Do librarians need basic HTML capabilities?

[Margareta S. Knauff]

        I have been watching this discussion with some interest.  The 
     situation here (a private law firm) is probably a little different.  
     However - the Library is responsible for maintaining the firm web 
     site.   know that our pages do not have a uniform look and feel (yet), 
     but there is some consistency overall.  Being the "only" ones in the 
     firm that do HTML give us some editorial and quality control over what 
     is posted on our site.  I have heard some horror stories from 
     individuals in other organizations where each section and department 
     marked up their own stuff and loaded it onto the server.  The color 
     scheme on one page clashed with another, or even the main company home 
     page, and the quality level of web pages varied greatly from 
     department to department.
        In my situation, learning HTML was an absolute career saver.  The 
     only downside, is with the 9 million other things I have to do, I 
     don't get to devote as much attention to web development as I would 
     like.  
        As to those software programs that insert HTML tags for you - there 
     are always going to be new developments in the tags (frames is an 
     example) that won't be supported by the design programs.  Knowing 
     about HTML and the way it works allows you to insert the newer tags 
     (if you want) even though they are not yet an industry standard (I am 
     *NOT* advocating this, just mentioning it!).
      Margareta Knauff <returning to lurk mode>
     Tech & Online Services Librarian
     Dickstein, Shapiro & Morin, L.L.P.
     Margareta_S._Knauff at dsmllp.com