[Web4lib] library website redesign schedules

[David Kane]

Hi John,

One one hand, you say that you want to wrest control from the city IT department.  On the other hand you say you want to have control.  You seem unclear as to what you want to do with your site, You are just unhappy with the job the IT crowd are doing - the use of that visceral word 'wrest' suggests frustration on your part.

Develop a clear idea, amongst yourselves, of how the website should be supporting your library's mission, in this electronic day and age.  Also, do some usablility testing - sit some strangers down on front of your site as it now stands and observe them using it first hand.  This will help you to identify ways to improve the existing site.

When you have done this, go into a meeting with the IT department.  You, with your strong case.  I suspect that the best arguement they have will be that their website is 'really cool'.  They will have no defence.

I hope this helps you.

Best of Luck, 

David Kane
WIT Libraries
http://library.wit.ie/


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>>> "JOHN MARQUETTE" <JOHNMA at ci.commerce.ca.us>  >>>
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 14:00:11 -0500
From: "Amy Ostrom" <amostrom at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Web4lib] library website redesign schedules
To: "Cox, Thomas" <Thomas.Cox at tufts.edu>
Cc: web4lib at webjunction.org
Message-ID:
	<2dfe2dd0606201200g5997d827x2c0b2c8980f3fed8 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

Dear Thom:

<snip>

>But as a quick summary, for a redesign I do an evaluation of what
people are
>saying about the current design to get an idea what needs serious
>consideration.  I also keep in mind all the accessibility and standards
when

Amy and other readers:

I'm looking for more basic advice:  how to wrest control our web page
(singular) from our city's web designer/publisher.  As it stands now, it
is attractive and consistent with every other page for every other
department in the city.  From an information access perspective, it
doesn't work very well.  We also can't make on-the-fly changes to it or
to files we've uploaded.

I don't mind continuing the city's theme on the web page; I just don't
want the theme and design to take up one-third of the usable area of the
1024x768 screen space.  We've made a (small) start by buying a domain
name and doing a redirect to the (correct) city-designed site with the
thought that sometime in the future we'd have more local control.

How have people successfully negotiated with their IT people to gain
control of their web sites?  I'm certain there are techniques we can
uses and phrases we can employ which will give us what we want without
disrupting IT's operations or seeming to deviate too far from the
current graphic standards.

John Marquette
http://www.cocpl.org

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