2019-11-19 Meeting notes

10 min

Roll call

@Maggie Hughes

• Notetaker: @Dallas Pillen

• Roll call question: What’s your favorite family or holiday tradition?

2 min

Recent contributions

Shoutouts since Oct!

Listserv:

• Kevin Schlottmann

Code:

• Bria Parker

• Maggie Hughes

Bugs/new issues:

• Edgar Garcia

• Maggie Hughes

5 min

Program update

@Christine Di Bella

• Relaunching help center (where the user manual and training videos are) by the end of the year

  • User manual has been updated

• Online forum coming up in a few months

  • Jessica Crouch is looking for people. If you or colleagues are interested in participating, get in touch!

• Currently between ArchivesSpace releases. Next release likely early 2020. Working on:

  • Additional container management functionality

  • Underlying infrastructure. Improving testing. Updating gems. Introducing more consistent coding conventions.

5 min

TAC/UAC updates

@Maggie Hughes

New TAC administrative pages on the wiki:

• TAC Administrative Info with Chair/Vice Chair responsibilities, yearly timeline, notes on running meetings.

  • These could be good models for the sorts of sub-team documentation talked about in the Integration sub-team’s discussion during the October TAC meeting.

    • Can go in the sub-team’s current term space and then making sure that pages like yearly timelines persist year-to-year can be figured out later.

  • If you notice that anything is missing, have additional suggestions, etc. let Maggie know.

• Guidance on council resignations and non-participation

ASpace TAC quarterly report

• Quarterly TAC report due by 11/25

• Collaborating with UAC.

• will share rosters and work plans from sub-teams. If there's anything else to add let Maggie know.

  • Reports will be shared on the wiki. Should be available to share by December TAC meeting.

Meetings after December.

• Previous TAC terms have had monthly TAC meetings at the beginning of the term and then transitioned to bimonthly meetings as the focus shifts more to individual sub-team meetings.

  • Next TAC meeting is in December. Shift to bimonthly after that. Can re-evaluate if necessary.

  • Joint TAC/UAC meeting in February.

15 min (less than 5 min each)

Sub-team and working group updates

Integrations: @Dallas Pillen

Metadata Standards: @James Griffin (Unlicensed) , @Kevin Schlottmann

Tech Docs: @Alicia Detelich

Dev Pri

Testing

API working group: @Dave Mayo (Unlicensed)

• Integrations has formed three sub-groups that will each focus on one of the broad sets of tasks laid out in the Integrations sub-team’s 2019-2020 work plan. Sub-groups will be starting their work in December 2019/early 2020.

• Metadata Standards: Decided to focus on published import/export mappings for MARC and EAD2002 because those are the standards that are most used in the community (and are out of date). Currently setting up the tooling for that – will be testing current import/exports and updating mappings as necessary. There is a lot in the Metadata Standards workplan for the year that they would like to focus on next, but are currently focusing on the mappings as the priority.

• Tech Docs: Set preliminary goals/timelines for completing tasks on their work plan. They have currently split up developer screencasts from HM and will be watching those and incorporating anything from those screencasts into the documentation that is not currently there. Also considering new ways to reach out to users to get ideas for documentation updates/enhancements. Will be submitting Issues to the tech-docs repo to start prioritizing/tracking on those updates/enhancements.

• Dev Pri: Lydia and Maggie developed and circulated a survey (closing tomorrow, 11/20). Over 120 responses so far. Dev Pri has addressed close to 50 tickets this term. Lydia will be doing some analysis of the survey results and will decide how to share that feedback back to both councils and sub-teams.

• Testing: Tested new language feature for recent ASpace release. Tested 16 Jira issues in September. Will be testing features and functionalities for next release when it is requested by the program team.

• API working group: Still in a “getting people ready to go” phase. Have set up communication channels, figured out next steps, done two trainings (1 hr/each) on getting a dev environment up and running, how to build the API docs, and how to submit a pull request with updates to the API docs. Will soon be distributing the work and submitting pull requests.

15 min

Discussion topic: led by Tech Docs sub-team

Tech Docs sub-team

• Soliciting and collecting feedback from users re: documentation enhancements.

  • Last year, sent an email to the list that got 0 responses

  • Knows that people have thoughts (e.g., someone on the list serv saying “I need to know how to do this and couldn’t find it in the documentation”) but has not figured out a good way to get that information from people

  • Discussion at 2019 Member Forum had a lot of good ideas/feedback

  • Question for the group: how have you gotten feedback from the community? If surveys, do more specific questions get better responses than broader, open-ended questions?

  • Valerie: Integrations sub-team has been talking about how to solicit feedback in the moment, when someone is looking at your page. References Google’s “Was this helpful?” link. How can we capture the reaction when someone is on the page.

  • Maggie:

    • Could an email address be added to the documentation? e.g., “Can’t find what you’re looking for? Email <tech-docs-list>”

    • Constructing surveys: First thought of “what do we want to know” and then drafted questions that would get that information. Thought about what questions were too open-ended, etc.

  • Multiple reminders can help a survey stay fresh in people’s minds.

  • Dallas: Thinking about where to send the survey beyond the ArchivesSpace lists to reach users who might care about these things but who aren’t always checking the member list (e.g., SAA Collection Management, Description, Encoded Archival Standards Sections)

  • Christine: Focus groups. Small, focused discussions. Member Forum discussion was a small group of people who self-selected to be in that discussion, so had a lot of feedback on the topic.

    • When new members come on board, program team asks for a technical contact. Those could be good people to reach out to.

  • Possibility: Holding an open Zoom meeting or a webinar.

  • Other possibility: reaching out to new member institutions about what worked in the documentation and what didn’t. People coming at it with fresh eyes can offer a new perspective.

5 min

Open mic

All

1 min

Next time

Tuesday, December 17, 2019 at 12pm PT/3pm ET

Notetaker: @Bria Lynn Parker (Unlicensed) (switching months with @Kevin Schlottmann )