PIC
June 22, 2005
9:30-10:30 a.m.
Attending: Dale Askey, Julie Linden (recorder), Stephen Naron, Karen Reardon,
Earl Roy, Kalee Sprague, Tao Yang
Absent: Katie Bauer, Debbie Falvey, Andy Shimp, Rick Zwies
1. Announcements
-Stephen represented PIC at last week's Committee Fair; people seemed particularly
interested in what PIC does and how they can send suggestions for interface
changes. A few people expressed interest in the PIC internship, which is still
up in the air for the coming year.
-Kalee reported that she is beginning to make the latest batch of Orbis changes
in torbis. When she's done, she'll announce the changes to yulib for a review/comment
period before putting the changes into production.
-There have not been many registrants for the PIC/WW&DCS summer classes;
no class is full. Earl will send a reminder to yulib-l about tomorrow's class.
-The Cascading Style Sheets class (July 25-26) is full. Karen is taking names
of people who are interested but can't make it; if there's enough interest,
she'll schedule a repeat session.
2. Databases & Article Searching interface discussion. How should databases
& information about them be presented to readers?
-We like the A-Z links to databases
-Readers should be able to go straight to the database without having to go
through the DBOW page. Information from the DBOW page should be presented separately,
as an "about" or "information" link (perhaps next to the
direct link) - the way MetaLib does it.
-The database description page itself could be streamlined; much of the information
is either easily available within the database's interface or is really of use
to librarians only.
The database description page could do without:
- Help (because it's available within the database interface itself, and it's
too hard to keep up with link changes in the DBOW records) - unless there is
a locally-written or essential Help document.
- Source List (also linked from within database)
- Access Restrictions (assume that database is campus-wide; list only exceptions)
The database description page should have:
- Abstract/description
- Years of Coverage
- Link to Proxy/VPN (while MetaLib does not have a specific field for this,
there are several fields we don't use that can be repurposed)
- Selector and/or reference contact information
- Related Resources (we didn't say this definitively, but there was a favorable
comment about keeping it).
- Search Hints, which has to display in MetaLib. The public label for that
field will be changed to "MetaLib Search Hints" to indicate that the
search hints are not for the native database interface.
Licensing information:
We need to keep the generic "permitted uses" statement and felt
that it was appropriate at the top of each "letter" page, as it is
now.
Many DBOW pages have database-specific "permitted uses" links. We
have to consider how to present these so that we are fulfilling contractual
obligations to inform users of license terms. We may be able to repurpose an
unused MetaLib field for these links.
We need to display iCONN icons in the A-Z list (by contractual obligation).
We also considered some aspects of database presentation beyond the central
Front Door list. SSLIS wants the ability to display certain restricted databases
and information about them on SSLIS pages (e.g. a social science databases list,
the SOM intranet library page) without having those databases show up on the
Front Door list. Medical and Science are using DBOW to create dynamic subject
lists of databases.
While we intended to discuss the presentation of databases and information
about databases in general, and not the specifics of presentation within MetaLib
or DBOW, we found it impossible to have the discussion without reference to those
two interfaces. Overall, we felt that the most desirable or necessary aspects
of the DBOW interface could be accommodated within MetaLib; for example, the
MetaLib interface can have the A-Z links at the top of the opening screen.
Next steps:
Talk to Angie and Nilou (Front Door facelift designers) about a graphic/template
that we could use for MetaLib (and the federated site search, and possibly other
applications), so that the look and feel is much more like the current Front
Door.
Discuss within PIC how we want to change the opening Databases & Article
Searching page: what to drop, what to keep, what to add, how to rearrange. We
agreed that the page needs to be redesigned in order to draw the eye to certain
elements.
Share this discussion with the MetaLib Steering Committee and discuss how to
bring DBOW-using selectors into the conversation.
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This file last modified 10/24/06
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