and possible scheduling problems. It was suggested if problems continue with the next issue, production be moved to Guelph and Shabiran maintain responsibility for editing.

Communication with Clients: Bo will put up a web board prototype for the group to examine.

Items in the Daily: TDR discussed the need to monitor the Daily for announcements of new data sets. Bo will give some thought as to how we will provide this value added service. The need for sharing information with our counterparts when we launch into a major licensing agreement was noted.

TDR Web Site: The target date to go live is the middle of November. Feedback on the content should be given to Richard as soon as possible.

5. Data Links (Shabiran)

Shabiran noted Data Links will be ready for distribution next week. She will give Richard the cost figures related to production.

6. EDS Web Pages (Susan)

Susan reported many of the EDS pages need to be corrected and cleaned up. She asked for assistance to determine what could be removed and what should remain. Marina or Val will be asked to break any links that are wrong. She noted the DLI dataset request form might be useful as a general EDS request form if it was modified and some links (eg. Cansim) need a counter in order to see how often it is used. Richard will take both issues to TDR.

7. Faculty Needs Survey

This agenda item will be deferred again until the next meeting.

Next Meeting: October 25, 2000: Porter 224A; 1:30 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.