[Web4lib] get rid of the www?

[Thomas Dowling]

Nina McHale wrote:
> I'm wondering if anyone out there has done away with this particular
> situation as a result of the www not being necessary:  Our *library*
> home page is www.library.georgetown.edu; our *catalog* home page is
> library.georgetown.edu.  Our campus web folks have started omitting the
> www on their new sites, and we've gotten one professor complaining that
> our home page keeps changing: "sometimes it's a homepage, sometimes it's
> a keyword search" (the catalog).  Our catalog does have links to
> "library home," but I'm wondering if this kind of complaint will become
> more and more frequent.  Is it worth worrying about at this point?  At
> least one user has obviously gotten used to the lack of www.  Will the
> library look uncool? :)


I think we just had this discussion within the last couple of weeks,
with sidebars on browser behavior given incomplete URLs etc.

IMO, it's just a matter of local taste whether your web site's published
domain is foo.org or www.foo.org, or both.  The two should probably map
to the same site (or have one redirect to the other) because you can't
prevent users from treating them as synonymous.  It's foolhardy to have
*different* web sites at foo.org and www.foo.org, as your professor is
justified in pointing out.  Is this really the first time anyone has
complained about it?

As for what's cool or uncool: see
<http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI.html>.  It's better to stick with
a comparatively poor choice of URL than to inflict a change on your
users.  In your case, however, I'd create something like
catalog.library.georgetown.edu and over the next two years or so
gradually migrate your OPAC and all references to it to the new host
name.  After that, make library.georgetown.edu map to
www.library.georgetown.edu.


-- 
Thomas Dowling
tdowling at ohiolink.edu