12/18/2006
by:Barbara Polowy, Smith
Five College Libraries
Research, Information and Outreach Committee (RIO)
Minutes of the November 13, 2006 Meeting
Present: Bonnie Vigeland (chair), Bryan Goodwin, Margaret Groesbeck, Beth Lang, Barbara Polowy (recorder)
Problem Reports, Changes to the OPAC Interface
∑ Bonnie will consolidate the lists of OPAC issues reported by each school and send these to Chris Hannon and Jan Jourdain by November 17.
∑ Each RIO member should send Bonnie a list of desired design and functionality changes (as Word documents) and she will compile and circulate these to RIO members.
∑ At the December 11 meeting RIO will assign priorities to problems and requested changes to the OPAC interface.
OPAC Development
∑ RIO has been charged with designing the New Titles and Alerts pages for the OPAC, the Five College circulation group (not RIO) will work on improving the My Account page.
∑ Bonnie will convey to the AIC RIO’s suggestion (as stated in our July 31 list of OPAC decisions) to model the New Titles function on the MIT model.
∑ Bonnie will investigate how RIO members should gain access to the out-of-the-box version of the SDI (Alerts) configuration page as the function is not active on the production server. RIO will try to resolve some basic decisions about the Alerts services by email discussion before the December 11 meeting.
Usability Testing of the OPAC
RIO is planning to usability test the OPAC on all five campuses during the spring semester. Committee members expressed concern about the mechanism for following up on the results of OPAC usability testing. Given the fact that the Five College Catalog is a unique architecture, it’s impossible for RIO to determine how difficult it is to implement features from single-institution installations on our own site. A group that includes both RIO members and systems staff is suggested as one way to address future developments of the interface.
Refworks Workshop
Beth Lang polled members to determine if there’s interest in a Five College workshop on Refworks during January (her proposal was greeted with great enthusiasm).
Next Meeting
December 11, Hampshire College
