2018-12-03 Documentation Meeting agenda/notes

• Link to survey results
• Link to key takeaways from survey results

Review: The committee surveyed the community last summer regarding their use of the existing documentation, as well as suggestions for how to improve it. Broadly, we found the following:

• it's written at a very high level, and doesn't provide extensive technical detail for those who desire it

• its structure for access and discoverability could be improved

• it could benefit from a serious re-working (though unsure what that would look like...)

• suggestions for alternatives to the current application on which the docs are built?

John Z. asked if there was anyone (either on the call or in the community) who had screenshots or examples of how to accomplish certain tasks in ArchivesSpace that they would be willing to share for the official documentation. This is a call we could put out to the users' group

• Embedding images into Digital Objects in the PUI (link)
• Adding staff interface hot-key shortcuts to the docs (link)
• Trainer's team booklet -- could it be incorporated into the core docs? Does it need to be updated?
  • Check in with Christine Kim about it before she leaves?

Other questions for LYRASIS that came up as part of this discussion:

• Is it feasible to make the app documentation open-access?
• What application runs the documentation?
• Who is responsible for creating screencasts about ArchivesSpace, in terms of the UAC? Is it this group, or the UAC as a whole? If us, how would we go about creating and posting those?
• Is there anything in LYRASIS' training manual that could be incorporated into the core documentation?

1. Survey of documentation writers:
   
   1. What have you written?
   2. What might you contribute to the core docs?
   3. Examples: E-mail to the list from Miloche Kottman on Nov. 27 about batch re-ordering; our (DU) own stuff online at https://duspeccoll.github.io

Discussion among the group re: documentation writer survey:

• who's writing? why are they writing? would they contribute to the core docs?
• Susan L.: Collection Management Tools Section SAA -- lots of docs available on their microsite
• Jasmine: linking to github repos as well as traditional text documentation (something the CMT section looked into but didn't pursue in depth)
• Jamie: They created their own user manual with screenshots (!)
• John: They have their own manual at NYU (the "local manual") -- it's mostly for their local practices but it also functions as de facto ArchivesSpace documentation. NYU doesn't really use the docs at all

Possible questions to ask in a documentation writer survey:

1. Why are they writing it on their own?
2. Are they willing to share that documentation?
3. Did they consult the official manual when putting together documentation?
4. Were they aware of the official manual when putting together documentation?
5. Make it easier to integrate the official manual with local documentation (making the official docs public could help with that...)
6. Who is responsible for documentation? How much of a commitment of time is it to build and maintain documentation?