Can we clarify what this means!? We have already proposed the LIS one blog as a major communication tool. To consider communications more broadly probably should involve gathering info about current communications, discussion of what various LIS ares/departments/staff need and want etc. etc. Is this something that should happen now?

Comment here!!

• Did you know? (or some variation?)
• Other ideas?

Do we need an All LIS category?

Existing Infrastructure

We’ll take the current LISt blog, rename it to just “LIS” and grant all staff in LIS Editor access to the blog. Student workers and LIS-related people like department advisory groups will have Author access granted as needed.

Porting Content

Users and groups with existing blogs may move their content into the LIS blog by going to Tools -> Export -> Download Export file in their blog, then Tools -> Import -> WordPress -> Upload file and Import. After doing so, they should go to Posts -> Categories and use the Category to Tag Converter to change any custom categories their blog had into tags on the LIS blog.

Categories

The LIS blog will start with this set of categories:

• Audience
  • External
  • Internal
• Areas
  • Academic Consulting Services
  • Collection Management
  • Enterprise Technology & Infrastructure
  • LIS Administration
  • User Services
• Institutions
  • Middlebury
  • MIIS
  • Language Schools
  • Schools Abroad
  • Bread Loaf
  • MMLA
• Teams
  • Area Directors
  • Curricular Technology
  • Digitization
  • LIS Website

All other existing categories in the LIS blog will be changed to tags. In general, we’ll encourage the use to tags to mark things like posts that have photos in them, posts about particular workgroups, posts about particular projects, or other things that tend to have a more temporally mutable quality to them. Categories will be used chiefly for broad categories that change infrequently.

Private Blogs

The LIS blog will not be used to store private content. Groups, such as ACS, who wish to have a private blog should continue to use and maintain their blog in its present form or create new private blogs if one has not yet been set up.

Internal vs. External

Posts that are likely to be interesting only to LIS staff should be marked with the Internal category. Examples of this content might include a notice about LIS goal setting. Note that these posts would still be readable by the public, but that those subscribed to the public feed wouldn’t see them in the feed. Posts that are likely to have broader appeal, like a cookie party for students, should be marked with the External category, or both the Internal and External categories.

There will be links to both the External and Internal feeds on the blog homepage with a description of the content featured in each so that site visitors can choose how they will read about LIS.

Sure. Just create a new folder in the Web Redo Project Managers area for LIS.

2. When will the next round(s) of Drupal training be offered?

A second round of test training will be offered to the Project Managers group starting the week of 9/21. LIS Website Team members may request to attend as may the LIS Project Managers, though it would be a good idea to ensure that any who do attend are caught up on the current process, workbook, etc. Also, all involved should understand that they probably won’t be able to immediately go back and edit their site in Drupal after these sessions. There will be training work shops and sessions offered later in October for content editors at which point people should be doing content editing in the Drupal CMS.

3.  Can we schedule a meeting with White Whale during their visit?

Probably. Joe is, at the (not so) very least going to schedule a meeting with Tonya, who is responsible for the IA & Content Recommendations documents. I have a feeling that most of our questions will involve her. Joe will try to have the others from White Whale present for this meeting, if schedules allow. We should have a list of questions we want to ask going into the meeting. They will be on campus the week of 9/14.

1. Will a link to my department/content exist on the LIS landing page?
2. Will there be a “featured departments/events/exhibits/goings-on” spot on the LIS landing page?
3. If I have an exhibit or event or online project being launched, can I advertize it on the LIS landing page?
4. Can I name my part of the LIS site whatever I want? (What if I want to name it something other than what my department is called?) Can I separate out parts of my site as I see fit?
5. Is creating my content in a Drupal page the best way to display and organize my department’s dynamic content (video, images, audio, etc.)?
6. What if I want to use blogging tools than Wordpress as part of my department’s web presence?
7. How can I use MiddLabs, and other tools of the new College website to best communicate my department’s services and collaborative activities?

• Our blog and wiki
• Project scope
• Timeline / time pressures
• Surveys, google analytics, search analysis, HEAT stats, etc.
• LIS Project Managers
• Brief overview of recommendations

Questions from the ADs and my paraphrased responses:

What can we do about time pressures?

I mentioned that we weren’t requesting peoples tasks to be juggled or reassigned, but we did want the ADs to know that some members wanted to spend more time on this project. I noted that we understood that the amount of time we spend on project work will vary during the course of the project. I can explain more during our weekly meeting.

What resources do you need [the ADs] to provide?

We don’t have specific resource requests at this time, though we may have more after our meeting with Jeff on the 20th. We will also ask the LIS Project Managers what additional resources they will require to work on their areas of the LIS website and will send these requests to the AD team as appropriate.

What about forms that send information to people in LIS? [book order form, helpdesk request, etc.]

I said that this was something we had not considered previously, but providing access to these forms does seem within scope of our project and is something we should consider in our recommendations. I promised to bring up this topic during one of our next meetings.

