Jack Cooper spoke on possibilities for some new commitment of human resources at Waterloo to the TDR. There is a plan to hire a Co-op student for data prep work, or to attend to local data issues. Jack mentioned that a Co-op job requires some serious content... i.e., the work must be of a substantial nature. There is still some work to be done at this point identifying tasks, and how this person might fit into the Library reporting structure. The possibility was also raised that this person might spend time at Guelph, although nothing has been worked out at this point. This position could potentially be funded (or partially funded) by academic units.
Richard Pinnell discussed progress so far in Waterloo's four years of GIS delivery. They have been using mostly ESRI products although software of choice varies between campuses. Efforts have been localized to this point, but it is clear that the time is right, and benefits could be gained from collaborative eforts. The direction is unclear at the moment , but it seems clear that we could determine who the players are, as well as determining some standards and preferred tools. Richard is going to put togther "an invitation" (for an unspecified meeting), and all will gather a list of potentially interested people to get together "some time in the Fall" to discuss potential collaborative GIS projects.
Bo presented a list of all data sets currently available through the TDR. Susan will take the list to cataloguers, but we have no way of determining time-lines, or any details of how the process may be completed.
We briefly discussed the CAUBO award, publicity that has been generated and might be generated. Doug said that he would contact Nancy Sullivan to get a lost of names of CAUBO attendees from Laurier and Waterloo that might be god contact people.
Susan presented the a new version of the "Data Available On-Line" page. As this was under the agenda item "Search Engine" there was some discussion of the Agenda and precisely what we were talking about. We did agree that the new layout looks good, (with some rearrangement of subjects), we will revisit this topic next meeting.
Bo announced the fact that the TDR is currently operating with a new script running with SAS 7.. The most notable change as a result of this is that output is now in a much nicer tabular format with colours, etc.
Doug discussed the soon to be completed service agreement, which will lay out the long-awaited actual costs of the TDR as well as describing some terms of service (such as support obligations, etc.). It is unknown when this will be complete and available to concerned parties.