Institutional Web
Management:
Report on “Working With
HERO” Session
Aims of Session
We’ve listened to Chris Harris’s
overview of HERO. Webmasters will
make it work. What do we have to do?
UKOLN is funded by Resource: The Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries,
the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the Higher Education Funding
Councils, as well as by project funding from the JISC and the European Union.
UKOLN also receives support from the University of Bath where it is based.
About The Session
20 participants plus
Brian Kelly and Sarah Austin and Quentin North
from EPIC
In the session:
• Participants listed what we wanted from the
session
• Sarah gave a demonstration of:
– The user’s view of the HERO Web site
– A brief description of the information flow model
– A demo of the administrator’s user interface
(Web forms)
2
Our Interests
Participants were interested in:
• The benefits of HERO to UK HEIs
• The resource commitments we’d have
to provide
• The marketing strategy for HERO
• QA issues
• Information flow issues (where is the
master source of information?)
• HERO point of contact
3
EPIC’s Responsibilities
Some of the questions were not part of EPIC’s
responsibilities
EPIC have been subcontracted to develop the
Web site
Out of scope for EPIC:
• Do we need HERO?
• Marketing HERO (Marketing contract still
under discussion)
• Solving institutional information flow
problems (although EPIC are aware this is
a major issue)
4
HERO Point of Contact
Letter from Tim O’Shea (Master at Birkbeck and
HERO plc director?) send to VCs in August
asking for nominations for HERO contact
person
120 out of 180? institutions have responded
ACTION: Find out who your HERO contact is
and establish communication channels
(Note possible confusion between HERO and
HEROBAC - another HEFCE project)
5
HERO Point of Contact (2)
Ideal point of contact doesn’t have to be a Web
master but ‘someone who can represent the
HEI at a national scale’
He or she should:
• Evangelise about HERO
• Draw on techies to provide effective
solutions
• Chase people for content
Note that EPIC will have to liaise with 190+
single points of contacts with differing levels of
expertise, knowledge, etc.
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Information Requirements
HERO to provide list of information
requirements to points of contacts shortly
e.g. URL of Personnel Web site and optional
brief description
ACTION: BK to ensure that the document is
available online
7
Information Flow
• Some information to be obtained from central
points with well-established QA procedures
(e.g. HEFCE’s info on HEI addresses)
• Web-based forms (copy and paste)
• EPIC to pull XML files (EPIC to publish DTD
for use by institutional techies)
• Paper input (keep it quiet!)
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Work Smarter
Concern that there are lots of similar requests
for information from HE agencies (e.g.
Research in Scotland) and commercial bodies
HERO can provide opportunity to move
towards use of backend databases, which will
enable input files to HERO (and WAP sites,
etc.) to be created with minimum of effort
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Competition for HERO
“Give me £xxx and I will advertise your
vacancies”
Should we:
• Use them as well
• Use them instead
• Agreed not to use them
Note that HERO is owned by the HE
community and has support from our
funding agencies and VCs - so we should
support it!
10
Summary
Very useful session
EPIC staff seem to be good people to work
with and were responsive to our concerns
ACTION: Need to hold similar (longer)
events regionally
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