Minutes of February 24, 2003 Meeting

Present:

K. Au, S. Bartz (recorder), V. Bowman (by teleconference), J. Boyle, R. Gardner, S. Harrington, D. Hoover, S. McDonald, L. Murtha, K. Wenk

Excused:

T. Haynes

1. The minutes of the January 13, 2003 meeting were reviewed and approved for posting.

2. Content Group Report

• No report.
• Au raised several questions regarding the 'Free' Electronic Access Request Form:
• Who should fill out the form? Selectors (others with recommendations should be referred to the appropriate selector).
• Who decides whether these items should be added to the Indexes and Databases pages? Items submitted by selectors will be added.
• Who will write descriptions for titles submitted via this form? Selectors whenever possible, WAC member if needed.
• Does the form need revision? Change "Free as a result of existing paper subscription" to "Free as a result of existing contract".

Au will refer the suggested change to M. Page and send an email to selectors to remind them to use the online forms to request that electronic resources be cataloged and added to the Indexes and Databases page.

3. Design Group Report

• No report

4. Webmaster Report

• PALCI and E-ZBorrow materials have been posted.
• The Catalogs page has been modified so that the names of the resources link.
• The Friends pages have been modified.
• An AALLive script that appears only when the service is available has been added to the home page. Au and Sam will consult with Natalie about advertising the service in off hours.
• The D21 committee has created a page on the SCC server that's linked from the RUL site.
• Hein-On-Line has been added to the Indexes and Databases page with a link to the Camden Law site. The law libraries link directly to many RUL resources, bypassing the description pages. Au will try and establish a contact within Newark Law.
• The training page is scheduled to go up on March 1.
• The problem with Shepard's access has not yet been resolved. The database owner (Bender) and the vendor (LexisNexis) are still negotiating licensing.

5. Instruction Report

• Plans are progressing for an April "50 Minute Instructor" workshop.

6. Systems Report

• RUCS secure services are targeted for implementation July 1, 2003. Telnet and FTP will be replaced by the SSH Secure Shell Client. WebDrive can be set up to tunnel to an FTP destination and act like another drive.
• A group from Systems and Technical Services is meeting to discuss problems with web caching. Dave has manually checked Indexes and Databases and reported the remaining problems to M. Page. E-journals still need to be checked. Additional problem reports should be sent directly to M. Page.
• Dave will send VPN information to the WAC list and will report on Index and Databases fixes at the next meeting.

7. Liason Reports

PSC

• Au will attend the meeting this week to talk about WAC.
• Council is looking at the Services pages with the intent to redesign and reorganize.

IPAC

• Reviewed IRIS peer sites and forwarded a request to Design Group for an IRIS search box on the home page.
• Alternative IRIS search screens are being discussed. Numbered steps or a simple search box with one pulldown are under consideration.
• Broadcast searching is being tested.
• New buttons have been designed and are replacing old buttons in IRIS.

CMS CAT Group

• Discussion continues on the narrowed down list of software options.

8. Usability Assessment

• There was a general discussion about assessment needs and the options for conducting an assessment. The basic question is "Can a user find what he/she wants on the RUL web site?" General agreement was that an assessment would be useful, but WAC is not necessarily in a position to do it. Au and Jeanne will take the question to PSC and examine the possibility of finding a partner at SCILS.
• An article in the most recent issue of Reference & User Services Quarterly refers to software for tracking web page use and the pathways followed to get there. Dave will investigate the cost and availability of Wusage.
• Au will send an email to the WAC list to begin a discussion of problems/concerns/peeves relating to the RUL pages.