library website redesign schedules

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" <JOHNMAci.commerce.ca.us>  >>>
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 14:00:11 -0500
From: "Amy Ostrom" <amostromgmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Web4lib] library website redesign schedules
To: "Cox, Thomas" <Thomas.Coxtufts.edu>
Cc: web4libwebjunction.org
Message-ID:
	<2dfe2dd0606201200g5997d827x2c0b2c8980f3fed8mail.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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