Report to the Board: Winter 2012 (February 2, 2012)

Tenn-Share Web Committee

February 2, 2012

Co-Chairs: Courtney Fuson, Jodie Gambill

Committee Members: Melissa Brenneman, Wendy Cornelisen, DeAnne Luck 

The Web Committee would like to welcome Melissa Brenneman to our committee! We look forward to working with her to maintain and improve the website.  We would also like to thank Penny Frere for her many years of service to the Web Committee and wish her a wonderfully happy retirement.

The Web Committee met on December 12, 2011 via GoToMeeting. See the agenda and notes from that meeting.  Highlights from the meeting are discussed below.

Web Analytics

There is no PDF this time due to recent changes in the Google Analytics interface. We hope to have a useful PDF report available to you in time for the next board meeting. Please feel free to request specific stats of interest.

Highlights of Tenn-Share site usage from September 25, 2008 (new site launch) through October 13, 2011 via Google Analytics:

• 47,077 visits (+6,084 since October)
• 24,230 unique visitors (+2,678 since October)
• 175,396 pageviews (+24,026 since October)
• Top Five Pages (most visited):
  1. homepage (24,271 pageviews)
  2. Databases (10,409 pageviews)
  3. User Login page (9,307 pageviews)
  4. TEL (6,742 pageviews)
  5. List of Members (5,321 pageviews)
• Top Traffic Source: Google. Top keywords used to find us include "tennessee electronic library", "tenn-share", "tenn share", "tennshare", and "tenn".

User Accounts Cleanup

We completed the final phase of our website user account cleanup project. After doing the cleanup reported in October, we checked the remaining active accounts against the 2010/2011 and 2011/2012 membership lists. If they were not found on these lists, their membership privileges were revoked without warning. An email message went sent afterward alerting them to the demotion and encouraging them to join Tenn-Share to regain full access.

The Web Committee agreed to repeat the user accounts cleanup process every other year in late fall/early winter. The next cleanup will be in Fall 2013.

Changes to Left Navigation

The main agenda item for our December meeting was to decide on some changes to the left navigation, also referred to as the site map in the meeting notes. What you currently see on the website is what we decided on. Please give us any feedback you may have on this change, as it affects how everyone uses the site.

A Variety of Email Issues

First, the bad news. Jodie became aware of an issue with email delivery on the server where Tenn-Share is hosted on Friday 1/27/12. Some email messages were queued back in September and were not delivered until 1/27/12, causing confusion for all recipients. We were able to obtain a partial log of queued messages, and Melissa used this list to email a direct apology to those affected. This message was also posted on the Tenn-Share site. The VU Library has already taken steps to ensure that this does not occur again.

Now, several bits of good news. The VU Library has made a configuration change that allows our @tenn-share.org email addresses to remain in that format, rather than automatically switching to @acorn6.library.vanderbilt.edu upon receipt of the email. This will give Tenn-Share a more unified online presence as you all correspond using your @tenn-share.org email addresses.

Tenn-Share also entered the Google realm with the addition of a new Google Voice number and a Gmail account to centralize Tenn-Share email archiving. We helped get a new 'voice' email alias set up to handle the Google Voice correspondence. Jodie also set up all Tenn-Share email aliases and distribution lists to copy Tenn-Share's Gmail account in order to archive the messages. She also went into the Gmail account and set up automatic filtering so that the mailbox will stay mostly tidy on its own.

Other Tidbits

• We continued to assist with hosting surveys on the Tenn-Share site, the latest one being the Strategic Planning survey sent out to all membership.

• In response to a request at the last board meeting, the login link on the Access Denied page now redirects you to whatever page you were trying to access when you were denied. There are also plans to enable this on the link in the dark gray bar across the top of every page, but it's trickier to implement in that spot.

• Jodie worked with Penny to gain access to Penny's Network Solutions account. Penny has taken care of our domain renewals in the past and is our account owner. Jodie now has access to Penny's account and will remove Penny from that role.

• We edited content on pages as needed/requested, helped sort out account problems, and loaded new membership lists when asked by Deanna.

Requests to the Board

• We still need a headshot from the following new board members: Robert Benson, Christy Groves.  Please email them to your webmistresses ASAP.  A big thank you to those who already sent theirs!

• The following new board members still need to register for a Tenn-Share website email account (or notify your webmistresses that you have already): Christy Groves, Alan Stewart.

• Don't forget about all the great resources available to you on the Tenn-Share website.  Review our tutorials section for a refresher.

• News items for the website are always welcome!