Because we have new people around who were not here during the major redesigns of the library web site, perhaps we need to think about the history of the library web site and why we try to not vary too much from the templates we currently have. The library web site tries to follow the basic guidelines of the ACC Web Advisory Cmte and the best practices of web design.
Originally, we were supposed to use the ACC Web templates only (through Contribute) and I had to engage in the battle of how the library website delivers different content from the ACC Web site which is mostly a PR mechanism and information "about" different college departments and how students should interact with them. Since there were people in the Public Information and College Marketing (the department who was given the charge to oversee ACC web sites) who were familiar with and respected what the library had done in the past, they were able to convince the ACC Webmaster that we really do know what we are doing and they could trust us as a second tier site (one click from the ACC home page) to blend in with the ACC web site and stick to the CSS styles that the college wants. We also received the approval of Richard Smith to have a look different from the other IRT web sites.
So, that is why we have the kinds of templates we use and why we don't vary too much from them. Consistency in appearance is what ACC wants and will let us do what we need to as long as we look like the rest of the ACC Web site and follow standard best practices.
There is another chapter to this story. The IRT Sys Admin for Web and Streaming Media, Maria Youngman, is in charge of the redesign and standardization of IRT Web sites. She worked with me during the library website redesign and her intention was that we create real templates to be used with Contribute so that library authors wouldn't be able to change anything but content.
In reality, in the beginning, ACC stylesheets and templates weren't really workable for us and I had to recreate them to accommodate our needs and continue to look like ACC. It was agreed that since the library does not have very many page authors, we didn't really have to go through the arduous creation of Contribute templates as long as we didn't have too many different looks to our pages. This is why we pretty much stick to the basic types of model pages, i.e., faux templates, that we currently have. And, why as the Library Web Manager, I sometimes appear to be too controlling about the format of our web pages.
It's also one of the reasons we sought out and choose LibGuides (now CampusGuides) for our help and subject guides. Our authors have more flexibility that way within certain parameters and they don't have to know and use the stylesheets governing the library web pages.
Originally, we were supposed to use the ACC Web templates only (through Contribute) and I had to engage in the battle of how the library website delivers different content from the ACC Web site which is mostly a PR mechanism and information "about" different college departments and how students should interact with them. Since there were people in the Public Information and College Marketing (the department who was given the charge to oversee ACC web sites) who were familiar with and respected what the library had done in the past, they were able to convince the ACC Webmaster that we really do know what we are doing and they could trust us as a second tier site (one click from the ACC home page) to blend in with the ACC web site and stick to the CSS styles that the college wants. We also received the approval of Richard Smith to have a look different from the other IRT web sites.
So, that is why we have the kinds of templates we use and why we don't vary too much from them. Consistency in appearance is what ACC wants and will let us do what we need to as long as we look like the rest of the ACC Web site and follow standard best practices.
There is another chapter to this story. The IRT Sys Admin for Web and Streaming Media, Maria Youngman, is in charge of the redesign and standardization of IRT Web sites. She worked with me during the library website redesign and her intention was that we create real templates to be used with Contribute so that library authors wouldn't be able to change anything but content.
In reality, in the beginning, ACC stylesheets and templates weren't really workable for us and I had to recreate them to accommodate our needs and continue to look like ACC. It was agreed that since the library does not have very many page authors, we didn't really have to go through the arduous creation of Contribute templates as long as we didn't have too many different looks to our pages. This is why we pretty much stick to the basic types of model pages, i.e., faux templates, that we currently have. And, why as the Library Web Manager, I sometimes appear to be too controlling about the format of our web pages.
It's also one of the reasons we sought out and choose LibGuides (now CampusGuides) for our help and subject guides. Our authors have more flexibility that way within certain parameters and they don't have to know and use the stylesheets governing the library web pages.
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