Proposal for a Web Information Concentration
by Michael E.D. Koenig, and Thomas Krichel
2012‒04‒15
Motivation
“For many people, if it is not online, it doesn't exist.”, says the
10th archivist of the United States. And for the vast majority of
textual information, online access means web access.
Large organizations have whole teams that curate their web
presence. Members of such teams can be highly specialized. In small
organizations however, there is no room for a large team. Such
organizations still need an individual who makes the web presence
happen. Ideally, such an individual should have a broad overview
over web technologies. This is the type of individual that this
concentration aims to train. Students in the concentration within
the MSLIS will be coming out with a dual competence of librarian
and webmaster.
The concentration does not aim to train individuals to
find information on the web. Other courses in the Palmer
School do that. Therefore the name of the concentration
could be confusing. But we have not come up with a better name.
Maybe webmaster concentration
would be better.
Overview
Each course provides students with theoretical grounding and a part
of the technical skills necessary to create and maintain web
sites. The four courses as a whole will allow
students to build and maintain moderately sophisticated sites on
their own. The technical skills involve knowledge of de jure or de facto standards–such as HTML,
CSS, SQL, ECMAScript–as well as computer programming and computer
system administration skills. The content of
the courses, however, goes way beyond learning facts. Each
course will train analytic reasoning ability through abstract theory
and hands-on work. Each course will also have a component dealing
with usability and user needs analysis.
Structure
The concentration consists of four courses. There are two basic
courses, LIS650, and LIS653. There are two advanced courses, LIS651,
and LIS652. The advanced courses depends on LIS650 only. The
requirement to take LIS650 can be waived by the manager of the
program.
LIS 650: Basic Web Site Architecture and Design
description
This course introduces students to the fundamentals of designing,
building, and maintaining Web sites. Students will learn and apply
Web site technologies like HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and CSS
(Cascading Style Sheets) in the design and construction of their own
Web site. Students will be introduced to the information
architecture and Web usability literature to learn the concepts and
measures that may be applied in the evaluation of Web sites.
Prerequisite: Good computer skills.
LIS 653: Information Management Systems
description
As web sites become more complex, the use of web content
software systems has increased. All of these systems feature a
database system used via a set of procedural scripts. This
course studies the mySQL database system and the PHP scripting
language as a sample popular approach. The bulk of the course
is spent on learning PHP as a scripting language. The
requirement of the library community is given special
attention through the study of text processing. A content
content managment system, e.g. Drupal, is used as a toolbox
that the students apply and expand upon to earn proficiency.
A sample syllabus is at
http://openlib.org/home/krichel/courses/lis653n12a
Prerequisite: Good computer skills.
LIS 651: Web Contents Management
description
As web sites become more complex, the use of web content
software systems has increased. All of these systems feature a
database system used via a set of procedural scripts. This
course studies the mySQL database system and the PHP scripting
language as a sample popular approach. The bulk of the course
is spent on learning PHP as a scripting language. The
requirement of the library community is given special
attention through the study of text processing. A content
content managment system, e.g. Drupal, is used as a toolbox
that the students apply and expand upon to earn proficiency.
Prerequisites: LIS 650
LIS 652: User interfaces
description
The construction of good user interfaces is critical to a successful
web presence. JavaScript enhances the basic HTML+CSS interface
toolkit. This course studies DOMscripting. This is the use of
JavaScript in an XHTML setting. Topics covered include the XML DOM
API and JavaScript. JavaScript gets the lion's share of attention.
Aspects of usability that relate to JavaScript-enhanced web user
interfaces are also covered.
Prerequisites: LIS 650
Implementation
The concentration will be run by a coordinator appointed by the
dean. It is assumed that Thomas Krichel will be the first
coordinator.
Relationships with existing courses
These courses in the concentration will also serve as a useful
complement to existing courses. Students who can build a digital
application will have an increased interest in the HCI issues
surrounding them, they will have a better understanding of digital
archiving problems, and will have the technical skills to build
digital information solutions to assignments in other classes. These
skills will also translate directly to real-world solutions to
library issues.
The existing
LIS654
“Building Digital Libraries” course is not included in the
concentration. It serves as either as substitute to these courses
for students who do aspire to the level of master that the
concentration affords, and will motivate student to go up that path.
The existing LIS707 “Human Computer Interaction” course is not
included in the concentration. It could take care of the some of
usability aspects. Students in the concentration will be encouraged
to take that course.
The existing LIS706 “Digital Preservation” course is not included in
the concentration. Students in the concentration will be encouraged
to take that course.
General approach
The concentration aims to train generalists who will build web-based
information system essentially from scratch, using low-cost tools.
The hardware aspect of a web server is out of scope for the
concentration. Root server space will assumed to be rented. Each
student will typically rent a root server for a semester or two
The cost of renting servers will come down in the years
to come. At this time it is $10 to $40 a month. The root
server is stricty required for LIS653, but it would be
hoped students will continue to rent it for the advanced classes.
The software aspect of web servers is clearly in scope. The
concentration's contents would be delivered with minimum reference
to implementation software. However since the students are assumed
to do portfolio work for every class, some software-specific
instruction is necessary. In these cases, the concentration will
mainly rely on open-source software that is industry-standard, or
heavily deployed in the library world. For server-side software, the
concentration courses will emphasizes tools written in PHP, the
server-side language studied in the content management course.
