Web Advisory Committee

Web Advisory Committee News

17 January 2005
Sarah Jones

There are a few changes to the library web site that we wanted to let you know about.

Home page layout -- if you've visited the library home page today, you might have noticed a couple of things:

"Login coming soon" has been removed. As we all know, that was something that was "coming soon" for far longer than anyone's definition of "soon". We are still planning to have a login feature where web site visitors will be able to have a personalized, customized view of library resources, but we'll hold off on announcing that feature on the home page until there is a launch date.
Rotating banner ads -- These ads have been 1) repositioned to the top of the left-hand column, making their location consistent with how web designers understand web page viewers' eye movements and attention, 2) resized slightly, and 3) refreshed with new designs.

New content -- "Database News & Downtimes" -- implementation of a proposal made to WAC

Some databases have regularly scheduled downtimes. In addition, we get announcements from database vendors regarding scheduled, one-off maintenance downtimes. Also, we get announcements from vendors regarding enhancements to their products.
So that library staff and web site visitors can stay informed on those things, we now have "Database News & Downtimes". Links to this appear in several places: 1) the library home page, as a permanent "News & Events" announcement, 2) the Research Help page, 3) the Research navigation panel (the blue panel of links that appears on all web pages in the Research section of the site), and 4) the Site Index.

Updated content

The Seminars & Tours schedules have been updated for the Spring Semester. This includes the Graduate Research Seminars, Library Demos, Tours, and GIS Workshops.
Also in GIS: the UTA Libraries' GIS Pamphlet is now available online. The other thing that is notable about this is that the pamphlet is offered in two formats: in PDF but also in "FlashPaper".
- FlashPaper is a recent technology developed by Macromedia where documents that might have been offered on the web as PDFs or as Microsoft Office documents are transformed into Flash files for viewing on-screen using Flash Player. FlashPaper isn't intended to replace the features that an Adobe Acrobat PDF offers, but rather to make opening files in a web browser, which might have required PDF before, a faster and easier experience for web site visitors. If you've ever had your web browser hang or crash while it tried to launch Adobe Acrobat Reader, you'll appreciate FlashPaper.
- Thanks go to Josh Been for allowing us to use the GIS Pamphlet as our first experiment in offering FlashPaper versions of documents to our web site visitors.

Coming up

WAC has collected your comments on the "Library Catalog" and "Research" sections of the web site's main navigation menus, and we'll be using that along with feedback from web site visitors to make adjustments in the site's navigation and organization. Look for more news on this in the near future.

Contacting us

Do you have web page updates for us? Have you discovered a problem with a web page? For updates and problems, contact the DLS Web Site Comments group at libraryweb@uta.edu ("Library - Web Site Comments" in the UTA Address Book)
Do you have a suggestion or proposal for a new feature or service for the web site? Or do you have a suggestion or proposal for a larger change or an enhancement to a current feature or service? For proposals and suggestions for site enhancements, contact WAC (the Web Advisory Committee) at library-wac@listserv.uta.edu.
You can find out more about WAC on the Q drive at Q:\MIS\Web Advisory Committee (WAC). You'll find the committee charge, minutes, and quarterly reports there.
WAC is: Gerald Alvarez, Suzanne Beckett, Barbara Howser, Marie Irwin, Josie Murdock, Cathy Spitzenberger, Gretchen Trkay, Jim Wellvang, and me.

Contact WAC:
Send e-mail to the group at
library-wac@listserv.uta.edu