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Web Operational Management Group

Minutes of the Meeting of March 5, 2003
1:00 pm, Dana Porter Conference Room

Present: Chris Gray, Linda Hastings, Esther Millar, Bill Oldfield, Marina Wan (Facilitator), Paul St-Pierre, Charles Woods(Recorder)

Guest: Dan Sich

  1. Minutes of meeting February 19, 2003 - approved with minor changes
  2. Business Arising
    • #4 Marina will send an announcement to webmaint-l that pages for the library Web site needs to meet the HTML 4.01 Transitional standard and that pages need not be designed to function properly in Netscape 4.7 and 4.8.
    • #6 Staffweb site has now been added to the siteindex page.
  3. Agenda Review
    • Meeting Time added as item 9

  4. TRELLIS Links

    Dan Sich joined the group in discussing alternatives to the current top-page of the Library site with regards to TRELLIS links. Several problems were noted:

    • on many screen resolutions the input boxes for the Quick Search option are being pushed off the bottom of the page.
    • The "TRELLIS - Library Catalogue - Full Search" and "TRELLIS - Library Catalogue - Quick Search" lines seem redundant
    • the extra lines between the news items are costing valuable screen real-estate.
    • the link to the TRELLIS catalogue in the drop-down menu is actually the most frequently-used means of accessing TRELLIS; perhaps another link to the catalogue in the body of the page would be less redundant if it pointed to the Combining Keywords page of TRELLIS instead of the default Basic Searches page. It could even promote this less-used search option

    Paul and Dan tabled some alternative page structures for review; avid discussion ensued. The group agreed to three changes:

    • The "TRELLIS - Library Catalogue - Full Search" line will be removed
    • a link called "More search options" will be added beneath the quick search box, and take a user to the Combined Keywords page of TRELLIS
    • The line "TRELLIS - Library Catalogue - Quick Search" will be reduced to "TRELLIS - Library Catalogue"

    Linda Hastings was asked to mockup these changes. It was suggested that some OPAC log analysis can refine the understanding of the way patrons access TRELLIS from the top library page.

    The group then discussed the relative merits of putting either news-items or the TRELLIS Search block first. Different opinions were expressed. An example of a previous TRELLIS page that put the news block lower than the TRELLIS search engine seemed attractive; Linda volunteered to construct a page similar to the one tabled in the meeting.

  5. Projects and Priorities

    The group reviewed several of the six headings identified in the previous meeting. Because it was believed that site quality-&-assurance was one of the most important priorities the group discussed how this could be achieved. It was recommended that staff be encouraged to validate their pages to ensure HTML 4.1 compliance; a prequisite to that is the creation of Nav-Bar SSI's that passes validation (our current ones do not, although dynamic tests during the meeting indicated that the "include" statements need only minor corrections). It was also noted that training sessions which illustrate the principles and techniques behind validation be provided to web maintenance staff. A checklist approach was advocated.

    Paul noted that he and Anne Fullerton were working on a shorter paper illustrating the principles behind usability studies and how they were applied to the creation of the new library page; he suggested that a usability study of the entire Library site might be an attractive project for a coop student.

    The group discussed how to proceed with the Projects-and-Priorities project. It was recommended that a list of potential projects previously tabled by Charles be reviewed for the next meeting, identifiying those tasks that fall within the priority categories established by Bill, and modified with items that members believe should be added or deleted.

  6. Text Drop-down menus for the Staff Web

    The group reviewed two examples of drop-down menus provided by Rose Koebel and Marian Davies, as seen at:

    Staff Web home page navbar (Rose's work)
    http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/staff/index_Rose2.html

    Navbar for all other pages (Marian's work)
    http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/ssi_staff_testdoc.html

    The group commended the work of Rose and Marian yet expressed a preference for the former as a technique that could be applied eventually to all web pages in both the staff and public areas. Linda Hastings volunteered to create a version for review, cleaning up any SSI validation problems along the way. It was advocated that Rose and Marian be included in the process of changing these files so they are familiar with the process.

  7. Web Accessibility standards and guidelines

    A Web accessibility and standards page has been created with two components:

    • a checklist of items, short and populated with specific examples
    • a list of references to other resources

    This new "standards" page will be moved to the WebOps site.

  8. Link to Library FAQ

    It was noted that a link to a Library FAQ list will be added to the dropdown Help box on the main library page. Discussion followed upon the issue of maintenance of the FAQ list. It was noted that it is currently maintained by the Virtual Reference group but that some -one or -group should be targeted to continue maintenance when the VR group disbands. It was also noted that a similar FAQ list had been compiled from another university by Helen Yueping He and that there may be opportunities to consolidate the contents of both lists into one. Paul implored the group to ensure that specific responsibilities for page-maintenance are established; ambiguity in maintenance-responsibilities result in pages that become out-of-date or inaccurate. Marina will carry the issue forward to the VR group of which she is a member.

    Esther stated that she would add a link to the FAQ list to the site index page.

  9. Meeting Times

    The group confirmed a preference to continue meeting at 1pm.

  10. Next Meeting

    The next meeting is scheduled for 1pm on Wednesday, March 19 in the Davis Library Conference Room.

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July 15, 2005