Minutes of the Meeting of September 17, 2003
Porter 428, 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm
Present: Chris Gray, Linda Hastings, Esther Millar (Recorder), Bill Oldfield, Marina Wan (Facilitator), Mike Wang, Charles Woods
Marina welcomed Mike Wang, our co-op student for the fall term.
- Minutes of Meeting of July 23, 2003
Accepted with one change.
- Business Arising
5. Report on Disciplines' Project - Marina noted that 3 discipline pages using the new templates have gone live. All Porter librarians are planning to adopt the new templates. Thus far, one Davis librarian has expressed interest.
8. news @ your library - Esther was happy to report that an issue of news @ your library was published last week, and procedures have been implemented to help achieve the goal to publish a new issue every month.
2-4. Esther reported that Linda has completed the screen shots for a historical record of our home pages. She will mount them soon and the old images directories can then be cleaned up.
- Agenda Review
#4. CMF Project Update
#10. Staff Web Password
#11. Orphan Cleanup
- CMF Project Update
Chris reported that the major work has been completed and Bill will soon start writing the report. The group agrees that the Library should move forward with a CMS system, and are currently doing a basic market analysis of the types of programs available to determine which programs would meet our requirements. Group members from outside the Library are showing great interest in CMS as well. In fact, Chris has been asked to give his CMS presentation at a IST professional development seminar for computing support staff in October. Minutes of their meetings are available at: http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/staff/dlcc/
cmf_minutes/index.html.
- Standards Assurance Project
Mike has begun validating and updating pages in the access directory to meet XHTML and accessibility standards.
- Since many of the changes required to validate a file to XHTML are consistnet with other files, Mike is looking for a way to make global changes to groups of files. Chris suggested HTML Tidy, a freely downloadable software.
ACTION: Chris will look into the Unix version. Mike will contact Michael Holmes about loading a Windows version onto his machine.
- the group decided not to place an XHTML button on pages that have been validated to XHTML.
- to assist in validating pages to meet accessibility standards, Mike would like a screen reader installed on his computer; a 60-day timed evaluation copy of JAWS for Windows is available for about $40.00.
ACTION: Esther will talk to Carl about acquiring this program for Mike's computer.
- XHTML and Dreamweaver Upgrade
Esther and Mike have discovered that Dreamweaver 4 does not support XHTML editing and validation. The group, therefore, recommends that all Dreamweaver 4 users be upgraded to Dreamweaver MX.
ACTION: Esther will contact Carl Nagel.
- Work Placement Application for Winter Term
We agreed that there would be work for a work placement student next term.
ACTION: All - send your suggestions for possible projects to Marina.
- Placement of New Resource "How Do I"
Library Instruction Committee has created a new "How Do I" documeent to replace the current FAQ.
ACTION: Linda - will find a place for the new file in the "usered" directory; create a redirect from the URL of the current FAQ; and update the navigation bars under the "help & instructions" dropdown menu. When the navigation bars have been updated, she will notify Bill and Chris so they can update other systems as required.
- Web Login Consistency
Doug Morton raised concerns regarding inconsistencies in login procedures for TRELLIS, EZPROXY, and RACER. We noted that several of the login formats are determined by the system and cannot be changed at present. Since current login instructures are clearly given, we agreed that immediate action is not required, but we will consider it as a desired feature for future applications.
- Staff Web Password
Library Managers raised the question whether the Staff Web password should be changed. After some discussion we agreed that the current password meets its objective (prevents robots from harvesting e-mail addresses and indexing private documents, keeps out those who are simply curious) and does not need to be changed at this time.
Charles suggested that we place "increasing security by using secure socket web server" on a future agenda.
- Orphan Cleanup
Esther identified several large collections of orphan files ("LibWebUse," Murray's photos in "info," and files linked into RACER from the "ocul" directory).
ACTION: Esther will consult with Anne Fullerton (LibWebUse) and Cheryl (info) and then let Charles know which files should be burned to a CD. Esther will then delete the files. She will suggest to Carol Stephenson that future OCUL files be located on the OCUL or RACER servers.
- Web Ops & Library Organizational Structure
The group felt we had reviewed our structure quite recently and it was not needed again. But we did feel, with Paul's departure, that it is important to add a new member with the ISR perspective.
ACTION: Marina will contact Susan Routliffe about adding another member
- Around the Table
No additional comments were made.
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July 14, 2005
