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From the Presidentposted: 8 February 2005Changes are a fact of life for most--dare I say all--of us. The Society changes as well, as you know. There are several initiatives underway that have the potential to make a positive impact, and to generate exciting developments. We have a new web design! The web site has been redesigned by the firm Q Ltd. They were chosen based on their past work for other groups which was excellent. Their work for ARLIS/NA takes our web pages to another level in both functionality and professional image. One of the elements which impressed the board in considering their proposal was the emphasis on basing the redesign on solid input. To that end, Q surveyed the membership to get an idea of what they consider important in web site design and content. A crucial concern for the redesign which emerged from the survey was the need to improve navigation. 74% of the 81 respondents rated navigation as the most important characteristic of the ARLIS/NA web site. Next in importance was fast-loading pages (44% rated this most important.) Visual appeal ranked third (35% rated this most important.) I hope you will agree that both navigation and visual appeal are much improved with our new web site. Overseeing the redesign from the ARLIS/NA side was the ARLIS/NA web site task force, led by Publications Committee Chair Jack Robertson. Our thanks go to the task force members Jack Robertson, Nedda Ahmed (our current web editor) and Jonathan Franklin (our former web editor and board liaison to the Publications Committee), Judy Dyki, and Lee Sorensen. We need to enhance our content! The redesign is just the first step in a continuum of change. When asked to rank content elements of the ARLIS/NA web site, 76% rated professional resources, tools, and standards to be the most important. Next in order of rank for content were job and continuing education opportunities (62%), online publications (51%), news and events listings (51%), members directory (49%) and info on relevant resources (40%). The Publications Committee will be pursuing these areas of web content development. All of us will need to contribute, in particular to the resources, tools and standards content. Up until now, we have concentrated on publications as our product. However the potential exists for many other products, and in fact some of these products are found on the pages of our committees, divisions, sections and round tables. These currently existing products have been [will have been by the time you read this] brought to a more visible position in the new ARLIS/NA Resources section. Content is the name of the game, and hopefully where our attention will be focused. Content is what we can share with each other, and what the Society must have to fulfill our mission, to support you, the arts information professional. For real estate, it's location, location, location; for ARLIS/NA, it's content, content, content! The news reporting functions and modes of the Society have also come in for their share of reconsideration, in part prompted by and in part made possible by the web redesign. News will be prominent on the new AWS (ARLIS/NA web site), reported/posted as it becomes available. This takes us away from our tried and true mode of the past and into uncharted waters for ARLIS/NA. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Linda Zieper for her excellent work on the Society's newsletter Update. Her organizational skills and keen sense of responsibility have made Update a publication the Society can look on with pride. We greatly appreciate as well her help in this transition period, as we migrate to a web news mode and as we search for an AWS news editor. Will our goals and objectives change as well? The SocietyÕs web site embodies so much of what we are about, and is the image we present to the world. It is an expression of ARLIS/NA. Underlying this ÒimageÓ are our very substantial mission, goals, and objectives. The Strategic Planning Task Force, led by co-chairs Leslie Abrams and Lucie Stylianopoulos, [will have] distributed a survey to gather feedback from the membership on current and potential goals for the Society. That feedback is critical in their efforts to draft the next strategic plan to cover 2006-2009. Please respond to the survey and contribute your voice. They will also be collecting input at the Houston conference. If you have ideas, if you have opinions, and/or if you want to hear what your colleagues have to say about the future of the Society, please attend the meetings of the Strategic Planning Task Force as well as the membership meeting. I am looking forward to our getting together at the Houston conference. Our annual gathering serves to reinvigorate us both individually and as a Society, and the Houston program and events promise to be stimulating and informative! [Note: it is somewhat problematic to write a column for publication two months hence, especially on the topic of change. This piece was drafted in early December for a December 10, 2004 deadline, to be published in February. I apologize for the machinations with verb tense that I resorted to above!] Jeanne Brown, President Top of Page |