Web Committee Annual Report 2018

submitted by Ray Heigemeir, Chair, and Katie Buehner

Current Roster

• Ray Heigemeir, Chair
• Paul Cary
• Vaughan Hennen
• Stephen Henry
• Jason Imbesi
• Amy Jackson
• Kerry Mastellar
• Abbey Thompson
• Katie Buehner, Ex-officio
• Elizabeth Hille Cribbes, Ex-officio
• Janelle West, Ex-officio
• Joshua Henry, Ex-officio
• Tracey Rudnick, Ex-officio

List of Previous Goals and Progress Made

• MLA Conference website
  • Wordpress proved an able platform for the 2018 conference website, so the Web Committee and MLA will continue to use it for future conferences. Current and past conference websites will exist at http://conferences.wp.musiclibraryassoc.org/, with old conference websites condensed and housed under a “Previous Conferences” menu.
  • The 2019 conference website will host all conference content, including the “apped” program. MLA will use Sched to deliver online program content in lieu of Guidebook in 2019, following the recommendations of the Program Workflow Task Force.
  • MLA purchased a subscription to Booked, an online scheduler, to facilitate the scheduling of the conference program. Program Chair Anne Shelley is the primary user of the software, though Web Manager Katie Buehner would like to explore creating user accounts for all presenters, which would allow them to update speakers and abstracts without going through the Program Chair.
• Fiscal Policies Handbook
  • Paul Cary has completed the migration of the Fiscal Policies Handbook from pdf to HTML website. The Handbook will be available on the MLA website in August 2018.
• LibGuides
  • The Web Committee and Manager recommended that MLA shutter its subscription to LibGuides in favor of building guides in Wordpress, and the Board approved this recommendation. The Committee and Manager will work to offload the five guides in LibGuides to Wordpress before the subscription renewal date in Spring 2019.
• CMC Wordpress Migration Pilot
  • Web Manager Katie Buehner and CMC Web Editor Elizabeth Hille Cribbs are working with incoming CMC Web Editor Josh Henry to transfer all CMC web content from YM to Wordpress. The Web Manager is handling development of Wordpress tools to manage CMC site functions, while the CMC Editors are working hard to transfer content into the system. Target date for transfer completion is by the end of 2018.
• Chapter website migrations
  • Mountain Plains and Pacific Northwest have both microsite templates in YM. Mountain Plains has transferred all content and is waiting on enacting of their chapter blog in Wordpress, which was stalled due to YM’s migration to Amazon Web Services and the wresting away of DNS record control from MLA (supposedly temporary). The only remaining unmigrated chapters are SEMLA and New England.
• Video captioning in Amara
  • The Web Committee requested volunteers to help caption MLA videos using Amara. The Committee received 20 responses to its call for volunteers. It is in the process of creating training materials and assigning videos to volunteers.
• Other Wordpress initiatives
  • The MLA Board requested that the Web Manager explore Wordpress as a platform for the hosting of the MLA Directory. The Web Manager believes that this is, in fact, possible. The Manager is preparing a prototype of this option to show to the Board no later than the 2019 meeting in St. Louis.

List of Future Goals

• To continue complete migration of administrative documents, committees, chapters, and other groups as appropriate to YM microsites and Wordpress sites
• To expand accessibility of MLA’s online content, with particular focus on captioning for archived conference videos.
  • 2015 Action: Initiate an internal Archival network.
• To build a sustainable model of maintenance and development for all MLA websites.
  • 2015 Action: Objective 1: Develop and sustain the resources to ensure the vitality of the Association, its programs and services. Objective 2: Improve access to information by and about the Association to meet  the needs of members and other interested parties.