UK University Home Pages: (Remember) The Way We Were

The Way We Were

Back in July 1997 UKOLN held the first IWMW (Institutional Web Management Workshop) event. The event aimed to share examples of best practices and innovation for those involved in providing institutional Web services.

D0 you remember what your institution’s home page looked like in 1997? Back in 2002 we set up a service which provides a rolling display of University home pages. We subsequently used the same tool to provide a rolling display of University home pages taken from the Internet Archive.

It is therefore possible to see how University home pages looked before the first IWMW event took place and to compare this with how the pages look today.

How We Are Today

The following rolling displays show how Web sites look today:

• Institutional home pages
• Institutional 404 pages

• Library home pages
• Institutional Web gateways

Note that if links are broken this indicates that the URL of the original Web page no longer exists. It is interesting to note the high profile that was given to the provision to institutional Web gateways ten years ago; nowadays institutional Web sites are more likely, I suspect, tow ish visitors to stay on the Web sites with links to interesting resources elsewhere being minimised.

I should also add that historical displays which show the evolution of the home page are available for the following institutions:

• University of Bath
• University of Oxford
• JISC

Looking Forward to the Future

The theme of the IWMW 2013 event is “What Next?“. We are currently inviting submissions for talks and workshop sessions which will be of interest to those involved in the provision of institutional Web services. Participants will be interested in looking to the future and to hear about approaches to the management of large-scale institutional Web services which are applicable in today’s environment.

It seems to me that it would be useful to look into the lessons which can be learnt from the history of institutional Web development when making plans for the future. I hope the resources mentioned above will be useful for those who wish to travel back in time and see how Web sites have evolved over the past 17 years.

---

View Twitter conversation from: [Topsy] | View Twitter statistics from: [TweetReach] – [Bit.ly]

Announcing IWMW 2013

I’m pleased to announce that next year’s Institutional Web Management Workshop, IWMW 2013, will be held at the University of Bath on 26-28 June 2013.

The Roman Baths. From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Baths_(Bath)

The annual IWMW event has taken place in Bath previously: IWMW 2000 and IWMW 2006. We know that participants welcome the opportunity to visit our beautiful city, which has been a World Heritage Site since 1987. The combination of Georgian architecture and Roman remains make Bath a city well-worth revisiting. We have already booked the Roman Baths for the IWMW 2013 reception which promises to provide a memorable occasion for all participants.

The theme of IWMW 2013 is “What next?“. This will provide participants with an opportunity to consider the challenges facing the higher education sector in light of the economic downturn, and also the opportunities provided by the continuing technical developments we see in our online networked environment. The final session at the event will provide an opportunity to reflect on the challenges which lie ahead and strategies for addressing those challenges.

The call for submissions is now open. We welcome proposals for plenary talks, workshop sessions and other ideas you may have (for example, it might be timely to revisit the debates which took place in 2002, 2003 and 2006).

If you are unfamiliar with the IWMW event and the format, it would be useful to visit the IWMW 2012 Web site to see the timetable and view the abstracts for the plenary talks and workshop sessions.

If you would like to discuss ideas for a proposal, feel free to contact me, the IWMW 2013 chair. In addition I would welcome the opportunity to make contact with potential sponsors for the event.

---

View Twitter conversation from: [Topsy]