Here at Alabama, we have a charter document that dictates content decisions, design decisions, and programming decisions as well as evaluation efforts, measurement, and then subsequent design changes based on those evaluation efforts. We also have a style guide that dictates functional stylistic elements like what Fontawesome icons are used to represent which areas, fonts to use, even styles to assign to DIVs or Spans if writing inner HTML.
Content is generally the intellectual property of the librarian or stuff subject area. Collection development policy and web site content is controlled by - for instance - the public services / circulation area, but we control the design, element location /placements, menus, navigation, etc. We have tried hard to divide our professional responsibility and expertise areas from the written informational content responsibilities. Our general approach is that we are the tech people, not the content people. And like Mr. Morgan, we have lots of content areas pulling data from various DB sources. Additionally, we generally control the design and content on the front page because it is primary landing page, and it’s recognized that its needs (or rather, the students who arrive to it, to use it) are almost purely functional, and are generally best understood and manipulated by the experts based on student needs and data. Occasionally an admin will want something done a certain way, to which of course, we say certainly. Everything we do is generally best practices. When somebody wants to do something that is not, we try to guide them towards the best practices / evidence-based activity. Steven Turner, MLIS Manager, Web Technologies and Development, Assistant Professor University Libraries The University of Alabama 416 Gorgas Library | Box 870266, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0266 office 205-348-1638 steven.j.tur...@ua.edu | http://www.lib.ua.edu/ [cid:image001.gif@01D21575.36CE1C80] On Mar 28, 2018, at 10:04 AM, Eric Lease Morgan <emor...@nd.edu<mailto:emor...@nd.edu>> wrote: On Mar 28, 2018, at 10:47 AM, Elizabeth Leonard <elizabeth.leon...@shu.edu<mailto:elizabeth.leon...@shu.edu>> wrote: Who makes the decisions about content on your website? Who decides what posts or information is placed prominently? Do you have policies written to respond to these issues? -- Elizabeth Leonard Seton Hall University :-D Here at Notre Dame, the short answer is, “Everybody”. The longer answer is, “It is a collaborative effort.” There are different types of content, and different people make decisions about it. Content of an bibliographic and instructional nature is often manifested as a set of LibGuides. For the most part, subject specialists edit this content. The folks in Special Collections create exhibits. They do lot of “fill in the blank” sorts of data entry against a locally written database application. Administrative information is created/manifested by querying various institutional databases. The collection is more or less provided access via the integrated library system. Then there is the institutional repository with content supplied by both the Libraries as well as individuals outside the Libraries. Who decided what information is placed prominently? I think there is/was a team who articulated these things, and those people made the initial decisions. I’m not sure to what extent they have ongoing work. Once the information architecture was “done”, things were made a part of workflows. Written policies? There are written policies for the LibGuides, but I don’t think there are written policies for other things. — Eric Morgan
