Documentation Committee Minutes

August 20, 2001

Present: Betsy Gamble, Angela Horne, Lee Lafleur, Leah Solla, Kornelia Tancheva

Scribe: Angela Horne

1.        On September 7th, Betsy begins a one-year leave of absence from Cornell.  We will contact IRPC Steering for a replacement committee member.  We extended our thanks to Betsy for her work on the committee.

2.        Discussion points:

• the overview pages Leah worked on for the NRRIG changeover need to be moved from Gould to Ivy.
• we'd like to use a new image on the overview pages, one that reflects the new e-Reference Collection.  Angela will work on the image.
• we decided to start using a "IRPC Documentation Committee" footer on our paper documents, one that shows the creation date and the new CU logo.  The e-Reference Collection Quick Guide will be the first to incorporate the new footer.
• we ran an "everything" search in the e-Reference Collection and found 799 items.  "Approximately 800 resources" will be used on our two-page e-Ref Quick Guide.
• Mihoko's and Kornelia's edits to the e-Ref Quick Guide need to be incorporated into the final version before Leah can make the guide available for ordering.  Angela will finalize the QG by Wednesday and pass it to Leah.  A PDF version will be also made available online.
• Wireless.  Our help page is live, and points to the CIT RedRover page.  If anyone (on the committee or within the library) encounters patron queries that warrant an entry in our technical questions FAQ, please let us know.
• Kornelia will look at the Library Research Overview and edit as required.
• Angela will revisit the MyLibrary tutorial and see if it needs updating.
• EndNote.  We will contact Bob Kibbee and see what overlap there is between the Mann EndNote page and the page Bob's group has created.  We'll likely use a combination of information from both sources for our own EndNote page.
• Linking to outside pages, ones not created by the Documentation Committee.  We discussed how to mark those links which lead outside Gateway Help and point to pages created either by other CU units (CIT, O/K/U Reference, etc) or units external to CU (such as a U Berkeley Internet research site).  We decided to try to link to CU units wherever possible, and include in such links the name of the creating unit.  We would link to a non-CU unit only if a CU page could not be found for that topic.
• Mihoko and Leah will continue working on a revised Finding e-Journals page, as well as one for Finding e-Books.
• Betsy will re-send to Lee the Netscape 6 page.
• Procedural change to "being edited" files.  To help Lee and Angela keep track of draft pages, committee members will begin adding "_123.html" to their file names.  For example, if Kornelia edits "telnet.html", she would save it as "telnet_123.html" and then send it to Lee and Angela.  The "_123" ending should eliminate confusion over which files have been edited, particularly when draft pages are loaded onto Gould.
• Angela will inquire if there is a link checker for Gateway Help pages.  We encountered at least one page-not-found message during today's meeting, and wonder how many others there may be within Gateway Help.
• /tutorial/web.html needs to be updated
• "Research Strategy: A Tutorial" needs to be examined for currency.
• While updating pages affected by the NRRIG changes, Lee and Angela encountered a technical problem with the file that re-indexes the help pages.  John Fereira fixed the problem and all of help is now indexed properly.

3. Our team has decided to examine all of Gateway Help, both its pages and organization.  As we worked through our latest page edits, several committee members noticed pages that seemed no longer valuable, or that should perhaps "live" in a different part of the Help architecture.  Now that the system has existed for several years, it seems time to re-examine its structure and tweak it accordingly.  This process will begin in the early fall and continue until completed.

4. Lori Micho, who has left CUL, was the committee's liaison to IRPC Steering.  We will ask IRPC Steering for the name of our new liaison and followup with that individual concerning a few issues that cropped up at this meeting.

Next meeting TBA.

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