Web Page Maintenance (was: Maintenance is so booooooooooring)

[Scott Bauer]

On Thu, 14 Aug 1997, Andrea Duda <duda at library.ucsb.edu> wrote:

>We're already doing these things.  For example, we run CyberSpyder
>monthly to look for bad links.  (The newest version of it is quite nice!)
>I send the reports off to the people responsible for those pages.  In
>most cases, people check the links and update their pages.  But there are
>a few people who say they don't have time to look at the reports and do
>anything with them.  What do you do then? 

Andrea,

If the person responsible for maintaining the page(s) does not have the
time for it anymore, perhaps you both can agree on someone to take it over
from them (that does have the time, interest and ability for it.)

Or if the page is otherwise of incredible value, perhaps it could be
assigned to an "archive" area (where it is made plain to users of the site
that some of the links/information on the page are outdated.) 

If these or other intermediate solutions can not be agreed on, I believe
that what you need to do at this point is to "weed" the page by taking it
off the server (or taking off the link if the page is on another site.)
Internal politics-wise, this may be tough to do -- but why should an
outdated web page be different from an outdated book?  If the information
is no longer valid (and if, in the case of web pages, it also very
publicly reflects badly on the library), then it needs to be dropped.

You should, of course, give the author/maintainer of the page warning that
this is the action that will occur if they don't update the page by
whatever time-limit you set. But when that deadline is missed, the page
needs to go. (Perhaps when the page actually disappears there may be
action taken to fix it. In which case, it will be put back.) 


>          ===========================================================
>                                Andrea L. Duda             
>                    Networked Information Access Coordinator
>           Davidson Library, University of California, Santa Barbara 
>                         E-mail: duda at library.ucsb.edu
>                     InfoSurf: http://www.library.ucsb.edu
>          ===========================================================

Scott Bauer   sbauer at ccnet.com   OR   sbauer at mail.contra-costa.lib.ca.us
Contra Costa County Library
[DISCLAIMER: I claim these words are my own.  DATCLAIMER: DVD is next.]