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Web Operational Management Group

Minutes of the Meeting of April 13, 2011, 2:00 - 3:30 pm
Dana Porter Library, Room 428

Present : Annie Bélanger (Chair), Charles Woods, Chris Gray, Esther Millar, Nancy Collins (Recorder), Doug Morton

Regrets: Adrian Kemp, Marian Davies

  1. Approval of WebOps Minutes of March 9 – approved with minor revisions

  2. Business Arising from the Minutes of March 9, 2010
    #5 Waterloo Web Phasing Plan - Outstanding items
    • No info. on the status of Adrian's items
    • Search box in the page header
      • ACTION: Chris will add a label to it
      • ACTION: Esther will check if other Waterloo sites have a label on the header search box. She will report any discrepancies to Sarah Forgrave

  3. LibX
    • Bill Oldfield managed our LibX account before retiring
    • Chris has completed the LibX Firefox 4 update, but we haven't made it public yet. He initiated a discussion on whether or not we should continue to support LibX. LibX updates are easy to do, but require extensive testing before being released, as updates are pushed out to all users
    • ACTION: Chris will bring the issue to the Adhoc Discovery & Access Committee
    • The decision will likely be that we will maintain LibX for librarians, but not promote it to our users at the present time

  4. New Web Form
    • Alex raised the possibility of creating a new web form for our users to report items missing from the stacks
    • The University of West Georgia is one example of academic library that includes a "submit a search request" form on its website
    • The benefits of having this type of form is that the request could immediately be directed to our ILL staff as well
    • The group thought the form was a good idea and raised the question of where the form would go on our site
    • ACTION: Alex will investigate different form options
  1. Web Redesign - User Needs Update
    Annie gave the group an update on the status of the User Needs Assessment
    • User data collection is now complete. Response rates were high - across all test components, we received over 7,100 responses: 28% of campus population
      • Survey. Surveys where respondents went through the entire survey. Total # of completed surveys: 5,214. Total completed through survey invitation: 4,583. Total completed through UW Library Website: 631. Total Internal users = 5,127. Total # of Undergrad students: 3,727. Total # of Grad/Post Grad students: 708. Total # of Faculty: 207. Total # of Staff (Library & Other): 462, including over 60 Library staff. Other Internal (i.e. Invited to survey but didn't answer Q.1) = 23. Total External = 87. Total Alumni: 56. Total 'Other' external: 31
      • Jargon-free Survey. Short paper-based survey about language preferences. Over 250 surveys completed
      • Online Usability Task-Based tests. Include content preference and tree test (navigation). Total # of completed tests: 1602 (as of April 14th - tests ran until April 18th). Undergraduates: 1175. Graduate students: 265. Faculty & staff: 153. Other users: 18
      • In-person usability tests. Interviews for complex tasks. 19 interviews so far
      • Focus groups: 7 groups with a total of 22 participants so far
    • Next Steps
      • Data analysis. The Survey Research Centre is beginning the data clean for the online survey
      • Staff consultation. This will occur in May. The thematic of the meeting will revolve around the views staff participants have of "what Library users want from our site?" More about what staff want to achieve on the site will be sought through the business requirements and functional requirements processes, which will occur after completion of user requirements
      • Card sorting will be left until after the user requirements are established
    • The campus content management and redesign teams will be publishing our usability protocols on web.uwaterloo.ca. The campus will follow our lead on usability software

  2. Training Update
    • Marian will be taking an Information Architecture - Advanced course at the University of Toronto's iSchool, starting April 28. She will also be taking a 2-day Google Analytics course
    • Chris recently completed a Lynda.com course in web accessibility. He found the course useful and has recommended that we purchase it on cd. He will be taking another web accessibility course soon, this time an 8-week text-based course offered by the International Webmasters Association. Chris has created a list of recommended links for accessibility

  3. Chairing in Annie's Absence
    • Annie indicated that she will be gone from May 27 for 6 months and asked if anyone would like to chair/facilitate meetings during her absence. The group nominated Charles who was absent from the meeting at the time. He arrived to the meeting seconds later and accepted these new responsibilities
    • Annie will talk to Pascal about his preferred involvement with WebOps
    • Alex will be the manager liaison during Annie's absence

  4. Around the Table
    • Charles discussed the recent Town Hall meeting in light of our web redesign efforts. He suggested that there is an opportunity to connect our redesign efforts with making the 6th Decade Plan tangible, particularly in relation to student gateways and student success initiatives

  5. Next Meeting: April 27, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm, Dana Porter Library (Lib 428)
    Recorder: Marian

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May 12, 2011