Barbara G. Scott's electrons arrived as: > I would like to hear from people at small to > medium-sized museums about how > their museums handle the creation and maintenance of > the museum web site. > Did you contract the actual design out to someone > else and provide them with > the text and images and updates? Did you contract > for the original design > and then start doing the updates yourself? Or is > someone on staff > responsible for the actual web site creation and > maintenance? We're a medium sized college with a budget of about $30 million/year, and I'm the director of the college gallery -- who by a combination of design and default also became webmaster for the institution's website. Our 1 1/2-person "team" is in-house, myself as producer/creative director sharing website duties with curatorial duties, plus one fulltime designer. We also use a freelance programmer for some javascript, but we do all the html coding ourselves. We spent less than $150,000 to create the site, and we are spending that much on maintenance and expansion each year. Point being, that the tidy idea of spending upfront money one time on site design and then coasting penniless through updates and maintenance may work for awhile, but once people in an organization get the internet bug they'll be thinking of all sorts of ways to apply the technology. Web protocol has a way of insinuating itself into lots of good ideas, and you should be ready to start budgeting an appropriate amount on an ongoing basis, just like we've all become accustomed to doing with print media. Very soon, if you are not keeping up with the web, you'll begin to be embarrassed as an institution -- just like if you let the paint peel and weeds grow. I would strongly recommend against hiring someone to learn on the job, though. Hire experience, or you'll end up with a real mess. By the way, $150K might seem like a lot by smaller museum standards, but I think we got a good deal for our money by going in-house. We raised $17,000 recently with an online auction, that ate up about $500 in site-development overhead. And I know of one large museum that just spent $3 million on its site. >Have people had problems with > board members or other > staff members underestimating how much time > maintaining a web site requires > and how have you dealt with this problem? This underestimation is inevitable, especially in smaller non-profits. I'd recommend getting someone in with knowledge and presentation skills, to give the staff and board members a reality check. _________________________________________________________________ S t e p h e n N o w l i n V.P., Director, Williamson Gallery Creative Director, ACCD online Art Center College of Design www.artcenter.edu _________________________________________________________________ ========================================================= Important Subscriber Information: The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes). If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "Signoff Museum-L" (without the quotes).