Slides for a report on the "Whose Site Is It Anyway? The Web Editor’s Career" discussion groups session at IWMW 1999.

1. Whose Site Is It Anyway?
The Web Editor’s Career
 Getting A Job
• Job titles and descriptions
 Managing The Job
• Institutional models
 Being Supported
• Advice, guidance and training
 Being A Professional
• Professional organisations

2. Getting A Job
 Brief survey of job ads
• Wide range of job titles
• No real consensus of title
• Wide pay scales
 Do the employers know what they want?
• ‘kitchen sink’ job descriptions
 Do we have to define our own job
descriptions for them?

3. Getting A Job
 Titles ranged from
• Website managers
• Web officer
 Could this be formalised, as a community,
defining these roles?
• By generating a list of skills for each member of the
team
• Or surveying current posts

4. Getting A Job
 Roles to be found in
• PR, Computing Services, Libraries
 Suffer from a feeling of institutional
isolation
 Solution
• We need to structure the teams so that they not
affiliated to any existing structures

5. Getting A Job
 Head of web team
• Someone who can wave the ‘big stick’ at university
management
• Effective and powerful voice within the institution.
 Putting learning on the agenda
 Recommendations
• Survey of current web teams posts/ salary/ contracts
etc...

6. Managing The Job
 Who to work for?
– Should be independent
• Not keen on placing them because of bias towards
one section
 Who holds the budget?
– Should be a budget holder so they don’t have to
go cap in hand

7. Managing The Job
 Ideal team
– Web editor (reporting to executive committee)
heading up team
• Designers
• Support (check HTML write/read English)
• Have a team of information providers in
schools/depts (responsible for maintenance) but
editor should be proactive in getting content.

8. Managing The Job
 Who are the clients
– Not just working to please one section/dept
– Meeting the needs of the clients of the
university
– Importance of what the clients need

9. Managing The Job
 Trying to serve all our masters with one site.
 Recommendations
• Cash incentives for surveys
• Lay down the structure of teams
 Observation
• Talk to library people about how people use
information services

10. Managing The Job
 Get together with people in the university to
decide what you need to do, break down
into manageable chunks and get some quick
wins.
 Strategy
• Be integral. You should have a voice in the main
University business.

11. Being Supported
 Problem
• Structure of institution such that don’t fit in and
often out on a limb without any support structures
 Solution
• The way you decide to develop the web and where
it’s placed would help solve other problems (i.e.
integrating into publicity)
• Needs management who knows about the particular
needs of the job
• Setting up professional groups that deal with
standards

12. Being Supported
 Problem
• A lack of specific training [different training for
each role (designer, editor etc)]
 Solution
• National accreditation
• Regional groups
• Mailing lists
• Newsgroups
• Exchanging ideas with a receptive audience

13. Being Supported
 Problem
• Status position of senior staff to the web people is
poor because of a lack of knowledge
 Solutions
• Management needs to know and understand and
make sure the you’re aligned with the key business
of the University
• Senior managers need to approach HoDs to impress
upon their staff

14. Being Supported
 The Web is a part of all university strategies
 Develop measures of success (if possible!)
• Useful for information management to keep this
data
• How useful something is
– like putting up basic contact details and see how that’s
changed people a few months later
 Treat people that you’re working with as
your internal market
• Need to sell yourself and your services

15. Being A Professional
 What to professional bodies to
• Sets standards and promotes them
• Creating generic job specs and skills sets for
membership
• Define what the community does and raises the
awareness of the post [raising awareness of
members capabilities/skills and importance]
• Disseminates special interest groups/information
about events/ professional qualifications (CPD)

16. Being A Professional
 What to professional bodies to
• Provide a sense of a wider community
• Personal development
• New developments
• Salaries survey/trends in the area/discounts for
services.
• Defining/Publicising the community/Current
Awareness/Professional Development/Special
Interest Groups.

17. Being A Professional
 Who they are
• USA based global organisations (very technical
groups)
– Useful for a UK body to affiliate to
• UK bodies something like the Institute for
Information Sciences talking to the libraries about a
differently named organisations
• Other bodies exist
– Computing, Marketing/PR

18. Being A Professional
 What do we want
• Regional groups (sound people out)
• Distance learning courses CPD/Accreditation
• Current awareness of new services and peoples
experiences of trying them
• Outside expertise
• Special interest groups
• Letters after name (but they offer so much more)
 Professional qualifications could cut across
confusing job titles