Minutes 11 July 20071

							1 Minutes Public Interface Committee Wednesday, July 11, 2007 SML Room 411 Present: Katie Bauer (Chair), Emily Horning, Karen Kupiec, Geoffrey Little (Recorder), Daniel Lovins, Hongbin Liu, Stephen Naron, Andy Shimp, Kalee Sprague, Tao Yang. 1. 2. Katie opened the meeting at 9:35 am. New “Search this Site” feature Mike Frescia demonstrated the new Front Door mock-up, modeled, somewhat, on the Stanford Medical Library web site. Members of the committee received a link to the mock-up from Katie on July 6. A new multi-option search box will replace the Orbis Library Catalog search feature and would allow users to search a number of different categories via a drop down list. The categories in the mock up are, in order, Library Web, Orbis, Databases, Journals, Google Scholar, Images, People, and Google. The search is currently by keyword and the results page displays the first 50 results. Katie asked about keyword misspellings. Would the site suggest alternative spellings? Mike replied that a Google thesaurus could be integrated into the search function. Katie also wondered if it could be linked with other thesauri, i.e. PubMed‟s thesaurus? Mike believes it could be linked. Mike and Karen noted that seaching in the „Databases‟ and „Journals‟ fields will search titles as well as metadata. It was noted that there is no full-text journal article searching. The committee asked if the Journals search could be re-named „Ejournals‟, as the Journals search featured does not search for print journals. This would reduce some possible confusion. The committee felt that highlighting the Image search feature was very important given the work of the VRC and their ongoing digitization projects. Karen noted that 400,000 images from the Yale collections will be available in the VRC by Summer 2008. It was also noted that searching Images would pull results from Yale, the BAC, and ARTstor, making the Images search very powerful. Katie asked if images could be searched by date or date range. Karen answered that this is currently difficult as standards for entering dates varied. VRC is working to resolve

2 this for the future. It was also noted that the VRC collections can be searched by geographic subject headings. The committee agreed that search results for images should be as broad as possible so that users have the fullest sense of what is available. Users will be able to narrow their searches using subject headings and facets within the search results. Stephen suggested that the new “Library Web” search would make the current “Search this Site” option obsolete. “Search this Site” will become the default search for the new “Library Web” search Katie asked if this will be ready for the beginning of the term. Karen replied that it would be. It was also agreed that PIC needed to canvass feedback from colleagues and users. The committee decided to phrase the call for feedback by noting that changes to the front door are coming, rather than possibly under discussion. Colleagues will be asked to prepare themselves for the new change. The committee also agreed that Google would be removed as a search option and that the search option “People” should be changed to “Library People”. As well, a link to the main Yale directory should also be included within the “Library People” search. The committee also agreed on a new order for search options. The first four search options should be displayed in the following order on the front page: “Orbis”, “E-journals”, “Databases”, and “Images”. This order should be repeated for the grey boxes on the search results page, with “Library Web”, “Library People”, and “Google Scholar” as the subsequent three search options (in that order). “Library People” will also then replace the current library directory search. The committee was very pleased with the look and ease of the new library directory search engine/results display. It was also agreed that every section would have a direct link to the native search engine, i.e., “For more results go to Orbis”. This will direct users to the appropriate search engine (Orbis, Metalib, VRC, etc.). The committee needs to work on this wording. It was felt that directing users to the native search engine was very important. The committee thanked Mike for his good work. 3. Alice‟s blog Ernie Markenko has been working on creating Alice‟s blog. Geoffrey has been working with Alice on content. Alice had initially specified a launch date of July 16. This may not happen, but the blog will definitely be

3 launched before the beginning of the term. The committee looked at the blog and had favorable comments. Ernie will be asked to center Alice‟s photo and Geoffrey will also ask him to link an “About Me” section to Alice‟s official bio on the Yale Library web site. Geoffrey, Ernie, and Alice will meet soon. Geoffrey will keep PIC updated. A committee member asked if blogs could be added to the new “Library People” search. The committee liked this suggestion as many staff members blog, but agreed it would be an “opt in” feature for privacy reasons, etc. 4. Server Interuption, July 15 The central Yale server will be undergoing necessary upgrades on Sunday, July 15 from 5:15 to 7:15 am. While this will likely not impact too many library staff or readers, a notice will be posted on the library web site‟s front door and on Yulib. The Medical Library may or may not be affected by the disruption. 5. Database News a. Katie noted that she had received an email from Scopus indicating that it had integrated with CSA. Accordingly search results within Scopus now also feature a “Search other databases” hyperlink. The committee agreed that it was happy with this new development. b. Emily also noted that Science Direct has started showing up in Google Scholar. According to Katie, this is a result of Google Scholar having newly partnered with Elsevier. Accordingly, this makes Google Scholar a much more powerful search engine. Katie will send a message out to Yulib highlighting this new development. c. There is a new and improved version of Lexis-Nexis. At the same time, however, SFX is having difficulties linking to it. This will likely mean eventual changes to SFX. 6. Yale Library Google “sponsored links” Katie discussed the spreadsheet of proposed sponsored links to our most important/significant pages. Stephen (who was also thanked for his work on the spreadsheet) wondered how many terms were needed to ensure that users found the pages they were looking for. Emily and Andy noted that some terms were missing or needed modification. They will send them to Mike Frescia via email.

4 7. Copyright statement on the Library website. The committee agreed that a suggestion to display a Creative Commons license (or to use Creative Commons license wording) on the library‟s website would be submitted to the Library Management Team. 8. The meeting was closed just before 11:00 am.

Submitted, Geoffrey Little