During the web-makeover project planning it was decided that we need to move forward with a new site architecture (where everything lives) and drop support for the old URLs from previous versions of the site that are 3-15+ years old. Most of the time links can and should be updated at their original locations, but if that is impossible (such as in a print mailing), you can now ensure that the correct link shows up on the main site’s 404 page.

Steps to add a link for a 404 page on the main site:

1. Create a nice GO shortcut to the new destination if one doesn’t exist.
   Go to the GOtrol Panel and create a new go shortcut to the new destination URL.
   If a go shortcut for this destination already exists, then you can skip this step.
2. In the GOtrol Panel, click on the ‘Create’ tab and add an alias for your shortcut from step one. The important thing here is that the alias ‘name’ is the path portion of the URL that is hitting the 404 page after the initial ‘/’.

   For example, if this URL is getting a 404 page:
   http://www.middlebury.edu/area/department/someimportantpage/default.htm
   then the alias name should be:
   area/department/someimportantpage/default.htm

   

3. Go back to the 404 page and verify that it now includes the GO link to your resource.
   

We still recommend that you update the pages that link to the site to use their new URLs or GO links, but if that is impossible, you now have a work-around to direct users to the appropriate place.

Team ok with Alex sending out the notice he presented. Team decided that the notice should be sent to all faculty rather than a limited group. Team decided that Segue 1 should be made unavailable at the end of Fall 2009 classes and not postponed until later.

Topic 2: CT Site IA.

Team looked at the Uses categories started by Alex. After much discussion and a few changes, we agreed to use the following IA as a starting point for our build-out:

• Uses
  • Video
    • Video recording/editing/formatting
    • Computer screen recording (i.e. screencasts)
    • Images/audio/video collection
    • Share video on the web
    • Create/share series of audio/video files (i.e. podcast)
  • Audio
    • Audio recording/editing/formatting
    • Share audio on the web
    • Create/share series of audio/video files (i.e. podcast)
    • Musical notation
  • Graphics
    • Scan a photo/slide or document
    • Image editing (resize, crop, reformat)
    • Images/audio/video collection
    • Presentation of text/images
    • Create/share a collection of images/audio/video
    • Model creation
    • Charts/graphs/diagrams
    • Create and print posters
  • Web Publishing
    • Create a web site
    • Create a course site
    • Create an online journal (i.e. blog)
    • Share files on the web
    • Share documents/presentations for collaborative editing
    • tagging
    • Share news/opinions/ideas with a group
    • create/edit/share calendars/schedules
  • Research
    • Find news on a topic
    • Web page “bookmarks” (i.e.  tags)
    • Manage citations
    • tagging
  • Data Collection & Analysis
    • Data analysis (i.e. statistical analysis)
    • Surveying
    • Document collection from others in a group (e.g. assignments)??
    • Quizzes/Exams??
  • Presentation
    • Create a presentation of text/images/audio/video
    • Create and print posters
    • Share presentations for collaborative editing
    • Share presentations/slide-shows on the web
    • Display geographic data
  • Course Management
    • Share files on the web
    • Share documents/presentations for collaborative editing
    • Document collection from others in a group (e.g. assignments)
    • Announcements
    • create/edit/share calendars/schedules
    • Grading
    • Quizzes/Exams
    • View/share a list of students in a class/people in a group
    • View/share views of roles/participation in a site (i.e. contributions of subscribers, authors, editors, admins… etc)
  • Discussion & Communications
    • “real-time” discussion
    • “asynchronous” discussion (needs nicer term)
    • A meeting in a virtual environment
    • send email to a class/group
    • Give feedback about contents of a document (e.g. assignment)
    • Annotate content of a document (i.e. inline notes) (e.g. assignment feedback)
    • Share news/opinions/ideas with a group
  • Visualization
    • Create/edit/annotate maps
    • Display geographic data
    • Model creation
    • Participate in a virtual environment (e.g. 2nd Life)
    • Meet in a virtual environment
• Tools
  • MediaWiki
  • WordPress
  • Audacity
  • Segue
  • GoogleDocs
  • Key Survey
  • Voice Recorders
  • Video Cameras
  • Still cameras
  • Microphones
  • iPods
  • ArcGIS
  • GoogleEarth
  • Moodle
  • Sibelius
  • GradeKeeper
  • RefWorks
  • Adobe Photoshop
  • Adobe Illustrator
  • Adobe Flash
  • MiddMedia
  • Scanner
  • Blender
  • EndNote
  • CONTENTdm
  • SubjectsPlus
  • SnapzPro
  • PowerPoint/Keynote
  • Word
  • Excel
  • Google Reader
  • Drupal
• Buzzwords
• Stories
• Help

Next Week

• Discuss what platform[s] will be used to build out different parts of the site (Drupal, MediaWiki, or both).
• Assign editing roles for the site.

