ESS Newsletter Committee Meeting: WordPress and Web Design
Friday, March 19, 2021; 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM (Mountain Daylight Time)
Meeting held via Zoom
Attendees
- Megan Bennett, Farmington Public Library, New Mexico, meganp.bennet@gmail.com (co-chair) (took minutes)
- Masha Stepanova, Miami University, stepanm@miamioh.edu (co-chair)
- Brendan Nieubuurt, University of Michigan, bnieubuu@umich.edu (member)
- Deb Raftus, University of Washington, draftus@uw.edu (webmaster)
- Dick Hacken, BYU, hacken@byu.edu, (ex-WESS webmaster)
- Lisa Baker
- Jen Bonnet
- Marta Deyrup, Seton Hall University, martadeyrup@gmail.com (member)
Minutes
I. Welcome and introductions
II. Agenda Item : Website : Deb Raftus took point
Templates for submissions are available on the ESS WordPress site
Copy the template and replace info with submission info
Process for taking submissions and adding them to the Newsletter:
Submissions need to be formatted
Submissions need to be accessible – WordPress site best way to be accessible
Dick Hacken volunteered to be the contact between the Newsletter committee and the WebDev Committee
Templates and accessibility – alt-text and screen readers
ESS newsletter will have more images than the old WESS and SEES Newsletters
Don’t accept pdfs?
Harder to format submissions and harder to make them accessible
Submissions with low-res embedded images
Suggestion: request file with text and separate image files
Personal outreach for contributions
Who hasn’t submitted anything, but usually does?
Template is made to be flexible
Not every article needs to have an image attached
Guidelines for editing the WordPress sites
In google doc
Webguidelines? Style guides?
Link to the ESS Web Administrator and Editor Guidelines
Current style guidelines are set up for maximum accessibility
Add more editing pages to the ESS Newsletter page; ease of access
Adding Parent pages into the hierarchy
Doesn’t always work the way it’s supposed to; workaround
Learn process as we go this time round
Still a lot of unknowns, be in communication as we work
III. Agenda Item : Submissions and editing
Deadline for submission is end of March
Get main template(s) in place, use that
Linking the pages might be a bit messy
Populate template/newsletter bit by bit or all at once?
Jen Bonnet worked things in when time permitted
WordPress – start individually, make sure we have the hierarchy and style set on one so we can replicate it on the others
Private pages in WordPress
Populate it gradually, release all at once
Admin Access to wordpress – web committee
Editing Access to wordpress – all newsletter committee members
Add section to editing site about creating private pages
Article template is live on wordpress site
Creating pages and adding them to the hierarchy, as well as linking them to the correct location
Website is still in progress, still being cleaned up
Content is still WESSWEB
SEES google site needs to be migrated
Content hasn’t been looked at and updated
Everything needs guidelines and standards
Need to use a DEI anti-racist language
IV. Agenda Item: Touch base on content
- Humor section already
- MLA conference reflection
- Helene will submit shorter bits
- Women’s section?
- Dick submitted article
- ESS Chair agreed to submit notes from chair
Resend call for submissions
If there is content to get after submissions close, go and get it
Contact various people who are/were regular contributors, see if they have anything
Write up conferences?
ESS Newsletter will need a new ISSN
Peace Corps – reach out to volunteers about newsletter content
Brendan will talk to Slavic and East European Information Resources
Masha will reach out to the Hoover institution and see what they have
See if Billy Hamilton wants to write something up about the books in his basement.
Migrating WESSWEB and SEES from Wiki and google sites to ACRL WordPress site by way of BYU’s WordPress
Still not done cleaning up
Get everything set up for future web teams and newsletter committee
Lucked out with the i-School student – Chelsea D. at Univ. of Washington – who helped design the website
V. Agenda Item: Next Steps
Meet around May 01
Lisa wants to know how she can help
Work on banner, front page, cover page
What would the cover page involved
Images, blurb,
Make sure that everyone who has a section has editor access
Intro to newsletter – couple of sentences about newsletter, mention merger (newsletter merge)
Anything to discuss before 01 May?
Nothing
Doodle poll to come soon for meeting date and time
Minutes submitted by Megan Bennett