[WEB4LIB] Re: hiring a consultant ... slightly related

[sean dreilinger]

thom wrote:
> This is mostly for any college and university folks. I trying to find out
> who designs the websites and presence for colleges and universities. I
> have been having a running battle with a university group at Indiana who
> wants to go with an outside group to design their website. My argument is
> that the better skills are actually on campus with students and that the
> university should invest back into their students and provide paid
> internships which will enable the students to get even better jobs when
> they graduate. The university is also a much more complex technological
> environment than any place off campus.

web development may be thought of in 5 areas of responsibility:
  1. planning (defining goals and strategy for your w3)
  2. design   (visual design and info architecture to meet goals)
  3. content  (author/write/edit to achieve goals with audience, incl
html)
  4. programming (interactive application development, IF needed)
  5. system administration (maintain underlying servers, hardware, net)

i would be very curious to know who out there employs students in their
w3, in which of the above areas (if the model fits), 

> Any suggestions much appreciated.

if you have big budget, no deadlines, library and design students, and
lots of time to train on-the-job, and dedicated server(s), go with the
students.

if you have small budget, tight deadline, specific business objective,
and servers that may contain faculty or administrative files -- you may
prefer to outsource the project(s) on an ongoing basis.

in my academic web-work [uc san diego mathematics (1994), uc san diego
muir college (1995), medicine meets virtual reality conference
(1995-96), lab for biological informatics and theoretical medicine
(1995-96)], `web budget' was not heard of, timeframes very short,
dedicated workspace and hardware lacking -- conditions that make it
difficult to bring students on board no matter how much you want. i am
guessing that those conditions have changed?

in the world of commercial w3 design and development
(http://interactivate.com/portfolio.html) i made an annual effort to
recruit student interns with mixed results. you can find me posting
internship ads in the usenet all the way back to 1995. we had some
really nice student input over the years, and one ucla grad did a great
job with the san diego zoo postcards this summer
http://www.sandiegozoo.org/postcards/send.php3 but the student
lifestyle, work availability, and political challenges (faculty - i
don't want students working on the department web server - thats the
same machine i store my grades on!) can be messy if your operation
doesn't have the infrastructure to support them right.

very curious to hear how others work (or do not work) with student
employees and interns.

--
                          sean dreilinger, mlis
                          mailto:sean at durak.org
                          http://durak.org/sean