LIS Website Information Architecture

(Also linked from our team wiki page.)

FYI: This follows the IA documents White Whale created for other parts of the College web redo project. It’s primarily a high-level guide to page & subpage structure, not a detailed list of page contents (though there are some content recommendations in the notes sections). See middfiles:\orgs\WebMakeover\IA Documents for examples (I used Academics when creating the wiki page.)

External Audience - term used TBD by vote by Fri 9/18 at 5 pm

Areas and Workgroups - use name of area as the category and use functions of the work area as tags (audience is mostly internal)

* Academic Consulting Services – research support, instruction, liaison
* Collection Management – aquire, catalog, preserve, maintain resources
* Enterprise Technology & Infrastructure – programming, systems, reporting, network
* LIS Administration – budget, planing, policy, assessment, strategy
* User Services – technology help and support, borrowing and lending, computing support, computing labs, media and event support

Institutions
* Middlebury
* MIIS
* Language Schools
* Schools Abroad
* Bread Loaf School of English
* Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference
* MMLA

Teams
* Area Directors
* Curricular Technology
* Digitization
* LIS Website

List just 2?
Library
Technical Support

Or more? If more than 2 – what should they be?
Media Services
Telephone Services

Please add your comments, ideas, suggestions to this post by 5 pm on Tuesday. Final vote at our Wed meeting.

Agenda
Information Architecture discussion with Tonya from WW

So that we can dedicate the full meeting to this topic, I propose that we vote on the One-Blog readiness at our Thursday meeting.

Please post suggestions for questions we’d like to ask Tonya about the site IA in the comments section of this post.

Existing Infrastructure

We’ll take the current LISt blog, rename it to just “LIS” and grant all staff in LIS Editor access to the blog. Student workers and LIS-related people like department advisory groups will have Author access granted as needed.

Porting Content

Users and groups with existing blogs may move their content into the LIS blog by going to Tools -> Export -> Download Export file in their blog, then Tools -> Import -> WordPress -> Upload file and Import. After doing so, they should go to Posts -> Categories and use the Category to Tag Converter to change any custom categories their blog had into tags on the LIS blog.

Categories

The LIS blog will start with this set of categories:

• Audience
  • External
  • Internal
• Areas
  • Academic Consulting Services
  • Collection Management
  • Enterprise Technology & Infrastructure
  • LIS Administration
  • User Services
• Institutions
  • Middlebury
  • MIIS
  • Language Schools
  • Schools Abroad
  • Bread Loaf
  • MMLA
• Teams
  • Area Directors
  • Curricular Technology
  • Digitization
  • LIS Website

All other existing categories in the LIS blog will be changed to tags. In general, we’ll encourage the use to tags to mark things like posts that have photos in them, posts about particular workgroups, posts about particular projects, or other things that tend to have a more temporally mutable quality to them. Categories will be used chiefly for broad categories that change infrequently.

Private Blogs

The LIS blog will not be used to store private content. Groups, such as ACS, who wish to have a private blog should continue to use and maintain their blog in its present form or create new private blogs if one has not yet been set up.

Internal vs. External

Posts that are likely to be interesting only to LIS staff should be marked with the Internal category. Examples of this content might include a notice about LIS goal setting. Note that these posts would still be readable by the public, but that those subscribed to the public feed wouldn’t see them in the feed. Posts that are likely to have broader appeal, like a cookie party for students, should be marked with the External category, or both the Internal and External categories.

There will be links to both the External and Internal feeds on the blog homepage with a description of the content featured in each so that site visitors can choose how they will read about LIS.

Sure. Just create a new folder in the Web Redo Project Managers area for LIS.

2. When will the next round(s) of Drupal training be offered?

A second round of test training will be offered to the Project Managers group starting the week of 9/21. LIS Website Team members may request to attend as may the LIS Project Managers, though it would be a good idea to ensure that any who do attend are caught up on the current process, workbook, etc. Also, all involved should understand that they probably won’t be able to immediately go back and edit their site in Drupal after these sessions. There will be training work shops and sessions offered later in October for content editors at which point people should be doing content editing in the Drupal CMS.

3.  Can we schedule a meeting with White Whale during their visit?

Probably. Joe is, at the (not so) very least going to schedule a meeting with Tonya, who is responsible for the IA & Content Recommendations documents. I have a feeling that most of our questions will involve her. Joe will try to have the others from White Whale present for this meeting, if schedules allow. We should have a list of questions we want to ask going into the meeting. They will be on campus the week of 9/14.

What else?

Here is a list of the LIS related links I found in each section:

Academic
Library & Information Services

Campus Life
Digital Music

News & Information
Web Services

Technology
Banner Web
Help & Support
Library & Information Services
Segue
Telephone Services
WebMail