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Web Operational Management Group

Minutes of the Meeting of January 10, 2007
1:30 - 3:00 pm, Davis Conference Room

Present: Bill Oldfield (facilitator), Chris Gray, Esther Millar, Dan Sich, Charles Woods(recorder)

  1. Minutes of the meeting of December 13, 2006

    Approved with minor corrections.

  2. Business Arising

    #9 - Marina's Responsibilities -- Allan Bell is now the group's sponsor, replacing Susan and Mark. Bill has not yet contacted J. Rodgers about potential membership.
    #6 - IE printing -- changes described there are still pending
    #7 - OCUL MultiSearch - Bill will check with Allan about this need for more involvement with MultiSearch

  3. Agenda review

    No changes.

  4. UW LibX Update / FireFox deployment

    This FireFox plugin is now available on 38 public machines, some staff machines and the Info Desks. Help pages are being fine-tuned. Promotional activity and advertisements will be made when it is available on all machines. Bill and Dan will manage trainining and promotions with groups such as ISR, and include basic FireFox training since it is also being deployed as an essential prerequisite.

  5. Web Site Contest

    Bill tabled a suggestion from Rachel Caldwell that the Library participate in a "Best Department or Program Site on the World Wide Web" contest. The group concurred, and advised that the LibWebReview group shepherd the Library's application through this process. Bill will liaison with that group. The group briefly discussed the criteria for the application and mused about several issues regarding the quality of our site at this time (orphaned files, broken links, page-validation-pass-rates, etc.). It was agreed that the Library site had the appropriate level of excellence.

  6. Library Blogs and Wikis

    Chris is continuing work on rebuilding Wikis & blogs on a VMWare server and a Debian OS. The Wiki version is MediaWiki, and the blog one is WordPress. The group discussed the need to get the library community to buy-in to the product. It was agreed that the first step was to make the software available to potential users and that it would perhaps best work with leadership-by-example. Groups like LibWebReview and ISR can identify pilot-projects and encourage participation. It was noted however that there are kinds of content creation and delivery that are not best solved by wikis or blogs, and that some of the engagement required to make them work are different from the preferred work-habits of staff.

  7. Proxy Login page

    A new proxy login page has been installed on the Library website that should eleminate some of the problems recently encounterd by proxy users. It uses the authentication logon page of Ezproxy instead of the previous Cold-Fusion version. Upon signon, a user is presented with a number of resources a user is likely to use after authentication, instead of the redisplay of the Library home page. See:
    http://proxy.lib.uwaterloo.ca/login/

  8. Google Analytics

    Chris has updated a SSI template used by most Library pages such that they will submit usage statistics to the GA servers for analysis by Google Analytics (gmail account required, but a library.general account and password is available on request from Webops members). Bill and Charles will review several outstanding GA issues, including addition of ancillary services, GA goals and optimization techniques, data export, and FFIPA issues)

  9. Website Archiving software – update – plans

    Chris will ask the workstations group to install the WinHTTrack software http://www.httrack.com/ on the PCs of Esther and Rose Koebel.

  10. Web CGIs and Web Forms – status – plans

    Bill has implemented java-script code on several form pages of the Library and Tug websites to prevent spam. He will be taking over from Marina and a review of all such forms on Library will be conducted.

  11. Government Publications Program - update - plans

    Bill demonstrated improvements to the maintenace functions of the db-delivered Government Publications site, and noted the software could be adapted to clearly reticulated hierarchical data structures.

  12. Around the Table

    Bill will invite Allan Bell to the next meeting. Members were asked to think about new membership for the group as well; entreaties will be made to Tim Ireland and Doug Morton.

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November 12, 2008