2006

Meeting Report from ALA Web Advisory Committee

ALA Annual Conference, New Orleans, Monday, June 26, 2006, 8:30 am – 12:30 pm, New Orleans Marriott, Convention Center Hotel, Natchez Room

Members Only Content Report/Update

The task force has gathered the existing Members Only policies however Michelle Frisque was unable to get the task force to come to any conclusions/recommendations based on what we discovered. Michelle will send what she has up to this point and WAC will continue this discussion after the conference.

Event Planner

WAC continues to have concerns about the usability of the Event Planner. WAC is writing a memo outlining our concerns that will be sent to Conference Services.

Report from the ALA Executive Board Liaison, Jim Rettig
Topics covered included how money from the dues increase will be used and conference attendance. Jim is ending his board liaison term; next year’s liaison will be Terry Kirk. WAC thanked Jim for his support and service to WAC.

Sherri Vanyek and Rob Carlson from ALA ITTS reviewed their web activities for the past six month, as well as sharing their action plan for the next six months. Here are some of the highlights:

ALA is in negotiations with a company for a comprehensive usability assessment of the ALA web site. The assessment will include: a user survey, an end-user task analysis, focus groups, heuristic analysis, and evaluation of feedback gathered through the web site (logs) and via email. Other web changes include a move to a new Content Management System. The conversion is currently on schedule. The LITA web site will be one of the first sites to migrate to the new system.

There are several blogs currently running on ALA’s b2evolution blog system including: AASL, ACRL, ALA Editions, ALA Membership, ALCTS, Green Kangaroo (Mary Ghikas), Hectic Pace (Andrew Pace), Horning In (ALSC President), ITTS Monthly Update (coming soon), OLOS, RUSA, and YALSA. They have also installed WIKI software at ALA. LITA is the first site on the WIKI. The new CMS will support syndication so the number of RSS feeds should increase once sites are migrated to the new CMS. A link to ALA Wiki’s, Blogs and RSS can be found on the ALA home page under the news section.

ALA ITTS has new staff. Jenny Levine, “The Shifted Librarian” and former Internet Development Specialist and Strategy Guide with the Metropolitan Library System (Chicago) will join the staff of ALA on July 31, 2006, with a half-time appointment in Publishing and a half-time appointment in ITTS. Louise Gruenberg is the new instructional designer for ALA. She started this winter.

Other topics that were covered include: Online Communities, WebCT, Library 2.0 bootcamp, JobLIST, mailing list software transition, Knowledge Management System, update on ALA Web Editorial Board activities, website statistics, committee appointment application, file upload application, bandwidth issues, and TrackIT. A detailed account of all these items will be posted to the WAC web site in the next couple of weeks.

WAC created its action plan for next 6 months.
Items included in the action plan are: event planner memo, writing memo asking committees to develop policies for challenged content, create documentation on how to handle blogs, test the Joblist site, figure out how steps necessary to retire archive.ala.org

The meeting concluded at 12:16pm. This is the first time in the fours years I have been attending these meetings that we have finished early! I have enjoyed my time serving on WAC and have mixed feelings about not serving on the committee anymore. Good luck to the incoming chair, Stephanie Schmitt. I also want to thank all the members of WAC for all of their hard work over the last two years. I have enjoyed working with you.