Institutional Web Management:

Report on “Working With HERO” Session

UKOLN is funded by Resource: The Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries, the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the Higher Education Funding Councils, as well as by project funding from the JISC and the European Union. UKOLN also receives support from the University of Bath where it is based.

Aims of Session We’ve listened to Chris Harris’s overview of HERO. Webmasters will make it work. What do we have to do?

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About The Session20 participants plusBrian Kelly and Sarah Austin and Quentin North from EPICIn the session:

• Participants listed what we wanted from the session

• Sarah gave a demonstration of:– The user’s view of the HERO Web site– A brief description of the information flow model– A demo of the administrator’s user interface

(Web forms)

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Our InterestsParticipants were interested in:

• The benefits of HERO to UK HEIs• The resource commitments we’d have

to provide• The marketing strategy for HERO• QA issues• Information flow issues (where is the

master source of information?)• HERO point of contact

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EPIC’s ResponsibilitiesSome of the questions were not part of EPIC’s responsibilitiesEPIC have been subcontracted to develop the Web siteOut of scope for EPIC:

• Do we need HERO?• Marketing HERO (Marketing contract still

under discussion)• Solving institutional information flow

problems (although EPIC are aware this is a major issue)

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HERO Point of ContactLetter from Tim O’Shea (Master at Birkbeck and HERO plc director?) send to VCs in August asking for nominations for HERO contact person120 out of 180? institutions have responded

ACTION: Find out who your HERO contact is and establish communication channels

(Note possible confusion between HERO and HEROBAC - another HEFCE project)

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HERO Point of Contact (2)Ideal point of contact doesn’t have to be a Web master but ‘someone who can represent the HEI at a national scale’He or she should:

• Evangelise about HERO• Draw on techies to provide effective

solutions• Chase people for content

Note that EPIC will have to liaise with 190+ single points of contacts with differing levels of expertise, knowledge, etc.

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Information RequirementsHERO to provide list of information requirements to points of contacts shortlye.g. URL of Personnel Web site and optional brief descriptionACTION: BK to ensure that the document is available online

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Information Flow• Some information to be obtained from central

points with well-established QA procedures (e.g. HEFCE’s info on HEI addresses)

• Web-based forms (copy and paste)• EPIC to pull XML files (EPIC to publish DTD

for use by institutional techies)• Paper input (keep it quiet!)

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Work SmarterConcern that there are lots of similar requests for information from HE agencies (e.g. Research in Scotland) and commercial bodies HERO can provide opportunity to move towards use of backend databases, which will enable input files to HERO (and WAP sites, etc.) to be created with minimum of effort

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Competition for HERO“Give me £xxx and I will advertise your vacancies”Should we:

• Use them as well• Use them instead• Agreed not to use them

Note that HERO is owned by the HE community and has support from our funding agencies and VCs - so we should support it!

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Summary Very useful sessionEPIC staff seem to be good people to work with and were responsive to our concernsACTION: Need to hold similar (longer) events regionally