Documentation Committee Meeting Minutes

August 31, 2004

 

In attendance:

Ida Martinez (Co-Chair), Gail Steinhart, Kizer Walker, Amy Blumenthal
Minutes: Gail Steinhart

 

Announcements:

 

  • We welcomed Amy Blumenthal, new member of the Documentation Committee
  • Ida will remain on the committee but would like to move away from being a co-chair. Anyone interested in becoming a co-chair should let Ida know.

 

Old Business:

 

  • Updates to the Library Research Overview page are complete, with the exception of how to convey the number of libraries on and off campus that are included in the library catalog. Ida and Lynn will work on this.
  • The page on Union catalogs needs updating; Lynn will work on this.
  • Metadata Project:
    • Ida reviewed the purpose of the project for Amy’s benefit.
    • The index is generated from the contents of the subject metadata field; a search searches the title, description, and subject.
    • Effective searching is a priority over a clean index, but we agreed to select the longest variant term for metadata in an effort to keep the number of redundant index entries down.
    • It’s helpful for indexing to put a line break in between each meta tag.
    • Kizer sends completed metadata text to Lynn, Gail sends to Ida.
    • Everyone “donates” 5 of their assigned pages to Amy to do.

 

New Business:

 

  • Maureen is working on removing the “test SideCar”; Ida will update the help page when notified that this is done.
  • Amy wrote a cheat sheet for troubleshooting connectivity problems that we could incorporate into the help pages. We discussed the titles of other technical support pages and how Amy’s information might be incorporated. Amy will review the technical support pages and figure out how to incorporate the new material.
  • Ida pointed out that some of the Find Articles / Find Databases / Find e-Journals pages are no longer needed or need updates. Kizer will work on this, with Ida reviewing the Search Tips pages.
    • Pages that refer to the number of card catalog records have incorrect numbers of records and we should eliminate references to the number of records.
    • The PDFs on the Quick Guide pages are current, but the HTML equivalents are not.

 

 

Other Announcements:

 

  • Help page redesign: now that the Gateway redesign is done, it’s a good time to move ahead with this.
  • The terminology on pages related to finding materials is inconsistent (“finding,” “locating,” “searching for”) and we should fix that.
  • We can expect to do some work related to the MyLibrary pages as well as something for MyDocumentDelivery and RAPID this fall.
  • Amy is working on a page about resources that have known problems (don’t work in certain browsers, for example)
  • Amy is working on a page on pop-up blockers.

 

 

Next meeting:

 

Tuesday, September 28

Olin Library 106

3:00 - 4:00 p.m.