2022-12-07 Meeting Agenda and Notes

Owned by Rachel Searcy
Last updated: Dec 16, 2022
3 min read

Date

Nov 2, 2022 at 1pm EST

Zoom/Meeting Info

https://nyu.zoom.us/j/97593576221

 

Previous Meeting Minutes

Participants

 

  • @Rachel Searcy

  • @Austin Munsell

  • @Jenna Silver

  • @Elizabeth M. Caringola

  • @Blake Carver

  • @Mark Cooper - regrets

  • Special Guests! User Docs Subteam!

Goals

  • Continue to review action items from workplan

  • Discuss potential collaboration with User Docs

Time

Item

Presenter

Notes

Time

Item

Presenter

Notes

5 minutes

Roll call / Introductions

Rachel

Notetaker: Liz

25 minutes

Meeting of the Docs

 

  • Here are some major topics we hope to cover:

    • Two main sources of documentation: User Manual in Help Center and tech-docs Github repository (as well as related documents)

    • Difference in content and audience

      • Also in accessibility, because the Help Manual is only available to paid members

    • What makes sense in terms of relationship between the two?

      • Tech Docs: we want more people to know about tech docs

      • User Docs: even if archivists don’t have the ability to make technical changes, they need to know what’s possible and communicate to their devs/hosted providers

    • Specific ideas: Changes to make? Additions? Pointers?

      • There isn’t always a 1:1 between user docs and tech docs in terms of linking related pages, so it’s not always clear the best place to link to

      • Links are easier to maintain when they are fewer of them at a higher level

      • Targeted/more granular links might help people interested in specific topics who don’t look at top-level pages, and developers seem to prefer getting sent to specific info vs. the whole tech docs site; probably worth waiting to make sure tech doc links are relatively stable

      • Tech docs can explore improvements to the Jekyll site to make it more user friendly

    • Visibility and sharing

      • Webinar idea "do you know about all the things you can customize in ASpace?" - or a forum session sponsored by our subteams; ask orgs to talk about customizations they've made - our 2 groups can revisit this and see what our capacity is (online forum in March)

5 minutes

Last Month’s Action Items

Rachel

 

@Austin Munsell (and anyone else) Monitor email list for questions where reporter might benefit from pointer to the techdocs
10/25 from Amanda Focke at Rice University to archivesspace@googlegroups: “I have searched the ASpace doucmentation, but am not finding info on how to implement the "request" button on the public side so users can request boxes. Any pointers for me? Sorry if I missed an obvious source. I did search the user manual for "reference" and "request" but didn't find it.”
2 additional possible tech doc related messages: Mike <mike.uofs@gmail.com> 11/10/2022 re: jetty; Hutchinson, Tim <tim.hutchinson@usask.ca> 11/11/2022 re LDAP atuhentication and ASpace API; 3 other inquiries that look like bugs or user doc questions.
@Austin Munsell @Jenna Silver @Elizabeth M. Caringola @Rachel Searcy Consider talking with your local developers/system maintainers to get their opinions on the documentation, identify gaps, identify potential contributors
Austin hopes to do this in the coming month. Local developer is swamped with a large system migration. UPDATE: Austin checked in with the developer. They reported a) not having issues with the tech docs and b) not remembering anything about them…this is good?
Jenna asked her dev if he has noticed gaps in documentation; he says he’ll just go to the lists and ask and doesn’t consult the docs. A new dev starting soon, so she’ll chat with him as well.
Liz will ask her dev group after they complete the 3.3.1 upgrade this month.

5 minutes

Repo check-in

Rachel


10 minutes

Workplan plan


Rachel

  • Continue looking at

  • Administrative Documentation page in progress:

  • Technical documentation improvements potentially scheduled for Spring/Summer 2023 release in Development Roadmap

    • See blue box under roadmap for additional details.

Next meeting

 

 

Do we want to meet in January? Currently scheduled for Wednesday, January 4

  • January meeting cancelled; next meeting in February.

Action items

Continue as a group to monitor the listserv/group and answer any tech doc related questions