Documentation Committee Minutes
Monday, December 3, 2001
3:00-4:15 pm
Olin Library 106In attendance: Kornelia Tancheva, Susan Currie, Angela Horne, Mihoko Hosoi, Lee LaFleur, Mary Patterson, Howard Raskin, Leah Solla
Agenda
1. New Member recruiting
2. Help Redesign
3. State of Pages
4. Link checker1. New Member Recruiting
This January the Documentation Committee will be losing two of its members, Angela Horne and Leah Solla. The Committee discussed recruitment and brainstormed possible candidates to replace Angela and Leah. In the coming month Committee members will need to coordinate this process with IRPC. In light of this transition, in January the Committee will potentially need a new:
· Webmaster
· IRPC Steering liasion
· Print documentation coordinator
· Co-chairIn the interim period Leah will prepare the Print Documentation resources to hand off to Lee.
2. Help Redesign
The Committee continued the discussion of a general help redesign, looking at the Help TOC page as a main focus of reorganization. As per the last meeting, the Committee discussed the arrangement of the "Help Reference and Technical Errors" section of the Help. After some deliberation the group decided that for the time being, we would leave the present arrangement of this section as is.3.State of the Pages
The Committee discussed the current pages in process.a. Mary Patterson handed out a copy of the Mac Caching page that she has been working on, for feedback. Comments for amendments to this page should be sent to her at mep4@cornell.edu. Lee offered to assist Mary in generating images and mark up for the page.
b. Korneilia sent out the first version of the Proxy FAQ page she has been working on. Please send any comments or amendments for this page to her at kt18@cornell.edu.
c. The Committee discussed the placement of the new Library of Congress Subject Headings page that Mihoko recently completed. The Committee agreed to put a link to this page in three separate locations.
· OPAC Basic Search-Subject Search help
· OPAC Guided Keyword Search-Guided Keyword Field Index help.
· Finding Materials-Books.
The Committee also discussed the other links in the "Subject" searching section of the Finding Books page. This section also contains links to the Library of Congress Classification Outline, and a link to a commercial site on "Understanding Call Numbers." The committee decided to attempt to identify an "in house" or library substitute for the commercial page.In conjunction, Lee also raised issue regarding the duplication of pages between the pages under Research Strategy and Process heading and the Research Strategy: a tutorial subheading. Both categories cover much of the same content, and some of the pages included in both are practically identical. The group discussed whether these could or should be combined so that pages are not being duplicated or maintained separately. The idea of making the tutorial into a PDF was raised, which would make it easier to print off as a whole. Likewise, what is now the Tutorial could also be expanded to take over the entire RS & P heading. Lee will try to contact Lance who worked on the original tutorial to gain some insight on whether any changes should be made. This decision may have some bearing on a possible fourth placement/location for the new LCSH page.
4. Link checkers
Lee reviewed his investigation of link checking devices for the CUL Help pages. He has primarily been looking at two resources-Linkscan (http://www.elsop.com/linkscan/ ) and Xenu (http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html). Linkscan is a web-based service that will scan one page at a time for free or may be purchased for greater utility. Xenu is a freeware product that must be downloaded and installed on the client's computer. Lee demonstrated Linkscan and some of its features, but was unable to access the report from Xenu. There is some indication that while Linkscan provides a more graphical interface, Xenu may have greater functionality. Furthermore while Linkscan currently allows users to check one page at a time for free, this could change at any time, whereas Xenu runs independently on the users computer, once downloaded. Lee hopes to conclude the product evaluation by January and shortly thereafter bring to the Committee a recommendation for software as well as a recommendation for staffing this function.In closing Lee also mentioned the Committee begining a general strategic planning investigation to inform future decisions and directions. As part of this investigation he is reviewing Documentation Committee meeting minutes from previous years to assist in assessing roles for the current committee. He is also looking into Documentation committees at other institutions as a possible point of reference for this group. He pointed out that the University of Wisconsin-Madison has a User Documentation Working group that performs a similar function to the Committee at CUL. In the past the UW group has also been very active in establishing guidelines for University web pages, including standards for usability and ADA accessibility. This is potentially one area in which the CUL Documentation Committee could become active. Additionally, as an outgrowth of current CUL investigations on the collection of use statistics for digital resources, Lee said that he would contact the Gateway Committee representatives in order to identify the status of the use statistics for the CUL Help pages..
Kornelia agreed to try to identify a standing time for the Documentation Committee meetings for the coming semester.
Next Meeting: January 31 2002, 10:30 - 12:00 pm, Mann 361
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