Minutes of May 9, 2005 Meeting

Present:: K. Au (chair), S. Bartz, R. Gardner, K. Hartman, T. Haynes, D. Hoover, S. McDonald, R. Nahory, K. Wenk

Content Group Report

Databases added

Sax's Dangerous Properties of Industrial Materials
Information Science and Technology Abstracts (ISTA)
Thesaurus Linguae Graecae- TLG

Database on-deck

Corpus de la littérature médiévale
Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française
Index to Printed Music: Collections & Series
Women and Social Movements in the US: 1600-2000

"Image Collections in Luna Insight" was added to the Indexes and Databases page without fanfare.
The Open Access/Google Scholar page is still being worked on.
Database descriptions are being continually reviewed and updated (averaging about 5 per month).
Karen Hartman reports she is working on an Urban Studies research guide.

Design Group Report

Nothing to report as actions. New discussion for 3 How Do I's under new business.

Webmaster Report

Work on proxy continues with news, notices, and other refinements.
Will be adding about 35 sub-pages to RU records pages.
Will be adapting MyRU Library channels: IRIS search, RedLightGreen, and Searchpath.
Shaun is working on the visualization of numeric data for SearchPath.

Liaison Reports

IPAC

Work on Webcat to iLink migration continues.

ISC

The revised "Library Instruction" pages now live and available from the navigation sidebar.

PSC

No report, but what "One minute library" and "First time users" are was explained.

Systems

Proxy news and support continues.

Discussion on WAC Restructuring

Given the diminishing amount of business facing the subcommittees of WAC, WAC-C and WAC-D, the discussion focused on re-integrating WAC-D and WAC-C into "full" WAC. This will reduce the number of meetings and allow the larger group to address issues faster. Small ad hoc working groups will be created to address specific action items as necessary.

Some of the points made were:

With the large projected screen in the conference room the design group does not necessarily have to be limited to who can sit around a single PC!
The managing/nudge roles of the WAC-C and WAC-D chairs will need to continue even with the merging.
Reducing the number of meetings saves time (travel and other logistics).
"Full" WAC can apply more effort to reviewing old content than WAC-C could.

The merger was approved.

The side-question of length of WAC term and who may be nominated as chair was asked. Terms seem to be open-ended until member feels they have more priorities than they can address. Notes from June 2004 indicate that any faculty member may be chair (which traditionally is a 2 year term).

Goals and Projects

From January minutes

WAC Goals for 2004-05

The draft document distributed prior to the meeting was reviewed and finalized as follows:

continue to review and update Webpages on a regular schedule
develop specifications and procedures for Website content (e.g., database descriptions, Research Guides, Finding Aids)
collaborate and communicate with RUL councils and committees to introduce and maintain Website content (e.g., Alumni Library)
investigate best practices at peer institutions for Website management and Webpage development

Specifically:

assist with the implementation of authenticating remote users by NetID
review the revised Instructional Services pages
complete the Website Usability Study

WAC was charged to consider the above and come prepared to discuss WAC goals and objectives for 2005/2006.

New Business

3 new "How Do I's" have been proposed:

1. How do I know if an article is scholarly? (or peer reviewed or something to that effect).
The idea came from an information desk staff person who says that question is asked a lot. After much discussion we decided to start with an adapted version of Au's eCollege version at http://newarkwww.rutgers.edu/ecollege/popular.htm. This would be a new page for the indexes page (and might also function as a "see also" from other pages). It was rejected as a typical "how do I" since it is not really a "do something" like the others. It is also likely to be longer than our brief, bulleted how do I style.

2. How do I set up a deposit account?
WAC agreed that Sam should code it and share with WAC for comment. This and the next How Do I were requested and written by Judy G.

3. How do I view articles delivered on the Web?
WAC had a few questions regarding if this was really a "do something" How Do I since a user already needed to have done something on order to get a delivery number via email. After some debate and questioning WAC decided that it ought to be put up and recommended that an introductory sentence/paragraph be written to explain what it applies to.

Next Meeting: June 13, 2005 (recorder: Hoover)

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