I think that the changes brought about with how "Web" information is
handled has made it *less* necessary to have "your own Office of Research Web
servers".  This probably was a greater issue (just 4 short years ago!) when
all we had to rely on was "gopher" to electronically disseminate large
quantities of information.  Now that everyone is more or less "buying into"
the concept of Webs, I'm hard pressed to think of a rationale for
maintaining your own *server* (meaning the physical hardware and probably
the technical person to run it) within the Office of Research....unless you're
one of the lucky few who already has a position justified and you happen to
have equipment which can be easily upgradeable to accomodate direct
Internet/Web access.

 Once you agree that you want to "go Web", there are a
different set of problems (I feel).  (1.) More than ever, you do need
someone who is responsible for "converting" files from "whatever" to make
that information presentable for the Web.  An "information manager" of some
sort.  IN our office, that's me, but I
can say without a doubt, while I would love to spend my entire day on the
Web, unfortunately it's not my full time job (it certainly could be).
Because the quality of appearance of the information is only limited by how
much time the "Web person" has to devote to making it nicer.  In my case,
currently I'm spending about 20%-25% of my time, and so far we're mostly
concentrating on conversion of existing info....I have no doubt that
eventually we'll want to work on creating additional original stuff as
well. We've had almost *no problems*
with any WordPerfect files; and almost *no luck* with spreadsheet files.
I've been told that the next upgrade to Netscape (how you view Web info) is
going to be able to accomodate tabular information quite nicely.  We'll
see.  And we have no idea how/whether Lynx will have a similar upgrade.
Which brings me to the second consideration.  (2.) Our biggest concern on
our campus was that we didn't want to exclude anyone by making the Web our
main info source.  Through Lynx (a text browser only) 100% of our campus
has access to our Web.  Obviously the information might not be as "pretty"
thru Lynx, but it can still be accessed.  When you start talking about all
these different technologies, it points to the fact that most campuses are
not one nice neat *consistent* platform, so it introduces problems with
disseminating more complex information like forms, etc.  Forms are probably
going to be the last information we tackle on our campus, because of the
complex array of setups around our campus for both "viewing" and
"downloading".

To view our web site (either thru Netscape or Lynx), go to:

 http://www.uno.edu

I hope the RESADM-L will keep this topic "active" because I think this is
certainly one area which benefits from comparing notes.

******************************************
*       Jane E. Prudhomme, Director      *
*       Research and Sponsored Programs  *
*       University of New Orleans        *
*       New Orleans, LA 70148            *
*       (504) 286-7154                   *
*       Internet: xxxxxx@uno.edu          *
*       Web Page:  www.uno.edu           *
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