Web Advisory Committee Meeting Minutes
Wednesday September 3, 2014, 2:30 - 4p.m.
Knowledge Innovation Technology Lab (KITL), 3rd Floor OISE Building
Present: Richard Carter, Carla Hagstom, Angela Hamilton via skype, Marc Lalonde, Judith Logan,
Kate MacDonald, James Mason (chair), Joanna Szurmak, Jen Robertson.
Regrets: Margaret Wall, Susan Stone, Lari Langford, Monique Flaccavento, Maria Buda, Heather
Buchansky, Heather Cunningham.
1. Selection of a minutes-taker: Joanna Szurmak
2. Minutes of June meeting: Accepted.
3. Business arising from the Minutes and Standing Items:
 Contact us page (Margaret Wall): Item was deferred as Margaret Wall was not present.
 Report from the Web Analytics Group (WAG) (Jen Robertson). The WAG is changing how
it works by liaising more directly with the ITS. Since the frequency of WAG meetings will
decrease, the WAG report will no longer be a standing item at WAC meetings.
 Mobile Group update (Judith Logan). The Mobile Group no longer exists. This is no
longer a standing item at WAC meetings.
4. Updates from ITS (Marc Lalonde)
LibCal Deployment:
 The library purchased LibCal, a SpringShare product. LibCal is now used to display
courses and events open to the UofT community. The Workshops RSS feed is now a
LibCal feed. The home-grown system we used to fulfill this function previously will be
displaying internal workshops.
 Contact Rita Vine to get an account in LibCal.
 LibCal is now displaying its “out of the box” style. It is possible to customize its
appearance. Since we should attempt to make all SpringShare products like LibGuides
and LibCal display consistently, we may consider returning to LibCal customization as a
future issue.
 HTML can be added to the description of LibCal events so that images can be displayed.
 UTM, UTSC and St. George already have their instances of LibCal.
Library Website Redesign:
 The redesign focuses on user-centered, responsive design with a clean, simple, and
intuitive layout.
 The redesign team did extensive community outreach and feedback activities, including
card-sorting exercises.
 The team traveled to UTM and UTSC to ensure all viewpoints were heard.
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Among the design evaluation activities was a usability study with Ask A Librarian service
providers. Design team observed responses of users not familiar with the UTL site.
The team is going ahead with a Google plug-in to deliver one of the key user requests,
effective web search of library guides (mostly LibGuides).
Users also want curated research resources that group major tools for disciplinary
research in one spot. We need to tag tools and make sure they can be discovered and
pushed together into one spot to satisfy that need.
Another major change is clear, easy to navigate contact information for library location
and hours.
Judith Logan has joined ITS on a placement to do a content audit of all the published
websites on One Search. Judith looked at the websites from the point of view of content
and style.
Judith is also updating the UTL Style Guide (see item below).
Where do we go from here? In September there will be additional redesign activities;
UTM and UTSC will be involved as well. Students and faculty will test the site for an early
2015 launch.
Encourage colleagues and students to send website redesign feedback to
web@library.utoronto.ca
The team is gathering some feedback using “Guide on the Side,” an open source
application that allows one to present a web page with associated tasks on the sidebar.
“Guide on the Side” started its life as a teaching tool. The UTL community is welcome to
use it for instruction.
Now when ITS builds a new application, it applies the new design. Feedback and testing
are thus ongoing.
Blackboard Course Feed
 The Blackboard Course Feed was the first application redesigned using the new design
template.
 The new Blackboard Course Feed is responsive and uses the LibGuide structure. It is not
in Drupal so that its maintenance is easier.
 The Subjects A-Z page will soon look like the redesigned Blackboard Course Feed.
 The Course Feed is as easy to customize as before.
 A web working group recommended the custom box order.
 The Blackboard Course Fees is now ready to go and waiting for further feedback.
 The Feed will be formally deployed next week.
Catalogue Request: Request Rush Cataloguing of On Order Items
Catalogue Request: Search for an Item.
 Four libraries requested the use of this service; others can join as well. The service
automates our old search form and adds the rush cataloguing request for faculty.
 The request menu includes the ICD or hold request, rush cataloguing or searching for
the item. Selecting options such as the hold request takes one to the Shibboleth login
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screen as seen in Blackboard login.
This service will be available in two weeks but the faculty publication already tells
faculty the rush cataloguing option is available.
Research / Service / Hours Information
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The team chose the open source Bootstrap Theme that can be tapped into with Java. It
makes the site responsive and was identified as a good theme in wireframe feedback
sessions.
The top right area of the page is a sticky menu. This feature mimics the design of the IT +
S site.
5. Updates from Website Redesign: New website navigation / UTL Style Update (Judith Logan)
New Website Navigation:
 The number of navigation items in the menu has been halved based on a card sorting
exercise.
 If the search functionality is really good, not everything has to be linked by navigation.
Google Custom Search is indexing all of the UofT library websites. It will make for an
excellent targeted search.
 The Search item displays the search option on the top of any page it is engaged on. Each
menu item opens into thematic sub-sections on a “sticky” page header just like Search.
 Research offers three areas: Find, Tools, Collections.
 Services has information for faculty or visitors.
 Visit has library hours and events for all the libraries.
 About item shows Contact Info, Vision and Work with Us. Vision links to a single page
only.
 Contact Desk page is the same as the old help menu.
 UofT link has Campus Maps, Portal, ROSI and Home.
 The Ask option is too reminiscent of Ask A Librarian: it will be redesigned.
 Featured Titles carousel is at the bottom of the page.
UTL Web Style Guide:
 We can view this guide online and consult the updated Table of Contents.
 Most changes are in how we address the users. It is about plain language and clarity, as
well as avoiding library jargon.
 New writing style examples show the Topic, Do and Don’t.
 One of the new rules is using the Oxford comma.
 Carla Hagstrom volunteered to proofread the Web Style Guide.
 Formatting of dates and numbers has been changed to agree with Margaret Wall’s
recommendations.
 Sections about numbers will continue to be included, featuring formats for
temperature, measurement, currency and phone numbers, since the guide is there to
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promote good usage, not to determine what information we should discuss in our sites.
The group discusses the rules for writing UTL versus spelling out University of Toronto
Libraries. Consensus is to always first spell out the name to avoid jargon / acronym use.
Course codes and degrees: no colon, leave as BKS100H.
Margaret suggests using sentence case for titles, not title case. Only first word and
proper nouns have initial capitals, as in APA.
Passive voice: We have a style guide, not a style law. In some cases it is still OK to use a
passive sentence.
6. Future Directions (James Mason)
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Taking a look at the Finance pages would require participation from that community.
This is a distant future item for further discussion.
Database help videos on “Read more” pages generated interest and a short discussion
of the WAC group. We will discuss the placement of these videos again as students do
not often go to “Read more.” Monique Flaccavento had previously suggested
embedding video thumbnails in the database list to reduce the number of keystrokes
needed to get to them. This will be revisited with a larger WAC group.
Social media integration: a contentious subject. Do we really want to share bibliographic
records on our social media streams? Do we sometimes tweet a book to bookmark the
record? Do we often tweet the record or message it to ourselves? How far does it go?
Can it be helpful? This will be a future discussion.
Any other ideas for future directions? Input for redesign will be a standing item. Mobile
and WAG are now lost as standing items.
Next meeting: Wed. Oct. 1, 2014.