Do we want to broaden the the web team’s charge to include “communications within LIS”?
Can we clarify what this means!? We have already proposed the LIS one blog as a major communication tool. To consider communications more broadly probably should involve gathering info about current communications, discussion of what various LIS ares/departments/staff need and want etc. etc. Is this something that should happen now?
Comment here!!
Personally, I do not think it is necessary or wise at this time to broaden the charge of the LIS Website team to include discussion or recommendations about LIS communications beyond those pertaining to the web.
We were told that there will be another round of teams at some point. Maybe there is already a communications team in the works. If not, maybe that should be considered.
It does seem like we might not completely understand what we’re being asked to consider, but I’ll take a stab at this.
If we’re being asked to consider expanding our role to include communication methods within LIS then I would vote ‘no.’ Especially not right now when we’re so heavily scheduled with the web redo. Taking on an additional task could be damaging to the web redo and/or to the additional task. In other words, we can’t do it all and do it all well. We could do it all and do it all poorly.
Even in the future, it might not be a good idea to broaden the scope of our team. Communication can take many forms other than web pages. But we can think about that possibility later.
For what it’s worth, I agree with Jess – LIS communication seems to me to be a project that’s worth an entire team of its own and y’all on the Web team are doing enough.
Jess and Carrie beat me to it. Expanding the role of the LIS Website team to include communication methods for LIS is outside of the intended scope of our current charge. While we are making recommendations on appropriate ways to communicate via the LIS Website, there are many other forms of communication that would fall outside of our purview. As Jess stated, this may be an appropriate for a communications team.
In my opinion, our scope is and should continue to be limited to making recommendations about how LIS communications *on its website*. These recommendations may allow for improvements in efficiency and staff workflow in changing communications by using the web, but we’re not involved in conducting a holistic overview of LIS communication.
The web team recommended the use of a one-blog concept to facilitate open and transparent internal and external communication using a web-based platform. It is the hope of the team that the LIS blog will foster effectiveness and efficiency in communication and work flows. The LIS blog has the potential to empower LIS staff to read, write and comment on a shared and easy to access web platform. The blog also has the potential to be an effective tool for LIS to push out news and updates and provide our users with the option to provide feedback.
The LIS blog will be one aspect of our new web presence, one that will hopefully improve communication and the dissemination of information across the organization and with our user community.
The web team recommended the use of a one-blog to streamline workflows and simplify access to information, effectively shifting some communication to a web based tool. However, we are not currently in a position to extend the original charge of the team to embrace all LIS Communications. I think this question warrants further exploration and conversation – maybe after February 2010?
You can read the recommendations here https://mediawiki.middlebury.edu/wiki/LIS/LIS_Website_Recommendations#The_LIS_Blog