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Web Operational Management Group

Minutes of the Meeting of January 13, 2010
2 - 3:30 pm, Dana Porter Library, 428

Present: Annie Bélanger (recorder), Allan Bell (Chair), Marian Davies, Chris Gray, Adrian Kemp (guest), Tim Ireland, Esther Millar, Doug Morton, Bill Oldfield, Charles Woods

Regrets: Nancy Collins

  1. Approval of WebOps Minutes of November 25 – Approved

  2. Business Arising
    1. Campus Web Content Management Project
      The Waterloo CMS Project group determined that Drupal was a better fit for the university and will be focusing the initial pilot, targeted for September 2010, on Drupal.

      This move will fit well with the Library’s move to PHP. One concern is that there is not full support for Unicode yet – they are working on it.

    2. LibGuides
      LibGuides has been purchased.
      Adding GoogleAnalytics code into the LibGuides header for UW. Bill will get the code and Esther will add to LibGuides.

  3. Agenda Review
    No additional agenda items

  4. Workshop Registration System
    Need for additional registration system aside from LINC sessions. Need to differentiate LINC sessions from other sessions. Could use for promotion. Pros and cons to having multiple instances vs. one that can be targeted.

    Action: Tim to approach Glenn to see if he can add instruction labels and publish link.
    If not, to set up a meeting with Glen and systems to see if we can alter it.

  5. Virtual Seminar on Search & Discovery Patterns
    Seminar by Endeca and Morville. Faceted browsing, visual representation of search result, bread box – in a faceted search, the box keeps track of the filters. They are trying to systematize the way people search and the devices you can offer for searching. Also, they are developing criteria for different level of knowledge about the interface. Statistical studies of site searching and impacts on user satisfaction and search successes.
    • Spoke to federated searches for libraries – how it can improve user searching and satisfaction.
    • There are two ways of finding on website: browsing or search. Browsing doesn’t scale. However, browsing and search need to interact.
    • Looking at mobile application and different ways to do searching for music – example: hum a tune and find the song.
    • NCSU was one of first place to do federated searches. They didn’t put it up; they kept doing research and new iterations of their search.
    • Note: You can’t look at your search logs too much!

      Action: Consider viewing this webinar and listening to the answer podcast.
      Action: Set up a central viewing of the webinar.

  6. Library Server Replacement Update
    Are there development areas planned out? No - Any IT projects that could impact Systems need to be discussed with Department Head and Allan.

    Action: Allan – reminder to Library Managers.
    Action: non-Systems folk – review template and provide feedback to Allan.
    Action: Allan – Review template to ensure user-friendliness.

    Email accounts are no longer on the library server.

    Everything on the site should work the same as before.

    Action: Charles - Systems to send a thank you to IST for the migration and for the Voyager update.

  7. Campus Web Redesign
    WebOps is to have lunch with White Whale on January 20th, 2010 – noon to 1pm.
    Action: Esther to set up in Bookit.

    The president, the vice-president (information architecture), the designer, and the developer will be attending.

    They want to discuss establishing the purpose and orientation of the site.

    Nancy Collins and Esther Millar are delivering Writing for the Web training. Annie Belanger will be presenting on web accessibility.

    Look at their portfolio, not their business site to get a sense of their work.

    Usability and accessibility will be a focus. There is a need to have information architecture to our site internally. The Library should take advantage of this opportunity to clean up the information architecture. Questions around how we will build expertise in the Library.

    Issues of how to seamlessly offer services from a variety of back-end technology. The issue is for the Library to deal with – will need to give thought to how different systems work together and how to address them.

    Action: We need to think about what works and doesn’t work in our current site. We need to also think about the audiences that are using it.
    Action: Have a pre-meeting to brainstorm the above question. We can type a list up of items and knowledge of each other’s opinions.

  8. Around the Table

    Esther
    Issues with website colours and negative feedback. Suggest changing the red to match the LibGuides. Will mean that the site will now meet accessibility.
    Action: Esther to change to new red.

    Chris
    Primo – has been experimenting with the ExLibris web services. In PHP, a mini search client to Primo. Can embed search result from Primo if the page has PHP available. Could also work for mobile versions and LibGuides.
    Action: Chris will share the URL to his search client.
    Action: Chris and Adrian will work on a mobile application for this client.

  9. Next Meeting
    Next Meeting: January 27, Davis Conf. 2-3:30 pm. Recorder: Nancy
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February 18, 2010