Minutes of July 28, 2011 Meeting

Present:

Deodato, Boyle, Ling, McDonald, Koruth (recorder), Mills, Mullen, Purger (co-chair), Springs, Womack, Kesselman, Fetzer

Agenda

1. Usage statistics/Google Analytics Update (Boyle)
2. Visual Design (Koruth, Purger)
3. Information architecture progress (Womack)
4. Search team progress (Deodato)
5. Ongoing Activities
   1. Mobile site development
   2. 10th anniversary of 9/11 - digital exhibit
   3. Libguides

The Board established that the minutes of past meetings #7, 8, 9, 10 are accepted on the Sakai site.
Noted: Team members who are not on web board will be given access to Sakai.

1. Usage statistics/Google Analytics

a) Documents reviewed: Analytics for libraries, Google Analytics team Update for Web Board (Jeanne Boyle) and Rutgers University Libraries Website: Mission, Goals, and Assessment Plan(Joseph Deodato):

Brief description of what Google Analytics (GA) can achieve for a website. The main issue faced by the GA team is identifying the 'big questions' ; what do we want to learn about our website usage and user behavior in order to best tweak Google Analytics to get useful answers. This includes users across platforms, including mobile users.

GA's commercial services have to be adapted to meet the needs of this organization.

Issues/Matters to be addressed:

• Define and identify 'Goals' and Funnel paths across the libraries site. A goal is a website page which a visitor reaches once they have completed a desired action, such as a registration or download. A funnel path is the path you want visitors to take to reach a goal.
• Currently it is not possible to track exits to third party sites (like the Library catalog). This could possibly be corrected by adding relevant code (Sam).
• Currently it is not possible to track movement through databases and indexes. This needs to be tracked.
• Data is to be gathered separately for LibGuides
• Collecting data will be easier upon migration to Drupal 6.
• Robeson has its own Google Analytics account which needs to somehow be reconciled with the account for the entire library site
• Bounce Rate: identify pages where a high bounce rate is to be expected and pages where it is not.
• Should there be a team whose goal is website assessment using various methods, with Google Analytics being a part of its responsibility?
• Where are usage statistics and how do users of staff pages get to them? (Boyle)
• Usage Reports need to be short, meaningful and easily accessible.
• What are the most frequent questions asked on Ask a Librarian? Laura Mullen has some compiled questions.

Conclusions: The website governance team and the Google Analytics team will work together on reconciling the Assessment Plan with the Website Governance Plan. The goal is to determine overarching points with regard to website assessment, mission, goals etc. This process, to be conducted in the next few weeks, will be concurrent with the implementation of the website redesign.

Google Analytics team needs to determine what is successful based on statistics (Tibor). However, the team needs help defining 'success', and defining what needs to be assessed in and across the site.

The Assessment Plan and above questions are to be submitted to the Governance team as input for fleshing out the categories in the Governance plan and reworking it as a whole.

IIS team will evaluate migration of site and databases to Drupal 6 prior to the redesign implementation.

2. Visual Design

a) Document reviewed: Design Draft Responses: Version 6. (Mary Ann Koruth)

• Need to define a glossary of terms for future conversations about visual design
• Devise printing options for pages that will not include the header and footer but only relevant content. Possible solution: provide print icon in specific content blocks?

Conclusions: await Roger Black design solution based on review. Discuss printing options at a later meeting.

3. Information Architecture

a) Thank you Ryan Womack; welcome Marty Kesselman.

b) Sam McDonald is the new chair of IA team; Katie Anderson will join the team.

c) Document reviewed: Information Architecture team design recommendations (Ryan Womack)

• Provide a site search box on the B-nav. Can be changed to just a link (without a box) if we find users are confusing it with the main search box.
• Options on how to display Ask A librarian live chat were discussed.
• Providing a strong visual cue to the 'Quick Finder' in the B-nav, or having it stay open when the page is loaded will indicate to users that it contains important links.
  Note: Quick Finder is a support navigation. Most of its links would already be accessible using the A-nav or other elements on the homepage.
• Hours and Directions need to be featured somewhere on the home page.

Conclusion: In future meetings, review menu items in the A-nav.

4. Search team (Joseph Deodato)

• Final search box option to be sent to Roger Black is version 2, option A on the redesign site.
• Two targets need to be worked on: EZ borrow and database search.
• Rationale for new tabs was discussed: tabs needed to be task oriented.
• Database tab will be changed to include only one pull down like other tabs.
• Possibility of including the names Searchlight and Library Catalog was discussed in descriptions of each tab.
• Customization of advanced search pages
• Proxy issues for the search tab have to be resolved. Possible solution: do a check and say 'Login required' when users access search from off campus.

Conclusions: Usability testing will be conducted, possibly a month from now, once the targets described above are programmed into the tool. Human Subjects Certification from IRB will also have to occur. Search team will discuss what advanced search will look like, and how those pages will be customized, so that designers can provide useful input about the same. Proxy issues will also be discussed.

5. Ongoing activities

1. Need to plan extent of development and coding that lies ahead
   Content creation/correction of existing content is a big part of this implementation. (Tibor/Sam)
2. Project management tool to be selected in near future. (Tibor)
3. Mobile presence of RU Libraries is a priority. We need to provide OPAC, hours and directions and some other basic services to begin with. (Tibor)
4. Libguides team will meet in the next two weeks to discuss homepage layout and decide whether course guides are to be included in the home page or not. The team has to pick guides that need a redirect icon to the new guides that will replace them.
5. Tenth anniversary of 9/11: this site needs to be developed. (Chad).