User Interface Group
October 12, 2006
Present: Maggie Bartley, Darcy Duke, Lisa Harrington, Nicole Hennig, Lisa Horowitz (minutes), Bonnie ParksGuest: Heather Denny for item #1
1. Staff Web Logo (met without Bonnie)
We reviewed the entries for the logo contest. Since Bonnie entered the contest, she agreed not to accept the prize if she wins and also to not be a part of the discussion, so we did this part of the meeting without her.We narrowed it down to 2 choies and Lisa Harrington will send our suggested changes to the two applicants, with request that they mail revisions to Nicole within two weeks. Once resubmitted, Nicole will take the new iterations and try them each in the staff web template for the UIG to examine. Final decision will be made at that time.
2. Staff web planning
Monday staff web discussion in DIRC 2-3 PM (10/16/06).
Nicole will use this opportunity to discuss the new staff web move, and to clarify and gather input on the new staff home page design.
Nicole met with Christine Moulen to discuss moving the staff web to its new space (http://libstaff.mit.edu). Nicole has blocked off the afternoons of Nov. 14 and 15 to make the move.
During the time of the move:
- no edits by any staff
- files will be zipped up, moved, and re-opened in new space
- copy sites “as is” into new space
- need to replace all complete full URLs somehow (where people did not use relative URLs)
NH will maybe try something as a pilot (WAG pages, for example). Harrington to determine who is author for pages for each site. She'll be emailing each person or group ahead of time to verify who is the author for each site.
This step is simply physical moving of sites to libstaff.mit.edu, leaving behind what will not be used again.
Simple way to explain at meeting:
- move all very current sites as well as those that have a mix of current and old sites. All really old sites will be moved to a standalone server so google cannot find these, but we can always get them back if needed.
- URLs will be fixed so they work
- Purpose of the new home page is to find things more easily
- brainstorm re home page categories. (top level categories, names of categories, UIG will then work with those)
- make clear that “old pages” according to home page will be available to be moved to a new space
- give examples (use WAG pages)
- Marion will be setting up permissions, anyone will be able to have a space; there will be web form for creating new spaces
- review staff web guidelines (libstaff.mit.edu/uig/staffweb-guidelines.html)
This move is the first of two steps:
1. Moving everything from macfadden to libstaff.
2. Making the new home page and re-organizing how we link to things.
Possible ideas for new home page:
· a documentation space
· a forms space
· are these categories? or some other work?
Staff can use UIG and Project SimpLR (http://libstaff.mit.edu/simp/ and http://libstaff.mit.edu/uig/) as templates, can change color.
Marion will make sure once a year that every link on home page is reviewed by person in charge of page — she’ll confirm it’s active, it works, etc.
For meeting: Nicole will make some sort of outline of what we discussed. Will show guidelines, wire frame, brainstorm with flip chart, and answer people’s questions
Nicole will try to test all forms once move has taken place. Harrington to remind Kim Maxwell to send list of forms or will do herself.Wikis: Still no decision about wikis from IS&T.
We have beginnings of a proposal for wikis for the public web.3. Barton items
Your Bookshelf. Rich finished design. We’ve already been asked if other sites could use our design. Is functional, although could be improved.
Upgrade went very smoothly.
Next steps for UIG:
- Making Barton an SFX source. (Could not do this until upgrade happened.) Priority.
- Barton RSS feeds (i.e., new book feeds). How are we doing with that? Once we have these, not only can users subscribe, but we can embed contents into web pages (no new book pages by hand) and these can then be displayed. Maybe have a brown bag so people can see options etc.
Nicole and Darcy will make master list for Barton fixings, to do's, new features. We'll work on prioritizing this at our next meeting.
4. Betas
At next meeting, Nicole would like to show Hum virtual browsery maybe and other betas.
Promoting LibX. Could prepare an email for subject selectors to send out to groups. Darcy and Horowitz will meet to discuss promoting LibX.
We have a list of possible future betas that have been suggested by various people. We'll work on prioritizing these at the next meeting.
Next Meeting: Thursday, November 9, 2006