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Discussion Sessions
Supporting Information Providers
Need for a support infrastructure
Sharing and collaboration are vital, self-help initiatives crucial, but we
need a national infrastructure to support those at the local level
supporting their local information providers.
There was a recurring emphasis on the need for human resources - both at
this national level and at the local level. Somehow the message must be
got across to universities that using WWW is going to be an essential
medium for accessing, delivering and exchanging information and of
delivering teaching and learning, but that this cannot be done without
new or diverted personnel and should not be regarded as free or a way of
making savings.
National coordinator
The group focused on the need for at the very least a national coordinator
- someone whose job it was to keep an eye on the futures, set up initiatives
to solve technical problems, collect in findings and pass on information in
a coordinated way.
There was talk also of the need for a server (below), ad hoc task groups,
and the value of meetings as a way to exchange information and reduce
isolation.
An Information Providers Web Server
This was seen as the most appropriate tool for a national coordinator to
use for delivering information (which did not need to be generated
centrally, of course, it could come from one site or be the product of a task
group, etc).
The sorts of topics to be covered on the server reflected the subsequent
discussion on what needed to be done to support providers:
- tools
- draft guidelines for information providers
- technical solutions (eg in areas such as indexing, caching, graphics...)
- documentation and training materials
- case studies
- news/updating information/awareness
Tools/software
The group agreed that there needed to be a mechanism (a small group?)
for identifying what tools were available, making recommendations,
ensuring the tools were available in a number of UK sites, if appropriate
passing information to CHEST for an agreement to be negotiated, and, in
the case of tools on the 'wishlist', taking steps to ensure their
development.
The tools (and guidelines) fell broadly into the following categories:
a) to edit or convert documents to HTML
The need for guidance and software to assist in the planning and structure
of data was also discussed.(The group spent some time swapping
information about tools members used and found a considerable degree of
unanimity. It was felt this was typical of the sort of information that
needed a structured route to the rest of the community.)
b) specialist/more advanced tools
The tools needed are more than simple HTML: there should be libraries of
scripts to help run standard services, automated for generating local
versions. In ~7articular there needed to be more collaborative work in the
areas of graphics and gateways to databases.
c) quality tools
eg validation software in a UK location, links verifiers, usage monitoring
tools and procedures, etc. The quality tools issue was tied up with the need
for more guidance on, for example, the use of meta information for
indexing and for maintaining the quality of information.
d) collaborative tools
It was felt that the original purpose of the Web should not be lost sight of
and there needed to be some exploration of its use as a collaborative
platform.
e) clients, helpers, servers
And of course there needed to be ongoing review of, guidance on and
availability of the key Web tools. Incidentally it was felt that the UK could
contribute by offering to develop a better lynx interface.
Guidelines
A lot of the discussion on tools threw up needs for guidelines and
guidance. There were many other instances when the experience of sites
could beneficially be passed on to others. For example, early in the session
the group discussed the problem of computing service involvement in
getting web servers up and running and how then to smoothly migrate to
distributed management and ownership of them by others, such as
academic departments, PR offices, etc. (We got sidetracked, for example,
on how far computing services should write the first generation of
information or home page in order to stimulate the department to take
this on - with the accompanying danger of dated information. But we all
agreed that finding a departmental 'champion' was crucial.)
Training
Various members of the group were already running regular courses or
workshops for information providers, which cover both the technical and
organisational (rules, procedures, regulations etc) aspects. There should be
links to these on the proposed Information Providers Web Server (see
above).
In addition there should be a nationally funded set of course materials
designed in such a way that they could be modified to fit local
circumstances.
Educating the decision makers (senior academics and administrators) was
seen as a vital activity. The group did not think it possible to produce a
national presentation to be used locally, because of the wide range of local
conditions, but suggested that good case studies would be helpful and
should be included in the Information Providers Web Server
A National Information Strategy
A comment on the need of external organisations to obtain information
across the UK on particular topics or from particular groups led to a
discussion around the idea of a national data model: at both a local
institutional and a national level we need to start planning an
information strategy which identifies who 'owns' data, how it fits
together, how to share our meta information presentation so that we can
provide integrated searching.
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