Writing Web page standards
Nancy McClements, Cheryl Becker · College & Research Libraries News · 1996
Establish content, design, and technical guidelines The Problem .The University of Wisconsin-Madison is a large and diverse univer sity campus, with more than 60 major libraries, special libraries, and reading rooms.Early in 1995 several campus libraries began develop ing Web pages which varied in design, style, and content.It soon became obvious that a level of standardization was necessary, and few writ ten standards seemed to exist with our special needs-succinct instructions for staff of vary ing levels of expertise on a large, distributed campus.The person responsible for mounting the General Library System's homepage needed guidelines for the links he would make to other libraries.He turned to the User Documentation Working Group (UDWG) for assistance.The W orking Group.The UDWG is one of the several working groups that report to the Electronic Library Access Committee (ELAC), the public services arm of the campus libraries' electronic infrastructure.The UDWG's charge is to "define levels of online help and printed documentation necessary for user access to all library electronic resources.Develop guidelines for format and level of detail.Develop or coor dinate the preparation of such help.Address ongoing updates to ensure currency."This fivemember group (Nancy McClements, Cheryl Becker, Patricia Herrling, Dennis Hill, and Don Johnson), which includes librarians and edito rial staff from several campus libraries, agreed to