Minutes of August 15, 2001 Meeting

Present:

Ka-Neng Au, Vibiana Bowman, Jeanne Boyle, Rebecca Gardner (Chair), Sara Harrington, Sam McDonald, Leslie Murtha (recorder), Pat Piermatti

Reports

Design Group:

• The new Web page is set to debut on Monday, 8/20 (subsequently postponed to 8/27). This will be a rolling changeover - not all pages will be completely converted immediately.
• "How Do I" pages for finding books and finding periodicals will need minor revision because of changes following the implementation of authorities in IRIS.

Research Guides

• The new Jazz guide is now available, and the press release is imminent.
• The finding Aids page is being updated
• Triveni Kuchi, the new Instruction Librarian at Kilmer, will be working on a guide for sociology resources. Social Work resources may be incorporated.
• The guide to numeric data is almost ready for release.

Immediate Things

• Ulrichs and MultexNet have been moved from the Forthcoming databases page to the main Indexes and Databases page
• ERIC needs an updated description.
• Grove's Dictionary of Art and Biography and Genealogy Master Index have descriptions written and ready to post.
• The new format for the second-level page for Indexes and databases will require that many of our older databases have their descriptions updated.

Instruction Liaison

• The new Web pages for library instruction are almost completed. A prototype can be viewed at [URL removed].
• Leslie Murtha reported very briefly on having attended the ACRL Instruction Immersion program. Plans are being developed to share information about this experience with the library faculty.

General Notes

• The new Media Services pages are up.
• The new Hours pages will go up today.
• Updating of Staff pages is a little behind schedule.

Art Library and other non-circulating collections

• Sara suggested that there might be some way of indicating on the Hours page which libraries do not circulate their collections. It was also suggested that we consider adding word processing capabilities to computers in these libraries to facilitate the use of materials within the buildings. It was noted that a viable alternative is for people to use an e-mail program to type their notes and mail them to themselves.

New Web Page

The committee reviewed the final version of the new Web page.

• There are two sidebars - one for the top page, with buttons, and one for the lower pages with links to the major categories from the first page.
• The sticky arrows have been implemented.
• The "Welcome New Users" icon will be removed after the first few weeks of the semester. The New Users page can be found as a FAQ under Ask-A-Librarian.
• There is still a little clean-up work to be done to make sure that the links on the top page and the headers on the lower pages match.
• The following items have been added to the "How Do I" list:
  • find video or audio information
  • register a barcode
• Staff Resources has been added as a link a the bottom of the list on the main page.
• The committee also reviewed the changes to the Indexes and Databases pages. Links to discipline sectors are now available at the top of the page, and the alphabetical list is divided in two. Links from either the alphabetical list or a subject list go directly to the descriptive material, with a link to open the database. This does not change the click-depth of the link to the database, but makes better use of space, and makes the descriptive material more readily available.
• There was some discussion about keeping the GO button used in the previous version. This creates some layout problems. It was decided that Sam would experiment with some button designs and try to find one that could be incorporated.
• The layout of the descriptions was discussed, and some of the fields were re-ordered. The new order will be: Access -> Notes -> Description -> Sources -> Type of coverage -> Dates covered ->Updating frequency ->Provider -> Print counterpart -> Help
  
  Information about plug-ins will be moved to the Notes field.
• The various merits and maintenance issues of the site map and site index were discussed. Decision was made to continue to maintain the site index and to have a modified site map.
• Items missing on new page that were present on old page - Finding Aids (moved to Research Guides page) and Web search tools (eliminated).

Web Page Consultant

• The consultant has had a preliminary look at our site, and suggested that we reconsider the name of the button "research shortcuts." This designation suggests a tutorial, rather than an expert's tool. "Quick Links" was suggested as a substitute; various other ideas were considered. This discussion was tabled for the time being. Further research may be indicated.

Meeting closed at 11:30 AM, and adjourned to the Student Center for the WAC Snack