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Guide to good practices for WWW authors

WWW as the medium for your information

The WWW is in many respects a superb medium for disseminating information. It offers access via a range of computing platforms and from anywhere on the network; updating and amendments are facilitated and multi-media formats easily accommodated. The software to use it is readily available and may even be free, and it is easily installed and used. The advantages seem overwhelming, but it is still worthwhile finding out what facilities your target users can access and, if network access or other aspects of using the Web are likely to be a problem, in being prepared to consider another medium.

Consider the needs and facilities of your users.

Where the user group has ease of access to WWW, the immediate benefits are obvious, but in calculating the cost/benefit equation, the cost of continuing maintenance of the information must be reckoned.

Questions to ask are:

• Are there the human and computing resources to sustain the service?
• Will there be someone to monitor document content and to make changes as necessary?
• Can the verification of links be carried out regularly?
• Is there institutional support to carry the service into the future?

Take into account the cost of maintaining WWW data.

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