Minutes - ELISAD gateway meeting, Thursday 29 Mars 2001 at Paris
Stephan Schulte-Naehring, DrugScope
Present:
Lucia Bianco (arrived at 18.15)
Paricia Brigoni
Thomas Rouault
Marie-Lise Priouret
Susanna Prepeliczay
Stephan Schulte-Nähring (minutes)
Marianne Van den Heijden
Anne Singer
Hana Sovinova
Gunnel Larson
Marielle Zeeman
Apologies:
Ove Sundby
Katalyn Szomor
Presentation and use of an electronic tool: online evaluation form
The meeting started with agenda point 2. Susanna developed an online form for the gateway project. This can be found on the Archido website at: http://www.archido.de/indexeng.html
It is estimated that it takes 30 minutes to fill in an electronic form. The representation of the electronic form on the screen can slightly vary depending on the web-browser used (e.g. Netscape, Explorer). Participants filled in a form as a group exercise and discussed problems and ideas for amending the form in the process. Discussion outcomes are as follows:
It was suggested that instructions should be given on the form where necessary that show how to fill in a particular field
A list of term definitions will be made
Susanna suggested the use of internationally agreed standards to indicate the language(s) in which information on a website is presented.
Following a discussion around whether users want information on either the actual location of an organisation or the geographic area that an organisations activities span, it was decided that an address field that could be a free-text field needs to be added to the form. This field should include the country in which the organisation is located. The current Country label will be changed to either:
geographic focus of activities or: geographic coverage of activities.
Marianne suggested to consult the desire standards to see whether they meet Elisads subject gateway requirements and purposes. Desire is an EU-project that gives standards for gateways to internet resources. The desire project has developed a manual for building gateways to internet resources. Their website can be found at: www.desire.org. The desire project conforms to the Dublin core metadata. An example that was given is the Roads software that is designed to search internet website descriptions. It is available free of charge from desire and can be downloaded from the desire website.
Following a discussion on the value of presenting information on funders of the organisation described, it was decided that funding is an aspect that should be added to the description.
The label: Description of organisation needs to be added to the electronic form before the field: Institution/organisation name.
Following a discussion about the purpose of the field: Political orientation or focus, it was decided that this field will be deleted and that information on political orientation ought to go into a working areas free text field that needs to be added. It was felt that it is difficult to fill in this field and requires some analytical judgement on the part of the person who would fill in such a field. This aspect was thought to be controversial because:
- it could be politically controversial for the organisation in question
- there is an aspect around the subjective choice on the part of the person who fills in the form.
Following a discussion about the meaning and purpose of the field: edition of website, Marianne suggested that participants should check the Dublin Core Guidelines (information on these guidelines is also available at: www.desire.com) which might clarify its meaning. Various meanings and purposes were identified. This field could mean:
- how the site is edited
- who edits the website and writes the information presented on a website
- who is responsible for the information on a website
- a webmaster is evident and can be contacted
Description of the organisation:
Below is a list of the agreed changes to the electronic form (the order follows the sequence of fields on the form) that Susanna will make:
Field: Institution / organisation name:
- the format for entering an organisations name that also has an acronym is as follows: first acronym, then full name of the organisation
- field length needs to be increased
Field: URL of the website:
- instructions need to be added that show how to fill in the URL-field
Field: Country
· countries are listed on a pull-down menu
· country category Europe should be added
· country category international should be added
· the Country label of this field should be changed to either:
geographic focus of activities or: geographic coverage of activities
· the electronic form should enable users to select multiple options under the category geographic coverage of activities
· an address field that includes the country in which the organisation is located
needs to be added to the form.
Field: Language(s) of website
· it was suggested that universal standards for languages should be used
Field: Audience
· this should be implemented in a way which enables a user to choose more than one value for audience
· specific audience terms that should be added are: professionals and politicians
· there was a discussion on what terms for professionals should be added. This discussion was not concluded and will be held later
Field: Institutional background
· this should be implemented using tick-boxes
· it was felt that the field name Institutional background is a misleading term
· name and purpose of this field need to be discussed further
Field: Type of organisation
· this field needs to be added to the electronic form
· this field should feature options like the ones in the field Institutional background; options for institutional types should be presented in a list but users should be able to select more than 1 option
Field: Working areas/activities
· the name of this field should be changed to: General working areas/activities
· this field should be implemented as a pull-down menu with categories that can be selected
· participants need to decide at a future discussion which categories need to be added to this field
Field: Working areas
· this field needs to be added
· there was no agreement on the name of this field but its meaning should be that of working areas; participants need to decide on a name later
· this field should be implemented as a free text field
· the text entered in this field can be descriptive
Field: Political orientation or focus
· this field will be deleted
· information in relation to the political orientation or focus of a website should go into the working areas free text field that needs to be added
Field: email
· this field needs to be added to the form
· this field should feature an email address for a contact within the organisation described
· there is no consensus on the name of this field but it could be either email or contact email
Field: Edition of website
· there was a discussion around what the purpose of this field is supposed to be. No consensus was found but it was generally agreed that information belonging to this field should go in a descriptive part on the form.
