Time Spent Building/Maintaining Web Sites

[Madeleine Showalter]

The amount of time varies widely depending on how many pages, how much
content, how complex the content (forms, databases, graphics, catalogs,
etc.), and how often you update it.  It helps if you start with
information that doesn't need to be updated very often, then later add
your news releases, calendars, etc.  If you can start with the
electronic copy of the text of brochures you have already printed, that
will speed things up.

In the startup phase of Austin City Connection, we had a team of people
from several departments who worked on it full-time for six weeks. 
Please see: http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/connect/
I was the only full-time person from the Library staff, but three others
gave part of their time.  Since then, the City has two full-time and
about 1 FTE part-time people dedicated to managing the City's overall
web site.  This includes a public relations manager, graphic artist,
computer system analyst/programmer and network manager, and an html
editor/liaison with City Hall.  Also, key contact people in each
department maintain their department's pages.

As for maintaining and improving the Library's pages since then, we do
not have anyone full-time (we have about 300 employees).  However, it
has been a team effort among several staff members to add and update
content.  Almost all of the managers and professional staff have
contributed to it.  As a rough estimate I would say I spend an average
of 5 hours per week, but that is increasing as we prepare to put our
catalog on the web.  Our graphic artist/public relations manager also
probably spends about 5 hours per week or more.  One thing he has done
which works well is to integrate publishing of paper flyers and handouts
with making web pages.  A guesstimate of average total time for all
staff would be 20 hours per week.

There is constant pressure (at least in my mind) to add more information
and update it more often.  When I think of all the
reference/bibliographic instruction information and databases we could
be adding, I wish we could have at least one person full-time devoted to
making our web pages more of a reference service.  I feel strongly that
this is the direction we need to be headed.  However, we already are
short-staffed in many other areas, and we have to take the transition to
cyberspace one step at a time.  We need someone with time to develop PC
programming skills.  Getting adequate technology for our staff to access
the Internet is needed as well.

One final, important point to keep in mind:  If you list any e-mail
addresses on web pages, that will increase the amount of e-mail you
get.  Even though you don't offer reference service by e-mail, people
will still send you questions as well as suggestions, complaints,
advertisements, job applications, requests to contact long-lost friends,
etc. by e-mail, and expect an answer.  I spend about 10-20 hours per
week answering e-mail now, including trying to solve problems for
customers telneting to the catalog.  I don't really mind doing this, but
it is a significant impact on planning for how to spend my time.

lHassett wrote:
> 
>      For those of you in charge of building and maintaining content for
>      library web sites, I would like to ask how much time per week you
>      devote to that task? 
> 
>      Leslie Hassett
>      Reference Librarian and Web Editor
>      Loma Linda University
>      lhassett at dwebb.llu.edu


-- 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Madeleine Showalter			mshowalt at library.ci.austin.tx.us
Internet Administrator			telnet://apl.ci.austin.tx.us
Austin Public Library			http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/library
		Opinions expressed are solely my own.