Minutes of User Interface Task Group Meeting

Tuesday, February 7, 2006

Attending: Heidi Hanson, Janet Evander, Linda Seguin, Diane Fuller, Laura Wrubel, Susan Wheeler, Lenore England, Joanne Dugan, Seán Henry, Cindy Todd (minutes)

Meeting minutes from January 13, 2006 were approved.

Topic 1: Expansion of Journal Subset

Outcome: We reviewed feedback from campuses on this issue. We agreed to expand the journals subset to include "all serials." Heidi and Linda will investigate how this will be accomplished and make the change in the test Catalog. One question to be determined is to ascertain if a new index is necessary. Heidi and Linda will try to make necessary changes in the next couple of weeks.

Screen labels that will need to be examined and considered for change are:

• Name of the base itself. Since usability testing suggests that the JOURNALS label is helpful and understood by users, we agreed to leave as "JOURNALS."
• Limit by format on the advanced screen. Should Journals/Newspapers/Magazines be relabeled?
• Label in FORMAT on the full record view

UITG will work together via email to draft message that will go to COI ALL to invite comment. Our intention is to set a deadline for comment that is one week after the email invitation for comment goes out. Our goal is to have comments back by March 1st if changes can be made within that timeframe.

Topic 2: Usability Issues: Full record in the Catalog

We discussed a number of possible changes to the Brief and Full Record displays in the Catalog. Usability reports from recent testing suggest that changes would make the record for useful/understandable for users. We had a lively discussion on "what is our goal?" with each of these record displays and What are our priorities?

As a first step in what we believe to be a multi-step change process, we agreed that Heidi will implement the following changes in the test Catalog:

• Suppress the Publication History field from the Full Record display.
• Suppress the Indexed By field from the Full Record display.
• Comment out the Citation and Catalog Card display options from the Full Record display.
• If it is possible, HH will change the Brief View so that the location is de-linked and the availability link is displayed.
• Right justify the LABELS on the Full Record display.

Our goal is to have these changes in the test Catalog in time for our next meeting (March 7). At that time we will decide on the timing of next steps toward getting feedback from COI ALL.

Meanwhile, UITG members will get feedback from their campuses on the advisability of suppressing Frequency, Former Frequency from Full Record display and on whether on not the Named MARC link is useful/necessary from the Full Record display.

Heidi will investigate the possibility of display of holdings and availability information on the Full Record display.

Topic 3: New Titles list/base

Heidi reports that ITD has set up an "informal task group" to work on the New Titles base/list. Currently Heidi, Jean, Yalen, and Ben are working on this. It seems that USMAI wants two different things, a new titles base and new titles list(s). The New Titles base will be worked on first and will be something similar to that implemented at McGill. Heidi will continue to report back.

Next meeting for UITG will be March 7 at CP.