College of Fine Arts websites are a primary source of information about the College for individuals within and beyond Ohio University. As such, they are considered part of the public presentation of the University and the College and require accuracy, accessibility, and adherance to the highest standards of print publishing. The intention of the College of Fine Arts is to have a professional quality web presence while also preserving the individuality of each unit’s graphic style, site structure, and specialized content.
I. Definition:
- College of Fine Arts official websites are defined to include all sites related to academic, curricular, or programmatic content for units over which the College of Fine Arts is the planning entity. This includes schools, centers, galleries, and other units whose budget is overseen by the College of Fine Arts.
II. Principles:
- College of Fine Arts websites will provide accurate and current information as appropriate to the purpose of each unit.
- College of Fine Arts websites will be maintained at a professional level, meeting or exceeding current practices in web design, navigation, graphic standards, and accessibility.
- College of Fine Arts websites will have some degree of consistency in navigational and graphic unity, while simultaneously enabling each unit to have its own graphic style and site map. Decisions regarding navigational and graphic unity will be made by the College in consultation with directors of the respective units.
- College of Fine Arts websites will adhere to Ohio University web policies and graphic standards.
III. Practices:
- Responsibility for each unit’s site content lies with the director of the unit. Websites will be reviewed by the director in a procedure of their choosing for content and currency at a minimum of every six months.
- Directors will have full access (passwords, access codes, etc.) at all times to all pages in their unit’s site.
- Oversight of pages that are part of the unit’s site will be assigned by the director to a faculty/staff member, committee or other designee along with deadlines for content updates.
- “Publishing” content permissions may not be assigned to students, and students may not have primary responsibility for maintaining any official website. Students whose work responsibiliites include updating web content are to be under the direct supervision of a designated faculty or staff member as assigned by the director, with “write only” content permission. Students working on official pages should be limited to working on a computer specified by the director within the unit’s facility.
- All official web pages related to a unit and its offerings will be housed in the College domain folder www.finearts.ohio.edu/ on the Ohio University server and within the unit’s subdomain folders. For example: www.finearts.ohio.edu/unit name/page_nnnn
- Websites not housed within the domain and subdomains listed under III.5, may not separately provide information that is the responsibiliity of the unit. For example, faculty sites, organization sites, whether hosted on or off campus, should not separately provide information regarding scholarships, admission, curriculum, degree requirements, or similar topics that a site visitor would reasonably expect to find on the official sites. Sites external to the unit website may link to pertinent information contained on the official pages.
- College of Fine Arts websites may not be used for private business or commercial activities, fund-raising, or advertising on behalf of non-Ohio University organizations or individuals.
- Units will provide reciprocal links to Ohio University pages that contain university information regarding campus wide policies and deadlines, (e.g. admission policies, applications, financial aid information) rather than duplicating information already housed on another university web page serving as the central information source.
- Copyright laws will be observed in compliance with Ohio University guidelines and state and federal statutes.
IV. Implementation:
- This policy is effective immediately, and all College sites will be required to meet the policy standards no later than July 1, 2007.
V. Policy Review:
- This policy and guidelines will be reviewed annually by the Dean’s office and Executive Council.
12/1/06