Minutes of December 9, 2002 Meeting

Present:

Ka-Neng Au, Sara Harrington, Theo Haynes, Sam McDonald, Leslie Murtha, Stephanie Bartz, Jeanne Boyle, Rebecca Gardner, Karen Wenk, Vibiana Bowman by teleconference.

Excused:

Dave Hoover

1. Content Group Report (WAC-C)

• Theo Haynes went over where we stand with Index Description review and revisions. All of the guides needing revision have been assigned to WAC members.

• Subcommittee will review status of the old research guides.

• Sara will be working on a new research guide with the French department.

• Jeanne is working on updated collections descriptions for each of the libraries. She is following up with head of collections at each library to get these updated.

• Off-campus support pages: Jeanne suggested that we remove the page “Recommended Hardware and Software for Remote Users.” Sam will remove that page soon. It was then suggested that we re-work the Off-campus support pages with the material that Au has developed for e-college.

• Alert Services pages, links, and site map listings are up.

2. Design Group (WAC-D)

• Libraries and centers moved up to the front page. The front page box reads:
  
     Libraries and Centers
     - RU-Online: The Rutgers Digital Library
     - Rutgers Libraries and Centers on all campuses
     - Related Libraries / Collections
  
     in the 'about box'
     - the first bullet 'Libraries and centers' will be removed

• Titles of staff directories:
  Libraries' Faculty and Staff Directory -> Alphabetical Directory of Libraries' Faculty and Staff
  Libraries and Departmental Directory -> Directory of Libraries, Centers, and Departments

• catalog page review for redundant 'web version/telnet version' links was done. The Eureka telnet links have been removed, but the 'web version' links have not yet been changed.

• The index telnet page has had all the Eureka titles removed. The notice of the changes was moved to the bottom of the page until about late January.

• Public service policies moving to the about page pending.

• Spring hours went up

• PDF form for a release form (see Staff->Public Services->Forms). It allows a very nice printout with letterhead and name etc. filled in. This service/function is now available for use elsewhere.

• 'User Services': environmental scan of what other ARL libraries done. Most other libraries use similar terminology. The decision was made to leave the title “User Services”.

• Alert Services was rolled out.

• The new index rollout procedures meeting was held, draft is done and under review. The process was clarified and streamlined – notes were made of exceptions.

• Discussion on how to make sure we post information about any changes in database vendor links in a timely fashion. Can we make early announcements about changes as soon as we know? Does the “Making Additions to Our Web Pages” specify this?

3. Public Services Council updates:

• Jeanne Boyle reported that questions came up in PSC about the libraries’ web pages. Jeanne proposed that the chair of WAC should attend the next PSC meeting. Au will write to RUL_everyone and report on what WAC is doing. He will highlight the horizon scanning that we do when looking at making changes and adjustments to usability.

• At the next meeting we will assess assessment methodologies. Jeanne and Rebecca will review background material and distribute to WAC members for discussion at the next meeting.

4. Instruction Report

The subgroup to write “ How do I Write a Research Paper?” has not met yet.

5. CNI Report:

Jeanne Boyle reported on the Coalition for Networked Information Fall 2002 Task Force meeting that was held in San Antonio TX last week. She gave a very interesting and comprehensive report. The consistent thread that ran through most of the sessions was the concept of Institutional Repositories.

The project briefings are available on the CNI web site http://www.cni.org Jeanne will let us know when the complete presentation material is available