The LIS Web Team presented their recommendations for AD approval See: https://mediawiki.middlebury.edu/wiki/LIS/LIS_Website_Recommendations
Here’s the high-level summary; many other details in the above link, explaining thinking/research leading to these recommendations.
We recommend that the LIS Website consist of the following elements:
- A landing page with contact information, location information, hours, and links to our content offerings.
- A blog that contains information about the organizational mission and structure as well as news and articles from LIS staff.
- A wiki that holds the technical and procedural documentation maintained by LIS staff, chiefly the Helpdesk and Telephone Services documentation.
- A website in Drupal for access to Library resources.
- Subject guides for academic departments and disciplines in SubjectsPlus.
- A search portal for Library resources
We also recommend that there be some consistency across all sections of the LIS Website. Every page should have a unifying graphic element (eg, a logo) to make it clear to the user who has arrived via search that they are on a Midd-LIS page. Every page should invite feedback (“Was this page helpful?).
General questions, comments and discussion continued.
- Blog consolidation issues were discussed with the possibility of maintaining one blog for all of LIS or possibly one for internal and one for external audiences. Ian McBride suggested using one blog with various categories to assist in this issue.
- White Whale will assist in developing a unifying theme for the Library landing page.
- Concern was addressed regarding White Whale’s home page design only showing Library and not including technology links. Should they prepare two links for Library and Technology?
- We should streamline services to utilize more self-service features and contain them in one place.
- Should we include things like:
- where can we find a free computer?
- Link system status to show which printers are up and running
- Room and thesis carrel availability
- A lively discussion occured regarding LIS Staff directory photos. Discussion will continue at a future date
- Governance and advisory groups – access and structures should be made available to users
- New helpdesk software – Where are we going? Software is currently being evaluated. We need to choose a product to create web-based forms with seamless integration
Recommendations were approved by the Area Directors
Info desk discussion: it was decided to not continue staffing the info desk as of September 1st. For the short term, the desk will remain. Possible ideas for the space would be to place additional computers at the desk for walk up usage or possibly a large monitor. Mary would talk to Joseph about reproduction of brochures and materials. Gate statistics will no longer be monitored and the info desk phone extension should divert to Circulation. Carol will prepare a write-up for discussion regarding the possibility of shifting room reservations to Scheduling. An announcement needs to be prepared stating the info desk closure. Mary agreed to write something for LISt.
Whatever the ADs decide about room scheduling can rm 105 remain with the library? Also if the scheduling office has only 9-5 staffing, we might also want to retain the ability to schedule the 150, and 240 rooms, since students often schedule those on the spot.
Part of the appeal of centralizing is that the Middlebury community would be able to view & schedule any library room in a single place and on-line. Making this type of a change would force LIS to plan further ahead for our own use, but we need to weigh all the pros & cons for the community as well. A discussion is currently in effect and my office door is always open.
Whoever is in charge of managing the scheduling of these spaces, I hope that we will be able to use the scheduling features of the new 25Live system that I, Barbara, and others at Middlebury are working to set up to augment and replace Resource25. The appeal of this system is a web interface to manage scheduling and segmented views of space availability. We believe it also allows for delegation of scheduling control, which would be useful for some of the library spaces.
Using these tools to manage space availability in the Library would allow us to embed a calendar of events and available times right on our website for people to view, which we currently don’t do with space management in the Exchange Public Folders. There are other advantages and I hope in the coming months to be able to demonstrate more of the features of our new scheduling system.
Yes, this is the thought to utilize the scheduling office and the 25Live capabilities.