Public Interfaces Committee
June 9, 2004
SML 411
9:30-11:00
Present: Dale Askey, Katie Bauer, Julie Linden, Karen Reardon, Kalee Sprague,
Manon Theroux, Tao Yang, Tim Young,
Absent: Andy Shimp, Rick Zwies
Minutes: Tim
1. Announcements (15 min)
The Your Library Account component of the Yale Web Portal will go live this
week in a limited format. Patrons will be able to see how many and which books
they have checked out, and what fines they have.
A limited Metalib implementation (for the Medical Library, maybe also for
Science) will occur over the summer - in the hands of a small, focused group
(many from PIC) that will aim for a Sept. 1 go-live date. However, this is dependent
on the new release (3.0) of Metalib. Audrey Novak will come to PIC later this
summer to discuss the eventual integration of Metalib into the Library Front
Door.
Webtrends: Katie has developed a basic report that she hopes to generate
monthly. More information will follow about this.
2. ORBIS change requests review (45 min.)
PIC reviewed a list of proposed changes to the library website, as submitted
by staff members. The list was organized by category, though PIC members chose
items for comments as struck their fancy.
Kalee commented first on the feasibility of the ORBIS patch - which should
hopefully be on by Aug. 1. NetID authentication will follow the patch installation.
Discussion followed about several search screen and display issues - such
as colors and division of real estate, but Julie attempted to focus the discussion
by asking how best to prioritize: by category? By time needed to effect the change?
By cost? Our target date for having a batch of Orbis changes implemented is the
first day of school; user testing needs to be finished a couple of weeks before
that date.
The next most important topic was the placement of Borrow Direct and ILL on
the Place Requests screen. After some talk about an overall redesign of this
page, it was decided that a line should be added to the page linking to "Request
items not at Yale" - which leads to the necessity to expand an existing
line to "Place request for item in Yale Libraries." These suggested
changes (with some appropriate formatting tweaks) will be tested on guinea pigs
first.
The call number index split may happen over the summer. Kalee is following
up.
A discussion about alternating colors in ORBIS results screens led to a discussion
about adding icons to the results page. Though this is an appealing option, the
limited number of icons that can be adequately linked from MARC fixed fields,
the realization that some formats (e.g. books and internet resource books) would
not be differentiated, and the presence of older catalog records that would not
generate icons causes this suggestion to be tabled, though further investigation
will be done.
We will investigate the possibility of adding a Search box to the HELP pages,
though the general consensus was that this is not a priority.
The wording of error messages for no results screens was discussed next. The
possibility of changing the color of these messages was also suggested. Some
testing will be done to determine what might be a good approach.
PIC concluded with the change request list for now and will address other
items later this summer.
3. Public troubleshooting page (25 min)
After some discussion about the value of such a page to allow users to find answers
to technical questions, it was decided that - because we already provide so many
help pages across our site, and the experience that many users do not really
find the answers they are looking for, short of speaking with a librarian - that
this type of page would not be worthwhile.
Related discussion of the proxy server (one of the top tech support question
categories of late) followed.
The meeting was adjourned with the announcement that this meeting would be the
last for Manon Theroux and Tim Young, who will rotate off the committee.
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This file last modified 10/24/06
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