Minutes of the meeting held 18th December 2002. Present: Owen Atkin, Lorna Evans, Paul Waites, Julie Lord, Richard Firn (Chair), Ian Jennings. Cake: Quite nice mince pies
ICDB 02/24 Apologies for absence. None.
ICDB 02/25 Minutes of the meeting 17/09/02. These were accepted. It was
agreed that minutes would be kept as web accessible documents and no hard copies.
ICDB 02/26 Matters arising:
Time Management Software (ICDB 02/11). Awaiting response from MIS.
Room booking software (ICDB 02/14). Awaiting progress.
Undergraduate Admin and YIMS (ICDB 02/17). Awaiting progress.
ICDB 02/27 Web use in the Biology Dept
The sub group convened by Owen had met and made progress. Most of the major
administrative groups within the department had been consulted and had contributed
ideas and solutions.
Overall Strategy The Biology Department will adopt the web as the normal means of distributing information to all users of information. The storage of information will be part of this strategy. Paper-based communication and storage will remain only for limited tasks which cannot be practically addressed within the overall strategy.
Implementation of the Strategy The strategy will be phased in, starting this Feb with the launch of the revised Biology Web Site. The next milestone will be the delivery of the great majority of material to the new cohort of students and to staff starting October 2003. The implementation of the web-based YIMs for student records will complement the departmental strategy. At a future meeting of ICDB a more detailed implementation scheme will be addressed.
Resources It was agreed that there would be some new demands in the short term but they should be compensated for at a later date by improved efficiency.
Staff issues
Lorna Evans would be the person responsible for ensuring that the various contributors
provided/revised they material on the main web pages at the appropriate times.
Her job description needs to be changed to reflect this changing role.
Paul Waites will provide training for the providers of information. Paul would
also advise on technical matters concerned with the implementation of the strategy
in consultation with Ian Jennings.
Ian Jennings will consider the issues of data security and storage.
Owen Atkin will maintain a watching brief during the next 12 months to ensure
that progress is maintained.
Equipment
There may be a need to upgrade certain PCs to enable them to perform adequately. Ian Jennings recommended that the majority of the web content be kept on the university server but the amount of filestore needed would have to be negotiated with them.
Software
The Department will be switching from the browser Netscape 4.7 to Mozilla early in 2003. Mozilla is an open-source product with all the capabilities of other current browsers and can run with all operating systems in use in Biology. It will be used for email as well as browsing and ECSMail will finally be taken out of use.
The best software to use for web page design, web site management and web page
authoring needs further discussion and Paul Waites and Lorna Evans will bring
back some thoughts to a future meeting. There is a need to consider whether
Word is the optimum product if much paperwork is aimed for web delivery. Staff
training on any new software will need to be considered.
Owen Atkin, the members of the Web subgroup and all those who had contributed
to the development of the new web pages were thanked for all their efforts.
ICDB 02/28 Win 2000 It was noted that machines that access the YIMS systems routinely will have to be running Win 2000.
ICDB 02/29 AV in MO23 Paul Waites reported that MO23 would be the first
room to benefit from his attempts to improve AV provision in the department
and that room should have a PC and display soon.