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Information Services & Resources

Email Reference Group
Notes of Meeting
April 11, 2006
10:00 a.m., Porter 428

Present: Rachel Caldwell, Helena Calogeridis (facilitator), Barbara Menich, Jon Morgan, Carol Steele, Amy Townsend, Marina Wan
Regrets: Marian Davies, Judy McTaggart

1. Comparison table (created by Marian)

1) Re: Redirecting queries to email when chat is offline in Docutek.
Action: Marina will check to see if this feature works with another interface.

Rachel noted that this is a great feature, but people don’t read it and some don’t realize when they are using email rather than chat. It is confusing because the forms look the same for chat and email. Interface should look different for chat and email so the user knows which he/she is using.
Action: Marina will use HTML to enhance colour and font to notify user which method they are using.

2) Patrons do not understand the “1 business day” clause.
Action: Marina will bold it.

3) Barbara will collate the notes from the group and submit them to Marian.

2. Docutek’s responses to our list of problems

Marina reminds the group that Docutek is not Email, but an email reference service. The representative from Docutek (Marlon) encourages us to report problems directly.
Action: Each of us will report problems to Docutek as they arise.

3. Email Reference Service: Which features are core/basic?

1) Re: Email security verification notice
Marina suggests checking the site for authenticity before you verify.

2) Some Gmail users reported that they had not received responses to their queries. This is probably because our personal email addresses are not on their “safe” lists/contact lists.

3) Re: Search feature in Docutek
Amy has used it; Carol finds it “dodgey”.
Action: Helena will check this feature.

4) Marina says the statistics feature is still not great and takes time to compile.

5) It is not possible to create a group account in Outlook.
Marina will look into creating another account.

6) Action: The group will assess the email reference service from the user’s point of view.

7) Carol suggests that using the service should be as “seamless” as possible from the user’s perspective.
Action: Amy will create an Excel sheet for the group to offer their suggestions.

8) There was discussion about our patrons’ security. At the end of each term, the group will either download all messages so they don’t sit in the U.S. server, or just delete them.

Adjourned: 11:45


 

 

Email Reference Group
libRefEmail@library.uwaterloo.ca
March 19, 2007