Notes of Meeting of May 16, 2005
Porter Library Room 428
1:30pm to 3:00pm
Attendance: Christy Branston, Rachel Caldwell, John Chan, Marian Davies (recorder), Kevin Manuel, Esther Millar, Bill Oldfield, Dan Sich, Marina Wan (Chair)
Regrets: Helena Calogeridis, Linda Hastings, Sandra Keys
Marina welcomed Kevin Manuel, Porter ISR Library Science Co-op student to the meeting. Christy and Kevin analysed the survey data.
Notes From Last Meeting
Business Arising
- ACTION: Bill plans to finish installing Contribute on staff machines. Bill will also request that Contribute be installed on the computer in the DC Conference room.
- Christy updated the content on the Resources page.
ACTION: Christy will update the look to be consistent with the other pages. Christy will update the Services page (removing the first line).
- ACTION: Esther will include Hours in the About Us page.
Agenda Review
- Item added to today's (May 16) agenda is assigning keywords in the template META tag.
Website Design
- Esther and Marina want to ensure that navigation can be traced through the hierarchies of information. The first and second level shown on the left navigation bar will be part of the gold heading when you click into a page.
- Some pages, for example the liason librarian contact page, can be accessed by various routes.
ACTION: Department responsible for page will decide, if the meantime Esther will use her best judgement.
- ACTION: Esther will be consistent with using '&' instead of 'and'.
- Dan composed new content for the Journal Articles page. Please see Dan's email.
ACTION: Bill will post the page for viewing, according to Dan's instructions.
ACTION: Bill will add 'ALL' to the database selection and make the alpha index font larger, more pronounced. Bill will review complications with the positioning of the 'close this window' text.
- Christy reported on the survey results that she compiled with Kevin's assistance. Generally, comments were fairly positive. There is some confusion with terminology but no suggestions were forthcoming from the participants. Clearly students need to learn how to find the material they need from the website, and it is clear from their comments that they lack this know how.
ACTION: Christy and Dan will bring to the ISR Department meeting the need for liaison librarians to incorporate a general overview of the site as part of their instruction.
- The lack of consistency amongst the pages was noted as a big concern. Suggestion: Once we go with the new 'look and feel' changes to the library site should only be considered when needed to solve a problem.
- Most complaints were directed at TRELLIS; e.g., the number of times patron needed to enter their barcode, the appearance of the catalogue, etc. The barcode issue can not be resolved any time soon.
ACTION: Dan and TUG OPAC are currently at work on a Site-Specific WebVoyage Project which, it is hoped, will resolve some of the issues related to the appearance of TRELLIS. TUG OPAC will also be conducting a search index review to determine: better terminology, ordering of search types, possible additional search types. It should be noted that the inherent clunkiness and limited customizability of WebVoyage are limiting factors in what can be done.
- Kevin noted the survey results yielded useful comments that would be of interest to other library groups.
ACTION: Christy will forward the data to CNAC.
- The survey will continue right through the conversion stage, as well as being available on the new site. Location of survey on the new homepage is not yet determined.
- The survey comments were analysed through the software Nvivo. The results were qualitative, not quantitative. Due to time limitations auto text was used instead of the preferred manual coding, although the results, from the analysis, would have been consistent.
- Discussion ensued as to whether or not Journal Articles should stay on the top level of the left navbar, or if it should be listed under Resources and at the same time (on the top page) be listed on the right navbar, between New Books and Course Reserves.
ACTION: Christy and Marian will survey a few students to observe preference on the current look, with Journal Articles standing as its own item, and then with the new look described above.
- No one really likes the term E-reference. In an attempt to improve on the term it will be changed to Quick Facts (remaining in its current position in the list).
ACTION: Esther will make this change.
ACTION: Christy and Marian will add a second question to their survey to see if this change in terminology has any effect.
META name ="keyword" tag
- Esther noted that the META name="keyword" tag in the template could be used if we wanted to enhance the search options for our users. Bill noted the usefulness but the down side is the high maintenance involved if we went this route.
ACTION: Esther will insert the words Library Waterloo University for the keywords and leave it at that.
- John created a top level page that moves us back to a previous version, changing the right navigation bar back to an earlier look because it complies more closely to the common 'look and feel' first proposed and distributed by Jesse Rodgers, Manager, Web Communications, UW.
Website Conversion
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Marina reported on the plan for conversion. Our site will be frozen from June 6 - 18. While site is frozen the web maint group will be able to test out Contribute on htdocs2. At this time Esther and John will be working on converting the site into htdocs3.
ACTION: Charles will be asked to set this up htdocs3. Training will be necessary. Dan mentioned that staff may be interested in the tutorial offered through the Contribute software, and also that IST is offering a course on Contribute - sessions are scheduled for May 19th and June 7th.
ACTION: John is already scheduled to conduct two training sessions for staff on June 2 (morning and afternoon) in the Davis Centre Conference room..
Cleanup of webpages will be necessary.
ACTION: Marina will distribute a list of who's doing what when within the next week. Completion date set for June 24th (our original deadline), going live June 27th.
Around the Table
- Bill reported on a change to the site index which makes it load faster.
- John would like to explore Dan's suggestion to insert alt tags on the links in the left navigation bar.
- Depending on what happens later on in the week Esther may have more information on colour choices.
- Next meeting is scheduled for May 25th (Wed), 1:30 - 3 in Davis.
Meeting Adjourned
August 11, 2005
