Library Technical Services

LTS Web Team Minutes, 10/9/2006

Present:  Jim Alberts (chair), Matt Connolly, Nancy Solla, Ardeen White (recorder), Betsy Elswit

Jim is giving the Senior Management Team (SMT) a status report on the LTS Web Team later today, so the team discussed several current ongoing projects.  These are:

1. Printing--Printing is possible but slightly convoluted as it stands now.  It involves copying the text into WordPad; or printing selected text from the Web’s printing screen.  Matt is looking into a way to redirect the page content to a printable page with a different template. Another option might be to programmatically change the font size in the base template. [Matt’s additional note on this: He could easily write a script that would grab the contents of a page from CommonSpot, find the content we want to print, discard the rest, and create a new browser page that contains only that content. A "Print Page" link on the original page could activate the script. The catch  is that this would be an external script, living outside the LTS site and outside of CommonSpot altogether, on a regular Web server somewhere. He’s fairly confident that it would work and be quick and easy to implement.]
3. Projects list—This is still in progress.  We might possibly end up using Excel with Web access for easier maintenance.  [Note from Jim’s meeting with SMT: SMT doesn't want a database running behind the project page.  Our action items will be to design a table (based on an Excel template that Jim L. is going to send out). Also select someone to train Laurie Stevens in CommonSpot. Lois offered to do this.   It's possible that we may also be involved in some of the data entry in addition to Laurie.]

Contacts and staff list—The responsibility for this may end up being switched from the LTSWeb Team to Laurie, but she would have to learn CommonSpot.  Her exact role is still being negotiated with Scott.

What’s New?---The documentation is fairly straightforward for adding text for news stories.  Nancy Solla will show us how to add images.  Jim will ask the SMT to funnel the news to us, preferably with some documentation already done.  Betsy will keep an ear out for Mann news. [Note from Jim’s meeting with SMT: One thing they thought of  was that when they sent mailings to CU-LIB or LTS-L that they felt merited such treatment, they would cc members of our group (Jim nominated himself and Nancy, but it really could be anybody) asking that we post the mailing as a what's new item.  Betsy was asked to do this.]

ITTS Web page--Nancy brought up a new project she received from Karen.  She showed us an interim umbrella  Web page she developed to cover the new LTS and D-Lit merger (ITTS).  It will eventually have links to the LTS page, the D-Lit page, and new org charts.  Different types of software make this especially challenging.  The question arose—where should the site live?

Cataloging E-resources procedure—The team needs to ask Lois Purcell or Nancy Holcomb what the status of this is?  Why wasn’t it moved to new site?  Where does it live on Library 30? [Lois’ note on this: The e-resource procedure has been up since summer. It's at  http://lts.library.cornell.edu/lts/pp/ere/96e-cattoc.cfm  It is in desperate need of updating but that can't happened 'til the new documentation has been written. I believe that Nancy Holcomb has asked Zoe about this and it stands in limbo.]

The Team had no other questions or concerns at this time for Jim to bring to the SMT.