The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is a regulating body that oversees more digital standards than I knew even existed. Indeed, it is they at the W3C who are the overlords of HTML, which I did not know had such a master. Hyper Text Mark-up Language is a set of tags that communicate the formatting of web sites. It is, it turns out, a rather simple, concrete set of semantic commands set within brackets that describe a conceptual layout of visual web material. All HTML, or Extensible HTML (XHTML), documents are satisfyingly balanced with opening and (for the most part) closing tags. Additional information about the look and design of a website (CSS), as well as metadata information that can grab the attention of search engines (<meta>tags) may be embedded within an HTML document. The great thing about HTML is that it's simple but flexible. In addition, in conjunction with the mark-up language, the use of a cascading style sheet means that changes can be made across a whole website (say you wanted to change your site's font, or background color, or height of a logo) just by making a single change in the CSS. In addition to text and style elements, HTML can be designed to display data in a variety of ways with the <table> tag. HTML documents can also be designed to be more interactive that just turning a link purple by clicking on it. Commands such as action and input can enable a site to collect user-submitted information.
HTML is a wide-spread and useful mark-up language. But why, you ask, should a would-be librarian even care about this? The answer, of course, is because web sites matter, and understanding and working with dynamic digital content is integral to an information professional's work. Duh. Why did you even ask that question. Developing these basic web design skills, and I am aware that these are very basic HTML skills, like the finger painting of HTML, provides the librarian with a certain level of autonomy in creating and managing online content. However, as the librarians at Georgia State found out, variable skill level between staff members can result in an inconsistent and incomprehensible mess. Enter Content Management Systems (CMS)! SpringShare and the like provide slick, coherent templates that are easily tailored to fit a wide variety of needs such as course guides, library instruction support, or database navigation; these guides can then be shared and altered, as fits with the collaborative nature of 21st century information behavior. I've developed a couple of course and subject guides using the SpringShare CMS, and I can't quite imagine getting the same (beautiful! amazing! useful!) results with my piddling HTML skillset.
The problem with SpringShare is that it's a commercial enterprise, and so it is out of reach for libraries with limited budgets. The solution ought to be an open source option, such as Drupal or Al Fresco, but there is little material specifically designed for libraries. Or, as GSU did, simply train your information techs, programmers, and librarians to be the baddest CMS designers around; this is probably the smartest bet to get that all-powerful ROI. The tables for their CMS, and the description of how the Active Server Page system pulls information out of it, were intimidating, but not incomprehensible.
(But it won't take you anywhere) (But it's still a button I made!)
The W3C HTML Tutorial is a lot of fun. Because we can format in HTML in Blogger, here is something that I wrote in HTML.
Mary Is Great!
Here is a link to a picture of a pine marten. Or, if you don't want to click the link, here is the picture itself:
.Aren't they adorable but just a little scary? Just like HTML.
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