Skip to the content of the web site.

Web Operational Management Group

Minutes of the Meeting of March 20, 2002
1:30 - 3:00 pm, Davis Conference Room

Present: Esther Millar, Bill Oldfield (Recorder), Marina Wan (Facilitator), Charles Woods

Regrets: Linda Hastings, Chris Gray

  1. Approval of minutes from the meeting on February 6, 2002
    Approved with minor corrections.

  2. Business Arising:
    The discussion and approval of the memo relating to Unspamable email will be deferred until Chris is present.

  3. Agenda Review
    10. TRELLIS URL Checks
    11. LibWebOps Spam
    12. TILT (Texas Information Literacy Tutorial)
    13. Metadata for Webpages

  4. Statistics
    Charles demonstrated FastStats, a web log analysis program, and pointed out some of the caveats that must be kept in mind when using weblog statistics.

    1. Homepage access statistics are inflated because whenever a public machine is restarted it automatically goes to the Library’s homepage. User directed access to this homepage from public machines would be lost from the statistics if all public terminal proxy entries were eliminated.

    2. Homepage and other directory top pages statistics can be split over FastStats entries. For example access to “/index.html” will be listed separately from access using just a “/” to the same file.

    Charles used grep to break the large log files into subsets. Subsets were created for ETD and the discipline areas and then FastStats was run against these smaller files.

    Spider requests from “pilot.uwaterloo.ca” used to index our website were removed from the log files before FastStats was run. Linkbot request were also removed from the log files.

  5. Archived Files (http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/staff/archives/)
    A number of emails have been received regarding the deletion of old files from the webspace. The problem can be seen as one of terminology and a misunderstanding of what is being proposed. People do not seem to understand that the CD which is burnt is a zipped file and will not provide easy access for casual retrieval. The commercial www.archive site is very handy for casual checking but there is no guarantee of depth or availability. The email questions are being dealt with as they arise.
    Item Five

  6. Staff Web Management
    The committee that managed the Staff Web conversion is being folded and the responsibilities will fall to the WebOps group. The committee composed of Marina Wan, Linda Hastings, Esther Millar and Kevin Rampersad was congratulated for a task well done.

  7. New Library Homepage
    CNAG is looking at the navigation bar and some areas beneath the top page that relate to the navigation bar. A new class will also be evaluating the navigation system of the proposed new Library website. No date has been set for the possible migration to the new pages so no date has as yet been set to begin the conversion efforts that will be required. Conversion information will be available through the web at http://library.uwaterloo.ca/staff/webops/newweb/.

    A question about the inclusion of the background colour in the server side include file was discussed. This will result in a single colour throughout the site and some people may wish to have different colours applied to their areas. This would require separate server side include files in these areas and complicate the maintenance process.

    A new orphan file report (http://library.uwaterloo.ca/staff/webops/
    newweb/orphans.html) will be issued in an attempt to reduce the number of orphan files before moving to the new format. There are currently over 8500 orphan files listed.

  8. UWInfo Guidelines
    Deferred until next meeting.

  9. TUGWeb Update
    The TUGWeb (http://www.tug.uwaterloo.ca/) has been changed and the new pages are now up and available to the public. This raised a lot of questions about other services still running on the TUGWeb server and the implications for other joint services like the Journals Indexes and Ejournals service. Currently they can display a TUG header with the old TUG look and feel. What about changes to the other joint TUG services? Linda Hasting, who was absent, may have more information about the plans for the TUGWeb site. The WebOps group would like to know what is happening so that potential implications for the Waterloo website can be assessed.

  10. TRELLIS URLs Check
    Using Cognos Charles extracted all 20,000 URLs from the TRELLIS database and created a file of URLs which were then checked using Linkbot. Both bib record and MFHD URLs were extracted. 300 – 400 potential broken links were detected. This is only a 2% error rate. The information has been passed on to Cataloguing for evaluation and correction.

  11. LibWebOps Spam
    Blocks for Korean spam messages to the WebOps group have been implemented. If this fails, all off campus messages to the WebOps group could be stopped. Loss of possible valid messages will be avoided. Messages are previewed before deletion.

  12. TILT (Texas Information Literacy Tutorial)
    Yulerette Gordon has asked Esther Millar to make some adjustment to the TILT (http://library.uwaterloo.ca/tilt/) program which has been loaded locally. This information literacy program has 2000 separate files. Other liaison librarians may also wish to have tailored version for their disciplines. Esther was assured that space was not a problem.

  13. Metadata for Webpages
    Metadata was a significant topic at the recent OLA conference. The National Library is talking about implementing it in their webpages. The WebOps group discussed the potential use of metadata locally. The primary uses for metadata are:

    1. Improved Indexing – to make this effective requires significant effort in the cataloguing of webpages and the application of subject headings or controlled subject terms to each webpage.
    2. Database Delivery – the delivery of a website out of a database requires metadata for the database records

    WebOps determined that until either the resources are available to catalogue local webpages or the decision is made to deliver the Library’s website out of a database the use of metadata locally serves no practical purpose.

  14. Next Meeting
    The next meeting will be held
    Wednesday April 3rd
    1:30 – 3:00 pm
    Porter Conference Room.

If you have any queries or concerns about this page, please contact .

July 15, 2005