This new subcommittee, one of three recently formed by Catherine Murray-Rust, has been given the responsibility to:
1. Set design criteria for pages loaded on the CUL Web server by units
within the CU Library system.
2. Set design criteria and contribute to the design of the CU Library Home
Page.
3. Organize and provide training and support to library staff involved in
Web page creation and maintenance.
This first meeting was devoted to discussion of these charges and to administrative tasks.
The subcommittee will meet once a week. In January '96, meetings will be held Friday mornings from 9 to 11. A different meeting date and time will likely be set for succeeding months. Once their spring semester schedules are known, subcommittee members will each send 3 two-hour availability slots to Patricia, who will set up the final meeting schedule. Mornings are preferred meeting times, since most subcommittee members are involved in public service activities.
Meetings will be held in either the Phys Sci Library training room, Olin 106, the Engineering Library training room, or the Mann Library first floor conference room. These are all locations where equipment and demonstration capabilities reside.
The next two meetings of this subcommittee will be 1/12/96 and 1/19/96, from 9-11. Both will be held in Olin 106. Interested members of the CU Library staff are welcome to attend.
During these and future meetings, the group will develop a list of minimum design standards for Web pages to be mounted on the CU Library Web server. Policy issues such as whether these will be standards for pages mounted by library units on this server only and whether pages mounted by units on different servers should follow the same standards will need to be determined at a later date and not necessarily by this committee. Some libraries may be grateful for a good model to follow, but it is not the role, as we understand it, of the Design Subcommittee to attempt to set policies beyond design standards for the CUL Web server.
Many members felt the Design Subcommittee will play the role of providing guidance and assistance to CUL staff creating Web pages. Formulating standards will involve compiling evaluation criteria for both appearance and functionality (using as many existing Web design publications as possible so as not to reinvent the wheel). The resulting products will most likely be a style sheet, glossary, and templates of various types of pages. The Design Subcommittee will work with the other Subcommittees to provide instruction (or organize instruction sessions) for library staff as needed.
Evaluating the design aspects of the CUL Home Page includes looking at both the present Home Page and prototypes for the future. Tony Cosgrave and the Implementation Subcommittee is working on both; the Design Subcommittee will respond to there questions and give feedback regarding headers, footers, navigational icons, templates, navigational schemes, how various pages relate to each other, and so on. The Design Subcommittee may also take the lead in developing design ideas for the CUL WWW pages.
Michael Engle will create a home page that will serve as a "single point of entry" to material of interest to the Design Subcommittee. This material will include standard documents used by other Web sites; minutes of the Design Subcommittee meetings, and works in progress for comment--such as draft pages being created by Tony or others. For example, when Tony is ready to receive feedback from the Design Subcommittee, Michael will create a link to Tony's draft page.
Using Michael's page as a single Web site used by the Design Subcommittee means that committee members only have to remember one URL. Michael's Design Subcommittee page will reside at www.mannlib.cornell.edu/design. Other pages, collections of icons, etc. can also be placed in this area, which is on a Mann Library server. Members of the Design Subcommittee will be able to mount files here; all members of the CUL library staff will be able to view html documents here. There will be times when we want input or reactions from the whole library staff; at those times we can make an announcement on cu-lib.
To facilitate communication among the members of the Design Subcommittee a small, closed listserv will be created. All members of the Design Subcommittee will be subscribed. The listserv address will be referenced in a mail link on Michael's Design Subcommittee page--this link will be used to collect comments--all comments will be sent to all members of the subcommittee. Patricia O'Neill will be responsible for providing initial follow up on comments from people outside the committee.
The group viewed the new Physical Sciences Library home page, which brought up issues for future discussion including guidelines for forms; which version of html to use; whether to create links to "under construction" pages or wait until they are finished; inclusion of library addresses and phone numbers; copyright; content components such as staff directories and "endowment pages."
The group was given assignments for the next meeting--write down ideas for basic template characteristics, and review these URL's:
http://urisref.library.cornell.edu/cul/cullogos.html
http://scholar.lib.utk.edu/melinda/web-policy.html
The goal of the next meeting is to have an outline of basic design issues that need to be resolved so that individual units may continue their work and hopefully be able to place pages on the CUL server as quickly as technically feasible.
Susan Barnes
Posted 10 January 1996