Union College Web Policy Board
Minutes
May 22, 2002
Prepared by Tom Smith
Present: Gregg Roth, David Cossey, Peter Blankman, Doug Klein, Gail Golderman, Tom Smith, Lloyd Tredwell, Peter Shoemaker '03
1. Removing links to departments: The Board discussed at length whether removing from the official college web site a link to a department was warranted and/or advisable. The Board decided that for consistency's sake, and for the sake of providing current students with all possible services, links should remain in place.
2. Updating links throughout the site: Doug Klein raised the issue of broken links throughout the site, and what could be done about them. The web office will be supplying a tool (hopefully to the whole campus) this summer that should help web authors identify broken links. Beyond that, greater vigilance is probably the best bet.
3. Metadata: A consultant recently on campus to talk about archiving the college web site pointed out the lack of metadata on the college's web site. Board agreed that official college web pages should contain at least a minimal amount of metadata, and that individual departments be shown how to add metadata to their sites through Front Page.
4. New 'non-official' template: Another point raised by the consultant was the lack of visual distinction between official college web pages and non-official web pages. The Board agreed that making this distinction was a good idea, so the use of the template by non-official sites will no longer be allowed (although there will be no rush to take down non-official sites that currently use the official template). The Web Office will be providing a new, simpler-to-use template for non-official sites this summer.
Note: (not raised at meeting) this will require revising the College's official Web Policy, which encourages everyone to use the official template.
5. Summer web class: a summer web class will be available for campus web stewards on July 18.