What about an issue/request tracking system on the web?

Developing/purchasing such a system is not within the scope of our project. However, should LIS acquire or develop this system, we may have recommendations on how best to provide access to its information through the web. As LIS does not have such a system at this time, developing these recommendations is not a priority for our work.

Where is LIS in the site information architecture?

The Library website will be part of the Academics section of the site. LIS will not have a traditional site on the CMS, but the LIS landing page may be accessible in the Offices & Services section, through Search, through Quick Links, etc.

I’m a faculty member and I want to know about the curricular technology options that are available to me. How do I find this out?

This is specifically the question that we are looking to the curricular technology team to answer, which is why we have identified that team as a Project Manager for a portion of the LIS website.

This is important because of the way Google Analytics works. The code to update the analytics data for the site is contained at the end of the body and is only run if the entire page loads. This means that when we do a redirect, the user’s click on that link is not recorded by our analytics tools. Because of this, you will see a 0 next to that link to MIDCAT on the LIS home page. It would be silly of us to assume that this link is never clicked on, but according to GA, it wasn’t. I’ve noted in the spreadsheet at the end of this post whenever a link on a page is a redirect. We could use standard log file analysis to determine the exact number of page visits to all of these, but as I explained earlier, we don’t have the log files because I deleted them all.

This is not to say that we should discount the results of the data here. There is still useful information in GA. However, when looking at the data, we need to take into account that there are links on each page for which we don’t have information.

Now on to the analysis! The following data is for the last year (July 26, 2008 – July 26, 2009). I figured that a full year would give us the most robust view of the site traffic.

I’ll start with the total page views for each major area of the LIS site. Unsurprisingly, the Library content is the most viewed, with the Contact, Quick Links, and Teach/Learn sections barely viewed at all in comparison. The Unique Pageviews bear out this pattern and the full table of data is available in the spreadsheet at the end of the post.

Two questions we agreed to ask of the Google Analytics tool were “What are the top five links on the LIS home page?” and “What are the five least clicked links on the LIS home page?” Here are the top five:

1. Library & Information Services (6539)
2. Articles, Indexes, Research Sources (6160)
3. Find Books, Articles & More (4289)
4. Middlebury (Home Page) (3175)
5. Course Reserves (3059)

Here are the five least clicked:

1. Content Provider (LIS website) (0)
2. P2P Music & Video Filesharing (0)
3. Telephone Services (0)
4. Digital Media Development (2)
5. Departmental & Workgroup Directories (3)

The full lists, as well as the lists for the landing page of each sub-site are contained in the spreadsheet at the end of this post.

One question that I was not able to answer was about click paths to the blogging and wiki sites. This question can’t really be answered for a couple reasons. First, we don’t have a full year of data for those other services and, second, links to those services would go through redirect posting which are flawed for the reasons described above. If there are sites within the LIS site that you would like to see click-path analysis for, please let me know specifically what resources we should examine.

Here are the broad recommendations I draw from this analysis:

1. The Quicklinks section gets little traffic. This should be removed from the site IA. A better designed site with the addition of a search landing page should not need this section.
2. Other than the link to the CTLR, the Teaching & Learning site is not used. Rather than try to have this information live in multiple places, any relevent content should be moved from here to CTLR and this sub-site should be replaced with a simple link to CTLR.
3. The Hours, Locations, Maps section is really the only think people click on About LIS to see. We should have this information on the LIS search landing page and move the remainder of the content elsewhere.
4. The Departmental Directory is not used, but the full Staff Directory is used. Eliminate both and replace with a link to the LIS search results in the central Directory, which is the same information as the Staff Directory. (Forthcoming improvements to the central Directory interface will improve this experience).
5. The Quick Phone and Email Contacts is the primary resource in Contact LIS. Eliminate the rest of the sub-site and add this information to the LIS search landing page.
6. The links in the top sections of the sub-site landing pages such as below “Need help?” on the Library site are rarely clicked. Avoid this interface in future site designs.
7. The “Did you know…?” sections of the LIS site are rarely visited. Consolidate this information into a central blog about LIS.

Here is the complete spreadsheet of results.

1) Use of blog & wiki – I was moved to send out e-mails to all of you because I thought if I posted on the blog/wiki you’d be unlikely to see the posting (about the survey) quickly. Is this true for some of us anyway? I feel like I get lost in the non-linear nature of the communications & yes – I know we can search, should be set up to get notifications of new postings etc. etc. but I’m not feeling this is completely sucessful.

2) meetings & agenda. I think that a useful discussion between 8 people on almost any topic is going to take longer than 10 minutes. Understanding that time is passing & meeting time is limited, do you think we should break into smaller groups to discuss different topics? That seems to me the only way to be able to cover the agenda items so quickly! If agenda items regularly have to be pushed to the next meeting & we always are rushing I’m not sure that we will do the best job.

Barbara