2006

ALA Annual 2006: Web Coordinating Committee

Web Coordinatng Committee Meeting

Present were:

Kyle Felker (your humble correspondent)
Tim Donahue: New Intern
Michelle Frisque: Outgoing chair
Aaron Dobbs
Nick Baker
Gail Herrera: IG coordinator, rotating off
Steve Turner
Rafal Kaprowski

Online communications/community space:

This has been implemented for a while now-how do we proceed from here/promote use? We already placed a link on frontpage of LITA site, what else? Make a larger graphical link to call more attention?

Question on access-how do/can non-members of committees/IGs gain access to committee/IG materials in community space? People outside a group can access by clicking a button if the group is not marked as “private.” Most of the material is accessible to everyone.

Maybe make a navigation button or link to community space? We can also (we think) make direct links to particular communities (EG Bigwig or Publications Committee community space). Maybe put links on committee/IG pages?

Are there RSS feeds for community content? So people can have material from community space delivered? We think each element or piece of functionality can potentially have RSS feeds, but they have to be enabled by someone with admin rights.

We agreed to set up RSS feeds on the WCC forum so we can play with them. Then try to write some FAQs and documents so others can use the functionality better. We can send it out to IG Chairs/Comm Chairs listserv. LITA is offering two hour sessions on using community software for admins and one hour sessions for non-admin users-we think new ALA Instructional Designer is responsible for setting this up.

There is a LITA Wiki– it hasn’t been announced yet, but will be, possibly on LITA Blog.

Tim will put a link to all community spaces from IG and Committee web pages. To promote use, we will do some email messages, send someone to the IG and Comm chairs general meeting, try to stress advantages of interaction, such as using space to preserve records of groups activities.

Same person should be point of contact for using community software as for website stuff. We want to make getting help as simple as possible.

Should Comm/IG chairs have direct admin access to manage community spaces? Currently, some do, some don’t. We are not sure, Comm Chairs don’t always do the web work, and IG chairs are hard to track down. If the group seems to ahve t’s act together enough to handle it, it would be great.

Some groups still need to have community space turned on.

David and Kyle agreed to do some back and forth trying to explore the issues and create some documentation.

Progress of Web Documents

Michele has sent out some workflow documentation the group has been working on for a while. This documentation will eventually become part of the LITA Manual.

We talked about using the community spaces as “official” means of communicating meeting reports/minutes. Not sure, ALA bylaws may prohibit this, but we like the idea.

Questions about documents elucidating responsibilities for web pages-does this need to go in manual? It does, it’s there to clarify situations that have been confusing in the past.

New CMS System

The new CMS system is now called Vignette, or Serenas Collage (they keep changing the name).

ALA is past proof-of-concept phase and now looking to implement. They are currently converting division sites over, August 1st is the target date for beginning conversion of LITA site. We look forward to shorter URLs! More info on this is coming, they will probably need our help to convert and troubleshoot.

Web Coordinator for IGs and Commitees

We need new bodies for this as the current person is rotating off.

This person works with IG and Committee chairs to put up and maintain content on IG and committee websites. There is a general IG and committee coordinator who can serve as a contact and resource.

Tim asked to work with IGs, Aaron said he would work with Committees.

Review of IG and Committee Websites

Been a while since we went through these to see how they are being kept up. We would like to review currency of all content.

Comms/IGs are posting meeting minutes and information to the blog now, we need to look for these and post links from webpages. We also need to ask Bylaws if any IGs need to be removed. Tim will do this. Yay for the eager intern!

BigWig Liason

This group has big ideas and is doing lots of stuff that could impact us. For example, they just got a Wiki. We need a liason to their group. The liasion would: Lurk on their listserv, pipe in if needed, attend meetings, report back to WCC anything we need to know about. Steven will do this.

Getting Email Addresses in Online Member Directory

The recently-disbanded Web task force recommended member emails show in member directory. The Member directory is produced by software,so this is programming thing, not something WCC can do directly. The address would appear when persons name is clicked. The directory already displays business address and phone number. Implenting this have ben controversial in the past, so we would need approval from the board.