User Interface Group
November 9 , 2006
User Interface Group
November 9, 2006Present: Maggie Bartley, Darcy Duke, Lisa Harrington (minutes), Nicole Hennig (chair), Lisa Horowitz
- Staff Web Logo (met without Bonnie)
Two winners were chosen for the staff web logo. Aspects of the two finalists were combined into one to create the final look.
- Staff Web Home Page
Nicole gave the group a tour of the new staff web home page. The MIT/Google search bar now works, as well as people finder, and printable directory. Categories are set for now but can be flexible and more can be added under each category.
Special features are the Spotlight, Quicklinks, and About this Site
We discussed ideas for Quicklinks and will add: request public spotlight, travel stuff, shortcuts to MIT Libraries, web guidelines, staff that speak, read, write in various foreign languages page, and staff Vera(protected with certificates)
The move of the staff web may be delayed (*update: the move is being delayed until Dec. 7th and 8th)
Forms- Lisa Harrington is making a list of various forms on the staff web and giving this to Nicole.
- RSS Feeds
We took a look at the RSS feeds for new materials for chemistry and economics. The feeds can be viewed in the browser or using a feed reader such as Bloglines. The group discussed how many items per page should there be- up to 250 is available but we decided that 50 is preferable and if libraries want more, they can request more. Also it is sorted by date which was also preferred by the group. We are aiming to make this live by Dec. 1.
We will eventually set up a way so that each library can embed the feed into their pages for auto-updating, instead of creating new book pages by hand. The schedule for updating may be once a week covering the last 30 days up to 250 titles. We could also put “new titles” links on the public webpages.
Eventually there will be a feed for the Virtual Browsery. Nicole will look into the possibility to have feeds for the new titles in Vera. (update: Perhaps we should just add feeds for electronic titles from Barton, since we already have a method for generating them from Barton).
- Barton as an SFX Source
Rich will be invited to one of our December meetings.
- Extra meeting in November
Nicole will send us a Techtime so we can set some priorities for upcoming projects
- Humanities Virtual Browsery
The Virtual Browsery is in a blog format, created by a task force to replace the current virtual browsery page that highlights books on the physical Browsery in the Humanities Library. Greg Padilla set up the blog and various scripts to allow it to be more automated than its standard html page predecessor. Lisa Horowitz gave us a tour and showed the group the various features. This will be updated daily with two or three titles and it works by staff entering in the ISBN of an item which then goes through a script that pulls the info. into the blog such as the book jacket from Amazon and it links to the Barton record and availability. For some items, reviews are also available and each item does have commenting capabilities for any mit user. There are technorati and de.icio.us links as well as a “find in another library” worldcat.org link.
Anyone with an MIT email address can add comments, including alumni fostering the MIT community feel. The comments will be moderated but only the first comment a user adds needs approval. A customized look for the blog will be designed later. There are rss feeds and we will add it to the Betas page and on the library home page as well.
- Public website
Darcy will be adding the Betas link to the homepage under “About Us”
We changed the title tag in the HTML of the Libraries home page, so that it now says: "MIT Libraries, MIT Library." This will help people find it when they google the phase "mit library." Under the Virtual Browsery their will be a message regarding Beta
Under staff listings where our names, email and phone numbers appear- those staff willing to be available for user reference questions and support can list there IM usernames and the system they use. Lisa Horowitz is going to draft a message to public services staff regarding this.
- Nicole showed us the idealib wiki for members of UIG to keep track of all of the various projects we are working on as well as all ideas that are sent to us.
Next Meeting: Thursday, November 30, 2006