You need to establish guidelines for project management, guidance and discussion

Project Management: Guidance and Discussion:

As mentioned before your school library website is part of a greater whole: the school and the educational enterprise. The 'stakeholders" need to be involved from the beginning if at all possible.

It may take many forms:

• an official committee,
• a small group of interested parties,
• a flurry of shared e-mails and ad hoc meetings.

This grouping will vary depending on the shape of the website. Possible interested people include other library staff, IT personnel, administration and other teaching staff. If it is only a library website then less people will be interested and involved than if the website includes teacher and student input. Even if the website is only concerned with library content there will still be need to discuss various issues with other members of the school community. You will need to ascertain where the website fits into the rest of the school's endeavours.

Support:

What you need most is in principle and practical support from administration, Information Technology Department and library staff. Without this, your website will not be possible.

Funding

As with every undertaking, funding will need to be allocated for this endeavour for:

• some space on a web server either locally or on an Internet service provider will need to be made available
• software will have to be bought and licensed (though this may be covered in other licenses)
• appropriate computers for compiling the webpage will need to be available
• a computer as a local server
• staff allocated to the task will be required and this is a cost from other tasks

Hardware

The first action is to find out

• what hardware is present (do an audit)
• what will (definitely) be provided if upgrades are necessary.
• A fast computer with adequate memory is needed for the person creating the website: searching, creating, publishing and storage are necessary.
• If the server is to be housed locally then the computer should be dedicated only to that task, if at all possible.
  

Web authoring software

Find out what software will be available. There are many different website creation tools, many easy to use for new creators of web sites. Skills of web authorship are very like those of word processing, written composition and design that many school librarians already possess. I would advise against trying to do all your website with pure html. It is far too time-consuming. Why not use some of the very easy to use web authoring software available? WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) web editors are very user friendly.

• I would not use Word, as html documents made with Word are very clunky. Word html is very verbose.
• Publisher saves as a large image.
• Many people use Netscape Composer quite successfully.
• People using Macintosh rather than PC might find other software of use.

• Web Authoring Software and HTML

• Front Page Web Design

I use FrontPage to create my website at school (Dreamweaver at home). FrontPage is available at many schools with the Office software license purchased by departments and school organisations. .

FrontPage is a tool that enables planning of the structure of the site beforehand, and it is able to be changed easily as needs change. It is relatively easy to use and integrates easily with ubiquitous Microsoft products. Existing licenses in the school and existing staff expertise also need to be considered. FrontPage is less useful in its html coding, often adding code which is incorrect or redundant.

• Dreamweaver Web Design

I do use Dreamweaver at home as it is very customisable (it does what you tell it!) The code is very clean. It will even clean up Word html if necessary.

Staffing

• Web authorship

  • Expertise

Who will create and maintain the site? Is it you? Whoever is chosen must either have or be prepared to develop the expertise.

• Time Allocation

If this is to be the teacher librarian from present staff, what will have to be curtailed to enable the website to proceed? Creating and maintaining a website is a time-consuming undertaking. Decisions have to be made as to how much time is allowable and available. Who will update the site and how are the links checked and how often?

• Technical Support

An essential factor in the creation of the website is

• the technical support for setting up and organising the running of the equipment and
• inevitable troubleshooting.
• How is the website to be hosted - locally or at an Internet service provider?
  • If it is hosted locally who will handle the server
  • and the interface with the outside world?
• If the site is to be hosted externally
  • how easy is it to publish to the server and
  • how much space is allocated?
• Who will maintain backups and logs?

It is very important that issues of space and ease of publication are discussed very early so parameters are set.

Activity: Infrastructure

Who will be involved in decision making and planning? Do you have support from administration, IT and library staff? Will you form a committee? How will decisions about content and design be made? What staffing allocations are there? Find out what exists and what will be provided. Do an audit of necessary software and hardware. What funding is available? What software are you able to use or purchase? What hardware can run that? How will your site be hosted? If you are hosting the site, do you have the server to run it? Who will handle the technical side of the process?