Andy Powell (previously of UKOLN, but now at Eduserv Foundation) is reflecting on 10 years of the institutional web.<\/p>\n
His first point is that as he tried to research the ‘history’ of this community, he became aware that we were in danger of losing our community history, as much of it is in digital media, which is not necessarily being preserved.<\/p>\n
Andy has a background in computing services at University of Bath, before becoming the first ‘webmaster’. In 1996 he moved to UKOLN and was involved in digital library projects, and cultural heritage stuff. He also advised JISC and the wider community about standards.<\/p>\n
There have been a lot of changes in 10 years. But some things have not changed – “Change is inevitable except from the University of Bath’s vending machines” (John Kirremuir). But, we are still working towards how we use web in our teaching and learning.<\/p>\n
Andy is running through a brief history of the web, and the community around it. He was unable to find the date for when ‘Alta Vista’ started (remember that? in the days before Google). Can’t find a date, but Ariadne<\/a> issues 2 has an article comparing alta vista and lycos<\/a>. (Found this timeline<\/a> later)<\/p>\n Over 10 years, we have seen the development of a new profession of ‘webmaster’. Although this job title has gone out of vogue now (bit un-PC). Indeed, there doesn’t really seem to be a single job title for people involved in this area.<\/p>\n An example of information disappearing. Andy has mentioned ‘coloured books’ – found this difficult to track down as a reference. Finally found a definition<\/a>.<\/p>\n Andy is now indicating some general trends: Andy is suggesting we have ‘moved through’ the portal phase. However, I don’t believe this to be true – but perhaps what we mean by portal has changed. Our portal at RHUL is a central place where students can interact with the college, and I do see this as a launch point for students.<\/p>\n Using external services – some risk here. The library community were are very early adopters of this kind of service approach (e.g. z39.50 as very early example – although turned out to be too difficult to implement and possibly ahead of it’s time). Now we are looking at light weight protocols to support rapid development (e.g. A9 Opensearch)<\/p>\n
\nfrom flat html files and static content, to xml, managed content with dynamic interface.
\nhigher quality (X)HTML – largely driven by desire to make content more accessible
\nbetter integration with institutional branding
\ngeneral recognition that end-user need varies widely. In particular it is better to move the content to the end-user, rather than to pull end-user into content via the Web user-interface – e.g. use of RSS for lists.
\nFrom static pages -> portals -> web 2.0<\/p>\n