Minutes of the Documentation Committee
11/19/98

Recorder: Deb Joseph
Present: Martha Walker (chair), Angi Faiks, Marianne Hansen, Lori Micho, Brendan Wyly, Deb Joseph

Gateway Help Working Group (GHWG):
The GHWG is working on a list of enhancements passed on to them from the Gateway Committee (GC). Marty Shlabach is the current GC contact. The communication flow between the three committees (GC, GHWG, and Documentation Committee) was discussed. The general consensus was to clear up the existing list of problems and then review communication between the various groups.

Browser Configuration:
Any proposed changes must go to Adam Smith of ITS at Mann Library. The GHWG will look at the current configuration and suggest changes to Adam. We agreed that while this is not an emergency, the time frame on accomplishing this should be as soon as possible.

Gateway Help Revision:
Angi reported on her meeting with Marty Schlabach concerning this issue. Marty felt it was important that the committee not think about this in the context of the Gateway, but rather to view it as a "stand alone" piece and keep it quite generic. As he pointed out, we will eventually be getting a new LMS and the Gateway as we know it may well disappear. The Documentation Committee needs to feed any ideas on contents for this through the Gateway Committee. It was also suggested that Technical Help and Library Help be treated separately.

About CUL Redesign Committee:
Martha reported on the work of this committee. She, with assistance from members of the Documentation Committee, will be responsible for the access to library materials section of this web site.

Function of the Documentation Committee:
The recent email exchange between Martha and Brendan regarding the function of this committee was discussed. Martha suggested that committee members consider how we might implement some of Brendan's ideas and that Brendan develop a proposal which would outline some of what we had discussed.

Task List:
The committee discussed tasks we should be working on.

1. Scouting for new handouts
-We decided to begin by getting library specific handouts from each unit, both paper and on-line. The following persons will be responsible for these units:

Angi--Entomology, Vet, and Geneva
Laurie--Fine Arts and Music
Deb--Law, ILR, and Cornell Medical
Martha--Africana

2. Creating a new handout to place on a GW Help page:
-Martha suggested creating a new handout, which can be found within the pages of GW Help and printed from the web, as a first step towards our goal of integrating online and paper formats. We agreed that a handout on Evaluating Websites might be a good one to start with. Martha will ask Michael Engle if she can some of the web evaluation information he has compiled to our next meeting.

3. Reviewing user survey
-Martha encouraged us to review Christian Boissonnas's user survey memo and to think about the kinds of user feedback that could be useful to the work of this committee. Martha will contact Phil Davis (a member of the group responsible for the survey) to let him know of our interest in user feedback.

4. Other tasks
-Brendan will work on the Documentation Committee web page
-Angi will look at the statistics of how many hits Gateway help currently gets.