Web Advisory Group Home > Minutes > 2 July 2003
Minutes - 2 July 2003Present: Hennig, Edelman (minutes), Duke, Quirion, Skuce
1. Content Management Systems
Nicole demonstrated Moveable Type <http://www.movabletype.org/> as a possible system for creating templates to use for our content management system. She and Carl are also looking at Plone <http://www.plone.org/>, which has even more features and is a full-fledged CMS.
2. Subject Guides Templates
Our current subject pages use a left-hand navigation style. We looked at different navigation styles: right-hand navigation, index pages of links on the top page leading to sub-pages, and long pages with links at the top that lead to anchors further down the page. We also looked at Google, which has tabs at the top that lead to different pages.
Several members of WAG will each take a subject guide and recreate it in a different style in order to see what they would look like in that style. Christine will do the Psychology page all on one page, and Darcy will do the Architecture page as a tabbed, Google-style page. Nicole will create a right-hand navigation page if she has time.
By the end of the summer we hope to have an alternative template so that subject specialists have a choice when creating or revising their pages. Graham has been designated by CMG to work with us on this and we'll get input from other subject specialists as well.
3. New Home Page Ideas
Nicole spoke to Nina and Mackenzie about creating a new home page sometime in the next year. We would hire a designer to work on the page with us. The usability tests we conducted last year, as well as the heuristic review we did during the previous year, led us to consider the idea of changing just the home page before our next complete site redesign. We need more flexibility to highlight certain resources and to promote new and exciting projects going on in the libraries.
The group brainstormed ideas for a new home page by looking at other home pages. Jen will email the list of ideas to the other members of WAG.
There is a list of library web sites that WAG had previously evaluated, from the March 20, 2002 minutes. If anyone has any more ideas or finds another interesting web site to look at, email WAG. Stephen and Jen will look at the list of ARL libraries at http://www.arl.org/members.html to find interesting features and email them to the group before the next meeting.
4. BELL
BELL pages can be searchable (update from Serials Solutions). How can we incorporate the search so that our patrons can find journals more easily? How does this relate to the option of importing data from SFX into VERA?
Next meetings:
Tuesday, July 8, 2:30-4:00; Lewis Music Conference Room
Wednesday, July 16, 2-3:30; 10-500 (Barker Conference Room)
http://libstaff.mit.edu/webgroup/minutes/20030702.html
Web Advisory Group Home > Minutes > 2 July 2003