Skip to the content of the web site.

Web Operational Management Group

Minutes of the Meeting of March 20, 2008
1:30 - 3:00 pm, room 428 of Dana Porter Library

Present: Allan Bell (Chair), Nancy Collins, Chris Gray, Esther Millar, Doug Morton, Bill Oldfield, Charles Woods (Recorder)

Regrets:Tim Ireland, Marian Davies

  1. Web Operational Managment group membership.
    The group paused for a moment of silence, recognizing the departure of Dan Sich and acknowledging his wonderful contributions during his tenure.

    Members were asked to think of a replacement. It was noted that there were future hires in the ISR and Systems Department that could provide options for the vacated position, and that there were worthy candidates in other departments.

  2. Agenda Review

    Item 7, Literature Review, was dropped from the agenda due to time constraints

  3. Minutes of meeting, February 27, 2008
    The minutes were approved with minor corrections.

  4. Business Arising
    1. Procedure: It was noted that the group often bogged down in the Business-Arising portion of the meeting, sometimes getting to new agenda items late in the meeting. To help ensure that the group address new, important and/or urgent agenda items earlier in the meeting it was accepted that members should show restraint. If a business-arising item is just informative it was suggested that it be deferred to an around-the-table item. Business-arising discourse should be brief. It was also agreed that a "Meeting-Review" item should be added to the end of each agenda wherein members could identify what went well, or poorly, in the meeting just completed.
    2. There was nothing new to report on item 2.6 -- Google Seach Enhancments
    3. Item 5 -- Home Page Link for Renovations. After review, Nancy noted that the WebCam option would not be pursued. A link to a status report on the renovation project will be put in the lower right corner of the Library Home page, and updated periodically with topical pictures.
    4. Item 6 -- A-Z list. Bill and Doug continue to refine A-Z list models and are utilizing a test site to do so.
    5. Item 2.8 -- BlogSpot Usage -- no change in status
    6. Item 4 -- Writing for the Web. Esther has sent a message to staff for the March 25th Writing-for-the-Web session. Allan also confrimed that Eva Grabinski was willing to do a session for staff that will be announced via regular IST course announcements.
    7. Item 8 -- UWLibrary Web Strategy. This item was approved by Mark Haslett and the Library Executive and will now be reviewed by the campus Web Executive Board for comment.
    8. Project managment -- it was noted that new projects were going through a "triage" process and entered in to Basecamp. This procedure should ensure better prioritization and execution.

  5. Recaptcha
    A survey concluded that the Recaptcha approach to protect forms from spam abuse would not work as it presented significant usibility problems. Bill is investigating alternatives to this approach.

  6. ERM -- A-Z list
    The group reviewed a document prepared by Bill Oldfield that identified several issues that arise from the implementation of the SFX A-Z list. It was noted that there were many links on the Library Website that pointed to the old TUG ERM system which will become obsolete over time. In some cases the link could be changed to point to an SFX equivalent but in many cases the differering subject classifications between the two systems made this difficult.

    The group discussed several options, including a longer-term implemention of a non-static delivery of discipline pages via content-managment systems. Bill and Chris will review the possibility of using dynamically created openURLs via our link resolver.

    In the meantime it was agreed to defer the subject classification issue until the potentials of Primo, Verde and SFX are better understood. It was also agreed that a warning should be posted to the relevant pages stating that they are no longer maintained. Bill was asked to forward his analysis to the TUG Public-Interfaces group for consideration.

  7. Plone Demonstration
    Chris Gray demonstrated the capabilities of the Plone Content Management System to the group. The demonstration began with a review of the materials available at the Plone home site at http://plone.org , including documentation, user forums and downloads.

    Chris then proceeded to show the mockups he had created at http://cpgray2.lib.uwaterloo.ca:8081/uwlib00 , illustrating the authoring interface, the setup of users, privileges and roles and some of the experimenting he had done on look-&-feel issues, including the use of logos and portal skins. He noted that Plone could work in a hybrid environment that would not preclude the use of 3rd party editors. It was also noted that Plone could work in an LDAP authentication environment. He noted that he would continue experimentation with large slices of the current library website.

  8. Primo demonstration
    Allan reported on the Primo training just concluded by Ex Libris for TUG Primo team members, and reviewed features of the new system. These include searching and saving of items, links to Amazon content (book-covers, reviews, etc), post-limiting of searches by facets, etc. He noted he would forward links to other Primo customers to the group. Tests are beginning in April; the system should be in production in September.

  9. Around the Table
    1. Chris noted that alternatives to the Connect-From-Home problem originally reported by S. Smith are yet under consideration.
    2. Esther noted the webinar on Writing for the Web will be held next week in Needles Hall.
    3. Charles suggested that it might be good to end each meeting with a review of its conduct, and opined that in this meeting there was redundancy between some of the items in Business Arising with later agenda items.

  10. Next Meeting
    April 9, 2 - 3:30 pm, Porter Conference Room (LIB 428)

 

If you have any queries or concerns about this page, please contact .

June 23, 2010