DCC/Wellcome Trust Workshop: Preserving Project Web Sites: The Lessons Learnt


Brian Kelly gave a 30 minute talk on "Preserving Project Web Sites: The Lessons Learnt" at a workshop on Future-proofing Institutional Websites organised by the DCC and the Wellcome Trust. The workshop was held at the Wellcome Library, London on 19-20th January 2006. The talk took place from 10:00-10:30 on Friday 20th January 2006.

For further information about the workshop see the information provided on the DCC Web site.

Abstract

Funding bodies, such as the JISC, will be responsible for funding many projects - many of which will set up a Web site as part of the work. But once happens once the funding finishes? There can be a danger that the Web site can disappear. Even if the Web site continues to be available, the Web site may 'rot'.

This presentation will describe work carried out by the JISC-funded QA Focus project, which developed a lightweight quality assurance framework which can help to ensure that project deliverables are widely accessible and interoperable. The presentation will provide some practical ideas which can help to ensure that Web sites will remain functional and describe a toolkit which can be used when 'mothballing' a Web site. The talk will conclude by exploring how these ideas can be applied to institutional Web sites.

Materials

Slides
[MS PowerPoint format] - [HTML]

Biographical Details

Brian Kelly Brian Kelly is UK Web Focus - an advisory post funded by the JISC and MLA (Council for Museums, Libraries and Archives) to support the Higher and Further Education communities and the cultural heritage sector in making best use of the World Wide Web.

Brian is a long-standing Web developer, having helped establish the Web service at the University of Leeds in January 1993 )one of the first 50 Web services worldwide). Although instantly spotting the potential for the Web for providing what was then known as a Campus Wide Information Service, Brian was concerned that inferior, although more widely used solutions such as Gopher, would become the de facto standard. So Brian sought to convert the Higher Education sector to use of the Web by giving presentations and seminars at a variety of events.

Following the universal acceptance of the Web, Brian sought further involvement with Web technologies as the senior trainer at the Netskills, University of Newcastle. In 1996 Brian was appointed as UK Web Focus at UKOLN, a national centre of expertise in digital information management based at the University of Bath.

Related Resources

The following resources relate to the talk:

Documents, etc.

Toolkit

Presentations