[WEB4LIB] Library web site relationship with parent institution site

[Deidre Lowe]

Hi Michelle,

At USQ we also had to conform our Library web site to the University's
CMS.  However we managed to convince the Project Manager that we
required a specialized home page for the Library.  

We are currently using Virtua's iPortal (our ILMS) as the Home Page,
which links to our content within the CMS templates.  We have modified
our home page to fit in with the "look and feel" of the CMS as much as
possible. We still have some legacy web information that has not yet
been transferred into the CMS, but we have cosmetically adjusted it so
that our users are unable to tell what is in the CMS and what isn't.  It
works very well for us as an overall solution. 

Alison Hunter and I gave a paper on our website redesign and CMS
implementation at the 2003 Educause in Australasia conference, a copy of
which is in the ALIA e-prints repository:
http://e-prints.alia.org.au/archive/00000019/

The main motivator for us (which helped in our justification) was having
the catalogue search box centrally located on our home page - something
we could not accomplish with the CMS, but could easily do with (minimal)
customization of the iPortal.

In our case, the Project Manager for the CMS rollout has implemented a
script so that when a user selects the link to our Library home page,
the CMS checks to make sure the iPortal is available and then redirects
them to the iPortal interface seamlessly.  If the iPortal is not
available for any reason, a backup version of the page displays with the
message "Catalogue search is unavailable" instead of the iPortal search
box.

I'd be happy to talk to you further about our project if it would help,

Regards,
Deidre.

----------------------------
Deidre Lowe
Acting Associate Librarian (Information Access)
The Library, University of Southern Queensland
West St, Toowoomba  QLD  4350

Ph: +61.7.4631.1846
Fax: +61.7.4631.1841
E-mail: lowe at usq.edu.au

http://www.usq.edu.au/library/


-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib at webjunction.org
[mailto:web4lib at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Michelle Conkas
Sent: Thursday, 7 October 2004 12:19 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: [WEB4LIB] Library web site relationship with parent institution
site


Hi everyone,
 
We are in the process of moving our Library web site into our parent
institutions content management system. We are the last area of the
university to do so, and have struck some problems in control over the
web site layout and design.
 
The university's site is here: http://www.usc.edu.au/. All sub-sites are
currently lists of links made up of lower level directory structures,
eg.: http://www.usc.edu.au/Students/Current/
 
We are writing a proposal to allow us to vary our home page from other
sub-sites, as we believe that the Library's web site is quite different
in purpose to most of the other web pages of the university, and that we
are a destination in and of ourselves, and have much more complex
transactions on our site than other sub-sites.
 
Our marketing department, who control the whole site, are concerned that
if we are allowed to vary our templates, then everyone else will want to
follow suit. We agree that we should fit into the university's look and
feel, with basic colours and identifying banners (although I think the 2
banners are far too large and confusing for clients who enter into the
library's site and expect to be in an independent site).
 
It has also been suggested that much of our content on our site is for
internal staff and students, and so perhaps should be on a Intranet or
portal, rather than a public site. We are strongly fighting against this
suggestion. We feel our site should be an information tool for more than
just our internal clients, and is not just a marketing tool for
visitors.
 
Any tips on how to approach our need for independence and uniqueness?
Any studies or papers that have been published on this topic?
 
Thanks,
 
Michelle
 
----------------------------------------------------------
Michelle Conkas
Systems & Digital Resources Coordinator
University of the Sunshine Coast Library
Ph: (07) 5430 2801
Fax: (07) 5430 2811
E-mail: mconkas at usc.edu.au
----------------------------------------------------------



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