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| Resource Discovery 30th September 2005 |
Resource Discovery Meeting Minutes1. Welcome and Apologies for AbsencePresent: William Marsterson (Chair - WM), Catriona Cannon (CC), Liz Chapman (EAC), John Gilby (Minutes - JG), Robert Hall (RH), Di Martin (DM), Brian Murphy (BM), Jean Sykes (JS). Apologies for absence: Stewart Brownrigg, Robert Kiley. WM welcomed everyone to the meeting. 2. Approval of MinutesThe minutes from the previous meeting held on 22 July 2005 were considered accurate and approved. 3. Action Update and Matters ArisingActions from the previous meeting held on 22 July 2005 are summarised below:
Action 6.1 from the previous meeting was to follow up comments in the IMA report about InforM25 catalogue enrichment with ALM London and the LLDA. A meeting had taken place with WM, BM and JG from the group meeting with Fiona O'Brien of the LLDA. It was confirmed that although there were no funds available, the LLDA were very interested in the idea of providing wider access to (London) resources by enrichment of InforM25 and also linking to WiLL. One idea that was discussed was to consider the addition of a 'top 20' catalogues to the service. There were considered to be many issues that would require further thought and discussion, such as disassociating membership of InforM25 from membership of the Consortium, whether the services were for the members or for everyone and how to select the 'Top 20' catalogues. It was also reported that there had been quite a few expressions of interest to join the Consortium with applications from the London, East of England and South East regions already covered by the Consortium. These potential members, should they join, will also extend the distributed catalogue. The group agreed that the core business (of InforM25) was to extend and enrich the catalogues on the service for HE research. A further idea was the addition of two large public library catalogues. Action 3.1 WM to mail M25 Directors to elicit potential catalogue suggestions for enrichment (and also to probe about staff usage of InforM25). 4. M25 Systems Team Manager's ReportJG highlighted key points in his previously circulated report and there were no questions arising. JG went on to demonstrate progress with the usage statistics work in extracting 'visits' data from Webalizer and importing it into Excel for analysis. JG showed a chart of 'visits' to "Search catalogues" since June 2003 that had been created from the exported data. The chart showed markedly lower usage at weekends, Christmas and Easter, peaks in the Autumn and Spring terms but also significant visits during the summer. The pattern of visits was similar for each academic year and a 'trendline' added showed a gradual upward trend with number of visits. For 2004/05, visits peaked at over 250 per day and there was a rough average of over 150 per weekday. JG then showed the same data plotted on a pivot chart (using Excel). Showing the data in this way permitted some flexibility in how the data was displayed on the chart. For example, only data for a particular year or month could be shown or comparisons made for a particular term across the years. A pair of charts were next shown for the ULS and JG noted that the overall pattern of visits was very similar to "Search catalogues". Visits to the ULS were generally higher than "Search catalogues", peaking at over 330 per day and a rough average of 200 per weekday. The ULS trendline was also increasing and at a slightly higher rate compared with "Search catalogues". The final chart demonstrated showed both "Search catalogues" and the ULS for the last academic year. The chart was less easy to follow due to the peaks and troughs in the data but did allow direct comparisons between the two services. JG sought advice and guidance from the group as to how best to show the visits data and how this data might be utilised. The key points from the ensuing discussion are:
Action 4.1 JG to look into exporting visits data for all 4 InforM25 services and plotting of just the trendlines on a single chart. Also to generate separate charts for the four services. DM commented that the group now has the data and usage figures and also has the remit to form an exit strategy for InforM25, so where does promotion of the services come in ? The following discussion concluded that promotion was generally reliant on the M25 member libraries doing something and that this was likely to be variable. Some form of service (re)launch or campaign was suggested. Interest was also expressed in being able to extract/export domain data to give a rough indication who was using the services. 5. RDWG Action Plan 2005/06WM had circulated a draft action plan for the forthcoming year and invited comments. The group felt that the text could be reduced by editing and that overall there might be too much detail for inclusion in the combined Consortium action plan. It was suggested that the plan ought to include something about promotion of the services and also about how we could 'tap in' to Google to promote the M25 services. Action 5.1 WM to revise draft plan and forward to the Steering Group. Action 5.2 JG to investigate web page metadata in relation to service promotion via Google and other search engines and also Google Scholar. 6. Funding for Systems Team for 2006 and beyondWM introduced this item and led a short discussion on the future of InforM25. Key points raised were:
The group agreed to the suggestion of having alternative options in the planned bid to the Consortium for future Systems Team funding. Action 6.1 WM to write draft funding bid for discussion at the next meeting ready for submission to the Steering Group at their December meeting. 7. Advocacy Working Group UpdateJG updated the group on progress with the M25 website review and its likely impact on the look and feel of the InforM25 services. The web review group were also considering the use of a Content Management System for the Consortium business pages. Action 7.1 JG to ensure that the inform25.ac.uk home page is designed for end users. 8. AOBThere was none. 9. Future Meetings
The next meetings are at 2pm on: J Gilby, 6 October 2005. |
