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Minutes of 9/15/04 TERMinators meeting

1:30-2:30

In attendance: Nastia Guimaraes, Alan Krieger, Mary Lehman, Tom Lehman, Laurie McGowan, Kathie Ryan-Zeugner, Linda Sharp, Cheri Smith

Continued review of new subject pages and DDW facets/terms

Tom distributed a current list of facets and terms; these included "management facets" ("Access", "Flags", "Notre Dame Libraries", and "Selectors") which are essentially background facets not directly related to the subject pages.

The group then continued to look at a variety of resources which have been assigned subject terms and at least one other kind of facet/term. The question arose as to whether terms have been applied consistently. It was noted that certain facets, such as "formats" and "genres", are actually complementary and can be appropriately assigned to the same resource. The group looked briefly at the "Selected Reference Resources" page, which roughly corresponds to the old "Virtual Reference Desk." There was a suggestion that perhaps there could be a more direct path to accessing a comprehensive list of databases by "type" ("indexes and abstracts", etc.) An e-mail from a subject librarian to Nastia requesting that certain terms be dropped from a title's record led to Tom introducing an overview of the group's immediate plans.

Overview of TERMinators' future activities:

  1. understand how vocabulary works in the DDW
  2. look at the vocabulary (facets and terms)
  3. formulate guidelines for using vocabulary (including definitions and other requirements for DDW data entry)
  4. review classification of resources
  5. articulate a process on how to make vocabulary changes
  6. wait for responses

Tom showed the group a website that he has begun, called "DDW Information Pages" (http://www.library.nd.edu/about/ddw_docs.shtml), and invited group members to look these pages over and make suggestions or comments on them through our listserv.

Tom also demonstrated how one could see how many times a given facet and term has been used by simply entering a given facet after the library website URL (example: http://www.library.nd.edu/research_tools). This can help us in the future as we review our list of facets/terms to see if any might not be useful.

Next meeting

Our next meeting will be on October 6, when Tom returns from vacation.

Respectfully submitted,
Alan Krieger