This is the first in a series of articles by Network librarians who have created homepages for their institutions.We hope you will find this series helpful. Please contact us if you would like to share your own experiences in homepage construction.
In the harried existence of the typical hospital librarian with an overload of demand and a reduction of resources you might wonder: Why worry about a homepage for the hospital? At Maricopa Health Systems I have been serving as the hospital's Webmas ter for the last year. I would like to briefly share why I feel this has been worthwhile (beyond being able to call myself Webmaster, cool in and of itself) for both me and my library and to give some pointers on where to start.
The last 30 years have seen rapid changes in how librarians and libraries provide access to knowledge-based information. Medical libraries and medical librarians have been in the forefront of this change. In the late 1960's online bibliographic dat abases, starting with MEDLINE and rapidly expanding with Dialog, Orbit and then BRS, took a key role in access to technical and medical information in libraries. In the late 1980's CD-ROM technology emerged and quickly developed as a key information acce ss tool allowing the local mounting of information databases, both full text and bibliographic. Just as we were beginning to figure out how to incorporate this new technology into our information access arsenal, Internet burst on to the scene. My workin g as the hospital's Webmaster, coupled with our efforts to develop an integrated, online information system in the library, have convinced me that Internet and the World Wide Web will play a key role in our knowledge-based information access systems. The more we, as medical and hospital librarians, can learn about the Internet and how to facilitate its use, the better position we will be in to develop knowledge-based systems. Hospital librarians should actively try to play a key, if not central, role in the development of their institution's webpages and consider how a page for their library can help them provide information access for their clientele.
In serving as Webmaster for the last year, I have come up with some ideas to remember when beginning to set up a page. The first and foremost is to identify your target audience and the message or information you want to make available. The original impetus for development of our hospital page last year was the desire of the Director of Academic Affairs to use the Internet to market our residency programs. We currently have 9 residency programs with 265 residents so that our graduate medical educat ion programs are very important to our institution. As the page has developed we have found other audiences we want to reach and have been slowly expanding it.
As with any new program or system there is a learning curve in developing and using homepages. When beginning to study homepages and HTML the goal is not to become an expert technician but to know what they do and what it takes to make them work. As the hospital librarian and key knowledge-based information expert in your institution your goal is not to become the HTML 'techie' but to be the editor/coordinator of the page who understands the audience, what information can be communicated, and who is responsible for various aspects of the page. I believe that learning basic HTML is important to understand what it can do and how it does it in order to better understand what your page can and cannot do. Initially you may be the primary person doing m arkup. But as your page grows and the people within your institution become more committed to it, then resources will become available to obtain technical help, and you will have the experience and expertise to take advantage of them.
When you begin to set up your first page, focus on its content rather than on how it looks. Keep the page simple until you begin to get a better feel for HTML and for how your page is developing. At all times, focus on content over appearance. That does not mean that having an attractive page with appropriate bells and whistles (such as Java and fancy graphics) is not important but, as with any communication medium, the content of the page is crucial. A fancy looking page that has little content w ill not be looked at again, no matter how much its content develops. It is easy as a new HTML student to get carried away with the 'bright lights and action' and to forget about the content.
Finally, when developing your page, think not only about what it takes to set up the page but what it will take to maintain its quality over time. As the page's editor you do not want to be responsible for keeping every part of it current. Ideally t he various units within your institution with sub level pages should maintain those pages. So they should be kept simple enough for easy maintenance: For example, on my hospital pages, two residency programs set up wonderful "case of the month" pages. The problem was that six months later the same case was on the page. The residents who enthusiastically set up the page quickly became overwhelmed with their regular responsibilities and never had the time or interest to develop new cases.
With the above points in mind and the advice you can easily get from others you know who see themselves as HTML gurus, you are now ready to start your page - so what's next? Here are some of my ideas on how to start:
From this point, you will find your pages rapidly blooming, but remember to start simply. Focus on input and market your pages internally as well as externally. You too will start calling yourself "webmaster" and casually giving out your URL to fr iends and relatives!