Documentation Committee Meeting Notes Date

Documentation Committee Meeting Notes
Date: 12/17/98
Recorder: Martha Walker
Present: Martha Walker, chair, Angi Faiks, Deb Joseph, Marianne Hansen, Nan Hyland, Lori Micho

Update on the Gateway Help Working Group (GHWG): Angi Faiks updated committee members on the work of the GHWG. New GHWG members Nan Hyland and Lance Heidig have been on board only one week. Their first meeting helped to bring everyone up-to-date on the work of the group. Items of discussion included work that needed to be done ASAP (Mac and PC configuration issues, user friendly error messages, and the need to give feedback to Greg McClellen on the Proquest Title List), and longer term projects (web page maintenance and the Gateway Help revision). Minutes of the GHWG can be found at the following URL: http://gould.mannlib.cornell.edu/docwg/irpc_documentation_committee.html

Gateway Help revision: Angi mentioned that the GHWG did not have much time to discuss this at their first meeting. Their brief discussion included a suggestion by Nan Hyland that the GHWG conduct a study of how users think about and categorize the contents of Help. The GHWG would like to undertake a user study before spending too much time restructuring the Help pages. This will be a brief study using a survey method that Nan has used in the past. Martha expressed concern about the amount of time a user study could take and if the users studied would represent all Gateway Help users. Martha was also concerned that this marked a step back from the consensus that emerged at our brainstorming session on 12/10 in regards to developing the "intermediate page" restructuring proposal, which would send users in one of two directions (with possible overlap) -- technical help and library research help. Angi indicated that the restructuring of Gateway Help is still very much in its infancy and that a user survey could provide valuable information during the restructuring process. The committee agreed with the timing of the study. Martha reminded the committee of the library user survey currently under development, and wondered if questions related to Library Gateway left-frame terminology could be included in the larger study. Angi will contact Phil Davis about this.

1999/2000 Library Guide: Martha gave a brief overview of the work that went into the current guide and asked for a volunteer to work closely with her on the update. Deb Joseph volunteered. Martha will also ask Beth Fontana of Library External Relations and perhaps one other person, particularly skilled in proof reading, to assist with this year's guide.

About CUL Page Revision: Martha distributed a draft revision of the About CUL Page and asked for a volunteer to work with her on the "Access to Library Materials" section of the About page. Lori Micho and Marianne Hansen volunteered to work with Martha on this project, which will begin in early January.

Searching by Subject Handout: Martha distributed copies of the CUL system-wide handout, Searching by Subject. She also distributed copies of the draft revision of this handout, prepared this past summer by Pat Viele of the Handouts Subcommittee. We discussed the handout and the proposed revision and decided to maintain two subject-related handouts, the current handout and a new handout on using keyword searching to identify appropriate subject searches. Martha volunteered to update Pat's draft to include changed content.

January meeting dates/times: The committee will meet again on Tuesday, January 12 in Olin 106 and Thursday, January 28 in the Mann Library Conference room. Both meetings will take place from 2-3:30.