WEBMASTERS’ COMMITTEE MEETING MINUTES

Tuesday, January 9, 2001

Adams Lounge, Physiology Building

 

Ms. Pridgen called the meeting to order at 9:05 a.m.

 

Members Present:  J. Chandler, T. Harmon, S. Hilligoss, J. Lenz, E. Monteaux (for J. Reigel) M. Pridgen, and J. Strecker. 

Guests:  Karen Wheeler, from the ARGUS Institute.

 

Old Business

 

Bobby Approval of Top-Level pages.   Our “deadline” for getting top-level pages approved is today.  Pages now displaying the Bobby Approved Logo are:  CVMBS Main page, Anatomy Department, Dean’s Office, Academic Dept Listing, Instructional Technology, Vet Service Centers, and the Related Links page.   Pages which meet the Priority One requirements for approval but as yet have no logo include RHS and Microbiology Department pages, and Jill demonstrated where to copy the links to the Bobby logos for those of us ready for that step.

 

New Business

 

Choose new photo for main page.  The group selected from a limited number of new options a photo to be provided by Ms. Wheeler of the Equine Mobile Unit, a recent acquisition of VTH for providing on-site veterinary services at horse shows and other equine events.  We discussed the possibility of using the William Wegman photo that has been donated to promote the Animal Cancer Center in the future, and Karen says it can be made available for our use.  Ms. Pridgen suggested we consider using it when the new ARGUS Center website is online, to draw attention to that site.

 

Ms. Lenz passed out handouts made from a library book she located on Web Concept And Design, and took us through the brainstorming process that she and Ms. Wheeler of the ARGUS Center did to generate ideas for identifying who their audience is, and setting goals for the ARGUS web page/site.  We briefly touched on identifying how our audience will use our College Home Page, and how this will impact our next redesign.  Suggestions were made to possibly set up a user group to test our new design on, so that we can obtain objective feedback from users, to look at other Veterinary school’s pages for ideas we might borrow from, and on how we might consider incorporating some sort of search mechanism within our site.  Mr. Strecker and Mr. Harmon said they would look into possibilities for this.

We also want to look at how we might reduce the amount of information on the main page into two categories, one for our Academic audience, and one for more General Public oriented issues and services, as it seems to some of us that we could identify our users as coming from these two very different categories.  Please think about what issues or suggestions you might have for the next meeting, where we will do a more general brainstorming session about our CVMBS Main Page.  If you would like a copy of the handouts, please contact Jill Lenz and she can make those available to anyone who missed our meeting.

 

Ms Pridgen passed on the information from Janice Reigel that even though we have two new reorganized departments, these won’t be official until July1, 2001, and we need not worry about changing department titles on our pages for a while yet, but we do want to look toward that change in the redesign process.

 

Ms. Lenz and Ms. Pridgen presented a brief summary of the Portals demonstration they attended on December 20th given by Linda McNamara of ACNS.  Portals are a new trend in websites being developed by a number of our peer universities (as well as by commercial ventures) that allow one to customize the homepage within a site, and build in a number of frequently referenced items for immediate use upon login.  It was the consensus at the meeting we attended that this would not be something that individual colleges would want to try to design, but that if it could be achieved at a University level, it might be an attractive feature, particularly to students.   One critical component of making such pages available would be the use of an EID (Electronic Identification number) that eventually may be required for all registering students (and possibly for Faculty and Staff as well.)  Ms. Lenz showed two of the examples of pages we were shown at the ACNS presentation:  http://my.ucla.edu/  and http://steamtunnel.net .  If you missed the meeting and are interested in learning more about these types of pages, please contact Ms. Lenz or Ms. Pridgen, or contact Linda McNamara at ACNS.  Ms. Lenz also has a handout on this topic that is available upon request.

 

The meeting was adjourned at 10:00 a.m.  The next meeting will be held on Tuesday, February 13th at 9:00 a.m.  in the Adams Lounge, Physiology Building  

 

Mary Pridgen 1/9/01