Minutes of the Meeting of January 9, 2008
2:00 - 4:30 pm, Dana Porter LIB 428
Present: Allan Bell (Chair), Nancy Collins, Marian Davies, Chris Gray, Tim Ireland, Esther Millar (Recorder), Doug Morton, Bill Oldfield, Dan Sich, Charles Woods
- Approval of WebOps Minutes of December 12, 2007
Minutes approved with changes.
- Business Arising
5. Bill provided documentation for spam-proof form processing. It is availabe at: http:testtube.uwaterloo.ca/forms/
FormsDocumentation.cfm
An outstanding issue is to ensure its accessibility, and Bill is working with Janet Wason who has students testing the form with JAWS.
- Agenda Review
Future agenda item:
Where Is It? —currently not available through TRELLIS. ACTION: Charles will outline the issues for a future meeting.
- Website Strategy Brainstorming Session
Allan provided two sets of documentation:
a) Minutes of a July meeting (brainstorming session on: Where are we now, Where would we like to go, and How we get there from here)
b) Dartmouth Web Oversight Committee: Building a Web Strategy (sample Web strategy and action plan showing how the various components fit together)
The group reviewed and discussed the above two documents. We agreed that we would use the Dartmouth example as our framework.
Allan asked the question whether the group feels our website needs changing? Everyone agreed. Comments included its need for an updated, professional style; its fragmented infrastructure (done in bits and pieces with different applications and servers); questions of responsibility, etc. We also acknowledged the hard work that has gone into preparing content for the current site and were cognizant that redesigning a site can confuse our users.
We want to engage others in the Library as we move forward. To assist in generating ideas, we will prepare a vision statement, prioritized principles, and strategic goals that we can present to all library staff.
Components we need to consider for our process:
- audience definition
- strategy
- understanding the current site
- analytics (where are our users coming from, what systems are they using, etc.)
- training / skill sets required
In order to review previous testing and feedback from our users, Marian will consolidate a list of focus groups, surveys, and usability testing that we have done in the past.
ACTION: Marian.
We agreed that it would be helpful to create an inventory of sites that are exemplars in the library world. ACTION: Allan will set up a WebOps project under Basecamp for us to use for this and other tasks.
The sub-group looking at our audiences has begun looking into personas. Allan is making arrangements with a former colleague, with experience in this area, to assist us with the development of personas. ACTION: Allan.
Brainstorming on a Vision Statement
Elements we would like to see included in a vision statement include:
- user focus - proactive in responding to user needs
- providing solutions
- task focus - (write paper vs. find article)
- support: teaching, learning, research
- facilitate scholarly communication – in collaboration with others in the faculties and university – active role in disseminating scholarly communication
- role in digital preservation
- innovation, world class, engaging experience
- integrating student services
- connecting users to content (including services like ILL) by responding to users’ needs - need to identify users' needs
- increase use stats vs. $ spent on resources
- make it easier for users to find resources
- functional
- flexible
- interactivity with our users – and users with each other
- building a sense of community
- feedback and assessment
- customization for our users
- being where our users are
- fulfilling users academic needs
ACTION: Allan & Nancy will draft a vision statement.
- Around the Table
Deferred.
- Next Meetings
January 23, 2 - 3:30 pm, Davis Conference Room
January 30, 2 - 3:30 pm, Porter Conference Room (LIB 428)
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June 23, 2010
