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
     _________________________________________________________________

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