1. Providing Information To Third Parties: The Pros And Cons Brian Kelly UKOLN University of Bath Bath, BA2 7AY UKOLN is supported by: Email B.Kelly@ukoln.ac.uk URL http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ Pres 3

2. 2 Advantages Promotes your organisation Drives traffic to your Web site Additional links to Web site enhance Google search rating Provides a disinterested view Open to other communities May have more attractive design May provide advanced technical features You’d look odd if you weren’t included Third party Web site may have bigger budget (e.g. marketing) May add positive info about your organisation you won’t say (“party city of the UK”) QA procedures may be better than yours Might be possible to automate distribution to minimise resource implications

3. 3 Disadvantages Requires resource to provide information Potential visitors may not leave portal to visit your Web site Information may become out-of-date Information may be embarrassing QA procedures may be worse than yours Loss of accountability Loss of control

4. 4 Universities-link.com Much discussion on website-info-mgt JISCmail list in Feb/Mar 2001 Is anyone aware of http://www.university-link.com/? They have information about a number of universities, including for us ripped off imagery from our site.. They.. also acquired http://www.leeds-university.co.uk and pointed this at our 'entry' on university-link.com. Web space appears to be Geocities. They have included an e-mail link which forwards to our Alumni Officer, who is not impressed (it's her site that they ripped the imagery off)! http://www.leeds-university.co.uk Jeremy Harmer

5. 5 Directory4students Discussion on “Another ripoff site” started in March 2001 http://www.directory4students.com/ Bath Univ map!

6. 6 Questions What should you do if: An unknown commercial body uses your materials (logos, text) without permission? A HE body (HERO, another university,..) appears to use your materials without permission? An individual uses your materials without permission? Do you have a policy which governs your response, or is this just your gut reaction?

7. 7 Need For Policy What if: The commercial company provides a valuable service, is featured in the national press, and helps to drive many visitors to your Web site The organisation obtained the information in a legitimate way (VCs had agreed that their corporate info could be made available to a national body) The individual was a happy graduate of your University who wanted to praise the institution (and maybe donate some money)

8. 8 Policy Requirements An institutional policy: Should be approved by the institution Should provide support for Web managers An institutional policy could cover: Use of text by third parties Use of images, logos, etc. Policies on linking to institution …

9. 9 Formulating Your Own Policy Attempt the group exercise C2-3 to: Formulate an institutional policy on providing information to third parties Discuss implementation and policing aspects

10. 10 Policies on Linking Permission to link to your Web site: Not needed – this would stifle growth of the Web Needed in some areas (frames, links to images, …) Framing Policy Technical solutions available (HTML code to remove frames) but: May be services which use frames sensibly (e.g. cataloguing interface for subject gateways) Could cause accessibility problems Framing Policy Technical solutions available (HTML code to remove frames) but: May be services which use frames sensibly (e.g. cataloguing interface for subject gateways) Could cause accessibility problems

11. 11 Fusion Sites An aggregation / fusion Web site may contain portions of Web sites http://my.netscape.com/ Accepted Reuse You will expect parts of your Web site to appear within remote services: In search engines In archiving services (Alexa) In offline browsers In caches … Accepted Reuse You will expect parts of your Web site to appear within remote services: In search engines In archiving services (Alexa) In offline browsers In caches …

12. 12 Conclusions What conclusions have we reached?