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Web Operational Management Group

Minutes of the Meeting of October 27, 2004
1:30pm, Davis Conference Room

Present: Christy Branston (Recorder), Chris Gray, Linda Hastings, Affan Javed, Esther Millar, Bill Oldfield, Marina Wan (Facilitator), Charles Woods

  1. Minutesof the Meeting, September 29, 2004

    Accepted with minor corrections.

  2. Business Arising

    2.4. The chat reference service is currently on hiatus due to problems with how the library homepage functions in the software’s co-browser.

    ACTION: Marina will speak to the Virtual Reference Implementation Group and will suggest that we get the service up and running with the chat portion of the service only.

    2.7 Phase 1 of the project should be done by the end of the month. Other universities will be polled. Marina noted that the City of Toronto is using web content software and will look into exactly which software this is.

  3. Agenda Review

    No additions or changes.

  4. Database Page Design Update

    The group has had 2 meetings. Objectives of the various pages involved are being identified. The indexes and databases page is being redefined. The ability to perform subject searches on the E-journals page is being questioned and this function might be removed. Bill explained that we now have the capability of adding a new service with ERM that would allow students to pull together resources located across the services into one page.

  5. Contribute Testing

    The library will have access to a trial version of Contribute 3 for 30 days. Bill has set up an area on the server for members to test various pages. Charles suggested that a list be created identifying things that should be looked at during the testing such as security issues. Rob will install the software on the WebOps members’ machines. If implemented, this software will allow those web maintainers purely responsible for updating content to update pages quickly and much more easily. Dream Weaver will still be needed for maintainers responsible for creating and editing templates and style sheets. Although we are under no obligation to produce a formal report, Bill will communicate our findings to other interested groups on campus.

    ACTION: Members should test various pages in the Contribute environment to identify any problems.

    ACTION: Charles will delete the htdocs2 area and regenerate new files and Esther will make sure that the background style sheets have a distinct colour to alert people to the fact that they are in a test zone.

    ACTION: Bill will look into the possibility for WebOps members to attend a Macromedia Information Session on November 10 th.

  6. New UW Standard

    Mark Haslett asked Bill to begin considering how the library can eliminate the top dropdown navigation menu. The new UW standard is currently being developed and a 3 column approach is being experimented with. Marina and Bill reported to Mark that a 3 column approach will be easy to implement because we can move the dropdown menu into the third column. To view the “template in the works”, see http://www.findoutmore.uwaterloo.ca and http://communications.uwaterloo.ca .

  7. Home page review project

    Marina reported that the task group has been formed and the first meeting is scheduled for next week. The group is comprised of ISR members, WebOps members and Shabiran Rahman will act as a support member for CNAC. The WebOps Committee will sponsor the project. Marina distributed the draft charter to the group. Committee members discussed the charter and it was agreed that all members of the task group need to clearly understand the scope of the project.

  8. Around the Table

    Christy attended the IST course on creating web surveys.

    Bill explained that TUG members who attended the Access conference (http://library.acadiau.ca/access2004/) met to discuss what was learned at the conference. Guelph has set up a wikki to keep discussions going. Charles reported that some interesting presentations at the conference focused on course related delivery of information.

    Marina is taking an Information Architecture course through the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information Studies. The course is geared for beginners; however many of the people enrolled have extensive experience.

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July 14, 2005