Governance Working Groups Digital Developments Working Group Digital Developments Working Group Meeting Minutes 5 March 2008
| 5 March 2008 |
Resource Discovery Meeting MinutesNOTE: The following minutes are unapproved and will be formally agreed at the next meeting of the working group.1. Welcome, Apologies for Absence and Membership UpdatePresent: William Marsterson (Chair - WM), Gavin Beattie (GB), Stewart Brownrigg (SB), John Gilby (Minutes - JG), Rosemary Lynch (RL), Marion Peulevé (MP), Marcus Woolley (MWo). Apologies: Sarah Crofts (SC), Robert Hall (RH), Maureen Wade (MWa). WM welcomed Marcus Woolley, Deputy Director of Learning Services, University of Bedfordshire, to the group and also noted that Sarah Crofts, Senior Academic Services Librarian, University of Greenwich, had also joined the group but was unable to attend the meeting. 2. Approval of Previous Meeting MinutesThe minutes from 27 November 2007 were approved. 3. Action Update and Matters ArisingProgress on actions from the previous meeting held on 27 November 2007 are summarised below:
4. M25 Systems Team Manager's ReportJG briefly highlighted issues from his report (No.18). The new name for BCUC (Buckinghamshire New University) was noted as was a short period of website unavailability over the new year period. 5. Future DevelopmentsA number of different projects and activities are reported below. AIM25 LinkingAIM25 received funding from the University of London's VC fund to develop and expand the service and M25 were also funding technical work to enable ‘linking’ from “Search-catalogues” to the AIM25 results for Subject and Keyword-anywhere search types. JG/WM attended first project SG meeting in Jan08 where a new suggestion was to investigate the technical feasibility of InforM25 displaying archive titles and holding institution, with an option for the user to then link to the full AIM25 results. JG showed a screen mockup of the idea and added the following comments:
WM commented that it had been a longer term aspiration of both the Consortium and the AIM25 project team for the linking to be added. He added that if the work led to further work then additional funding is not available. Again the risk of relying on a single programmer was raised. The group agreed that the new idea was very good but that as Systems Team resources were limited, it was not possible to proceed with the idea at the present time as it was beyond the scope of the original project brief. Action 5.1 JG to consider asking ULCC about their availability for assisting with the work involved in the new idea and also to consider practicalities of them carrying out the work. Visit-a-library & SCONULJG had met with the SCONUL Access Group and the programmers for the SCONUL website and agreed to give them a copy of the V-a-l software which has now been made available open source. JG commented that he would ensure that due acknowledgement to M25 would be made. WAM25 ProjectJG gave the following brief update bullets:
Note - A brainstorming session with the WAM25 consultants followed the meeting. Usage StatisticsJG reported that Dave Puplett had made good progress with configuring Google Analytics on the three M25 domains/websites. On m25lib.ac.uk the reports showed around 100-150 visits per weekday and that a 'spike' in the number of visits on the same day as the last e-Bulletin was published gave confidence in the figures. JG demonstrated the wide variety of reports and data that was available from Google Analytics and commented that the configuration for the m25lib and cpd25 websites/domains was completed. Further work was still required on InforM25 which would be done during May 2008. Reports available thus far for the InforM25 services show similar patterns of usage to the older Webalizer statistics, which again, boosts confidence in Google Analytics. The reports also showed that the most popular parts of InforM25 were the Search-catalogues and ULS search and results pages and it was noted that with further analysis, more details about user searching behaviour could be derived. MWo commented that the 'bounce rate' (number of users who go to a particular web page but then go away from the website completely) was quite good (at around 60% compared to other websites), which implies users were coming to the site and staying. Another question raised was whether the statistics excluded spiders. Action 5.2 JG to determine whether spiders are excluded or if not, whether they should be. The Group expressed their thanks to Dave Puplett for his good work on the usage statistics. Research collections, MASC25 and InforM25WM recounted the M25 Steering Group's idea for some form of online guide to research collections within M25 libraries and that Elizabeth Chapman from UCL had looked into the idea and reported that rather than look at a new initiative, it would be sensible to look at better use of existing services and data, such as MASC25, to avoid overlap. The M25 Steering Group had agreed that MASC25 should be looked at by RDWG and its relation to InforM25. In response JG gave a brief outline of a new idea whereby existing collection description services (e.g. MASC25, AIM25 and Find-a-library) could be somehow cross-searched to provide users with collection data in a single place rather than the user searching three or more different websites. Following discussion, the group approved the idea and agreed that it should be taken to the forthcoming M25 Steering Group Planning Day. Action 5.3 JG to summarise idea and forward to RDWG and via RL to the Steering Group. 6. AOBNone.7. Future Meetings30 April 2008, 2pm in the LSE Library. Minutes by JG |
