Abstract
Today’s academic library web sites are mission-critical library locations providing access to research content and online services. Managing these web sites and related projects has grown increasingly complex. The authors conducted a 24-item survey via a listserv to gain a better understanding of the current state of web project management in academic libraries today. Responses from 121 managers of web projects were received. The survey results provided quantitative and qualitative information about project managers, project management techniques and organizational structures used by libraries to manage web projects, the responsibilities of standing web committees, best practices, and remaining challenges. Web project management in libraries continues to be informally defined and is managed from a variety of organizational locations. The function of project management is still often only one part of a hybrid job and is not often included in job descriptions. Some project management techniques are used frequently, but the most formal practices are not. Web teams and workgroups vary widely among libraries and are occasionally the source for contention. While the survey data is not statistically generalizable to the larger population of academic libraries, it points to the need for research into specific aspects of library web project management, most notably in the area of web team effectiveness.
Highlights
Academic libraries were quick to respond to the advent of the World Wide Web
While freelance web development companies and the commercial sector quickly moved from trial-and-error workflows into more formal project management techniques for web work, libraries have struggled to find the right combinations of staff, committees, and organizational structures to meet the web’s growing demands
In addition to basic demographic questions, the survey asked ten questions related to web project management in libraries and six questions related to web teams
Summary
Academic libraries were quick to respond to the advent of the World Wide Web. Librarians learned HTML and created online pathfinders, library catalog companies developed web interfaces, and systems librarians installed web servers. While freelance web development companies and the commercial sector quickly moved from trial-and-error workflows into more formal project management techniques for web work, libraries have struggled to find the right combinations of staff, committees, and organizational structures to meet the web’s growing demands. Library web projects are different, because their customers do not buy the offered services and materials, and because libraries have a large number of internal stakeholders and access to many third-party systems. For these reasons and more, in 2009, Fagan and Keach proposed a library-specific set of strategies for managing web projects in Web Project Management for Academic Libraries.[3]
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