Web Advisory Group Home > Minutes > 16 March 2005
Minutes - 16 March 2005Members present: Hennig (chair), Duke, Gaskell, Quirion (minutes), Skuce
1. Photo stripe and home page news
We reviewed the status of different home page feature ideas. Darcy has set up a checklist of the ideas that have been used or in process, which is available here: http://libstaff.mit.edu/webgroup/homepage/features/status.html
WAG members will follow up on some of the ideas for the home page: Stephen will follow up about the Metadata Unit as a featured service, Darcy to follow up on materials and spectra as well as Access keys. Christine will send out a call for new spotlights to all-lib. A section for students will be added to the Scholarly Communication pages, we will make this page a spotlight when visiting committee arrives.
Future ideas for features:
-SFX (after the SFX upgrade)
-New Books (waiting for RSS feeds)
-Barton Tips perhaps by using parts of the Information Navigator or Barton Tutorial (searching for conferences or theses)
-Preservation Services web site (these pages are on hold, pending further review)
2. Business FAQ
Millicent showed the Business FAQ resource, developed at UPenn. http://faq.library.upenn.edu/This is a resource developed at Penn that answers common business related subject questions, which other libraries can subscribe to. UPenn can host the database; the subscription includes the back end database tool, answers to the questions (which can be deleted/edited as appropriate), and a customizable user interface. The business section of this FAQ is really good, with powerful searching.
Millicent is proposing using this tool in Dewey as a test and has suggested that we consider using it in other areas, such as other subjects, or as a tool for core competencies for staff. Yale, Dartmouth, and other institutions have also purchased the Penn system. We'd like to know how much we can customize look and feel. This tool has capabilities as a Content Management System.
If we were to implement this system at Dewey as a test at MIT, a few questions come to mind:
-Would we make everything an FAQ? What's a FAQ page and what's not?
-Can we replace subject guides with FAQs?
-Would we want to use this tool for other things, to experiment on how we might want to host our content at another institution?. it would be an indication of how much work it is to try it out.
-Could this tool be used internally for the CHS?
-How customizable are the templates? what statistics are offered ? are RSS feeds as a
-How do these FAQ work with our other "How Do I?" pages?
-Where would this resource go in the Help Yourself section of our web site?
-Do we decide to skip some subject pages?
-Can you upload images? export for printing?
WAG is in favor of trying this, unless we can't customize the interface very much and there are major usability issues. After we answer some of these questions, we would recommend it.
3. Google Scholar Search pages
The page is live now, and linked from our home page, MacKenzie gave us some feedback about DSpace and the beta nature of the search tool. Additional edits will be made to address these.
4. Pages about searching our content in Other interfaces (Google Scholar, RedlightGreen)
Nicole sent us an article about RedLightGreen. http://www.nla.gov.au/pub/nlanews/2005/jan05/article1.html
We also looked at the OCLC Library Search in Google Scholar. Both are outside services that display our content in a new way, but bring users into Barton directly. Redlightgreen implements FRBR, and could be a good resource for undergraduate students.
We could approach making some pages about these other tools by making a cheat sheet for Redlight Green, Google Scholar, and others, then make a introduction page about "global" search tools which compares them. WAG will ask if anyone is interested in writing a page or pages about these individual resources. Stephen will work on a draft Q&A page for RedLightGreen, and it's features. Stephen will ask a librarian to write a page about WorldCat.
Other ideas:
-Do PodCasts on CD Rom which include free music from sites w/ creative commons licenses, and tutorials on finding things through tools like Google Scholar, RedLightGreen, and WorldCat.
-Create an RSS feed for all of our instruction programs
5. News:
-Events calendar card sort- WAG members volunteered to test. This card sort test used a tool that facilitates an online card sort. Testers create names of groups to drop things into and can rename and reorganize the folders for each group. We could use this tool if we wanted to do another card sort.
-Contribute- We can test Contribute with more people, MIT's trial license lasts until July 1. We will need to think about who should get trained for Contribute rather than Dreamweaver.
-Blogs- Darcy, Tracy Gabridge, Stephanie Hartman and Rob Wolfe are testing Wordpress (a free application) for blogging. They are going to keep on testing and will report back to Nicole. 2 are staff uses, two are public uses. These can be used to get RSS going.
-RSS- There will be a feature in the IS newsletter about RSS. Nicole is following what's going on with RSS at MIT, and she's also waiting for Austin to have some time to look at RSS for new book feeds in ALEPH (after the Barton upgrade is done).
-Records Management Web site- Lois Beattie is working on a new site for Records Management for the Archives. It will be found at libraries.mit.edu/records. Nicole will send us a preview sometime in the future.
Next meeting:
Wednesday, April 6, 2005, CubeSpace
http://libstaff.mit.edu/webgroup/minutes/20050316.html
Web Advisory Group Home > Minutes > 16 March 2005