Thematic areas of website:
Following a discussion on how many fields ought to be on the form, it was said that the project is focused on organisations websites, thus information on actual organisations should be kept to essentials. In this light, it was said that a rationale for having a subject gateway is to get to know other organisations in Europe and to find out about what they do. Other discussion outcomes are as follows:
It was decided that we the substances field should present tick-boxes.
It was decided that the structure of the form should be broken down as follows:
There are three main sections:
1) Description of organisation
2) Description of websitea) URL
b) Language(s)
c) Audience of website (fields)
d) Thematic areas of website (fields)
e) Types of information available on the website(fields)3) Evaluation part
It was suggested that we should use existing resources that give terms we could copy. The following resources were suggested:
- EDDRA
- Toxibase thesaurus
- ISDD thesaurus
- MESH (Medical Subject Headings of the National Library of Medicine) or any controlled language pool that give the correct English terms used for searching/indexing.
It was decided that we should extend the website coverage to include information on alcohol, and in this respect that the gateway should generally be broad in coverage.
Re: field: Health and Social Consequences of Drug Use
There was a discussion around the rationale and how to fill in this field. It was reported that it is difficult
a) to get this information in the first place
b) to fill in this field
c) to establish where to find this information on a website. Two approaches were identified when filling in this field. The person can either simply copy what is being said on a website or use an analytic approach whereby the person filling in the electronic form analyses a website and fills in the form based on his/her own conclusions.
It was suggested that we ought to make clear what is meant by Health and Social Consequences of Drug Use to avoid differences in interpretation by European inputters.
There is a general problem around whether a website is giving information or whether there is a great deal of analytical work that needs to be done on the part of the inputter when filling in the electronic form.
Thomas proposed that some organisations should fill in the form and see how they get on. At the next ELISAD meeting, we will discuss problems that people experienced.
Types of information available on the website:
Below is a list of the agreed changes to the electronic form (the order follows the sequence of fields on the form):
Field: Specify searchable databases: options should be presented with tick-boxes
Field: Specify website directories: options should be presented with tick-boxes
Field: Specify online collections: this field should remain a free-text field. Inputters should describe here precisely what kind of collection is available on the website
Field: Specify synthetic documents: should be implemented as a free text field
Field: Specify interactive service: options should be presented with tick-boxes
Evaluation part
Re: Summary field: concern was raised that people might not know what to fill in. It was said that it needs to be made clear what this field means. This part should give a descriptive overview of a website. We need to agree on an evaluation methodology for filling in this field.
There was a discussion around what a quality website is. It was suggested that we ought to use quality criteria for website. In this context, Marianne suggested that we ought to check out the criteria for good websites that are published by OMNI on their website at: www.omni.ac.uk. It was also suggested that the gateway project team ought to have a general discussion around what we mean by quality website.
It was suggested that we might want to add a full text field: special attention for
We established that gateway project team members should share documents amongst each other about what we mean by quality websites. Documents to look at in the context of quality websites are:
- a Gruppo Abele study on the subject
- Dublin Core Metadata
- Ms Robinsons presentation at the ELISAD meeting in Lisbon
Issues and concerns were raised around how to evaluate websites, how we select websites, and who is supposed to fill in the forms. The gateway aims to present information on an organisations background and a description of the organisation behind a particular website. The concern was raised that different people might fill in forms differently depending on whose interest they represent, e.g. an Elisad member could fill in a form differently from the actual company whose website is being evaluated. In this light, an additional concern raised was that funding (or the lack of it) could thus have an impact on the degree of objectivity if ELISAD members havent got the resources to fill in the form themselves, thus leaving it to the people whose website is being evaluated, and consequently open to subjective opinion and bias. This initiated a discussion around who is to fill in the form, organisations themselves or ELISAD members only. It was agreed that because we cant control data given to ELISAD by third parties, we will pay more care to data control if funding is agreed.
agenda point 3: plans for structured continuation of project: tasks, procedure and coordination and point 4: Implementation of gateway project to the ELISAD website elisad.org: general presentation of the project, presentation of project partners
These two points were briefly discussed and the following conclusions were made:
In the future, received forms will automatically go into the database. Currently, forms are sent to Susanna, Thomas and Anne.
A methodology for filling in the form needs to be worked out first. Susanna will coordinate the methodology discussion and revise the online form.
The electronic form needs to be evaluated. People present at this gateway meeting will do this; every member will fill in one trial form. Later on, this group can be enlarged. Issues that come up during the pilot evaluation will be pooled by Susanna and feed into the standardisation of forms including the metadata set. A revision and standardisation of the form will subsequently need to take place.
ELISAD will produce a user manual that will be comprehensive with definitions and information on how to fill in the electronic form.
Susanna proposed the next stages:
I) finalise form
II) look at other standards
III) Elisad members fill in forms as an example exercise
IV) Feedback and final version of form
The following tasks were allocated:
- Marianne will find out about Desire.
- Thomas will see what terminology could be borrowed from EDDRA.
- Patricia and Stephan said that they would participate in the production of the manual.
At the Stockholm meeting in the autumn 2001, we will have a board meeting and a discussion of standardization issues.
Marianne suggested that ELISAD ought to set up a working group of webmasters to give its website a professional look.
agenda point 1: details and reflections on EC submission process:
An answer regarding project funding is expected by summer 2001. ELISAD will continue with this project on a small-scale basis if the funding application is not successful.