Quality Assurance For Museum Web Sites: Review

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Quality Assurance For Museum Web Sites Review

• Brian Kelly
• UKOLN
• University of Bath
• Bath, BA2 7AY

Email B.Kelly_at_ukoln.ac.uk URL http//www.ukoln.ac.
uk/
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About UK Web Focus / UKOLN

• UK Web Focus
• Advisory service based at UKOLN
• Provides advice and support to the Higher and
  Further Education communities and (since August
  2003) the UK cultural heritage sector
• Provided by Brian Kelly
• Project manager for JISC's QA Focus work
• UKOLN
• Centre of expertise in digital information
  management
• Funded by JISC and Resource
• Based at University of Bath

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The Need For QA

• There is a growing need for quality assurance
  (QA) procedures for Web sites to ensure that Web
  sites
• Work
• Function correctly in a range of environments
• Are widely accessible
• Are future-proofed
• Comply with legislation (e-GIF, accessibility, )
  and appropriate guidelines and best practices

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The Importance Of Standards

• Open standards are needed
• To avoid platform dependencies
• To avoid application dependencies
• To support preservation strategies
• To facilitate interoperability
• But
• Standards may be difficult to use
• It may be difficult to choose appropriate
  standards
• Checking compliance with standards can be
  difficult

There is a need for advice
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The Need For Advice

• Web development communities can benefit from
  advice
• Covering choice of standards
• Covering compliance checking procedures
• Covering other aspects of best practices
• Which is informed by the community culture,
  resources,

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QA Focus

• QA Focus
• Funded by JISC to support a number of JISC's
  digital library programmes
• Based at UKOLN and AHDS
• Is developing a QA methodology and producing
  support materials
• Methodology and materials are available for use
  by other sectors, providing acknowledgements given

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QA Focus Advice

• QA Focus briefing documents
• Brief, focussed
• Cover standards, best practices and compliance
  checking
• Areas include Web, digitisation and standards,
  with metadata, software development and service
  deployment being written
• See lthttp//www.ukoln.ac.uk/qa-focus/documents/br
  iefings/gt

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QA Focus Case Studies

• QA Focus case study documents
• Brief, focussed
• Describe approaches taken by projects to
  deployment of standards and best practices
• Areas include Web, digitisation and standards,
  with metadata, software development and service
  deployment being written
• See lthttp//www.ukoln.ac.uk/qa-focus/documents/ca
  se-studies/gt

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Quality Control vs Quality Assurance

• What we often do
• Respond to problem reports
• Run checks when new Web site launched
• Quality Control
• Run checks (possibly on ad hoc basis)
• Spot errors
• Fix them
• Quality Assurance
• Document policies
• Systematic checking of compliance with policies
• Documented audit trails
• Fix workflow process which caused error

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QA Focus Methodology

• A QS Focus methodology is being developed
• Aims at being lightweight and usable by community
• Seeks to be seen as beneficial to developers and
  not something which is imposed by an external
  body
• Based on well-established QA principles

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QA Focus Policy Example (1)

• QA Policy Web Standards
• The Web site will be based on XHTML 1.0 and CSS
  2.0.
• The Web site will use PHP to merge XHTML
  fragments into an XHTML template
• The Web site will access a backend database,
  which also uses XHTML
• Authors should use an HTML editor which does not
  create proprietary extensions or inhibit use of
  clean XHTML. HTML-kit is recommended.
• Resources derived from MS Word/PowerPoint need
  not be updated to valid XHTML.

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QA Focus Procedure Example (1)

• QA Procedures Web Standards
• When creating or updating resources the ,validate
  tool should be used
• When creating or updating stylesheets or
  embedding stylesheets in HTML resources the
  ,cssvalidate tool should be used
• At least quarterly a recursive validation of the
  Web site should be carried out using ,rvalidate
  
• An audit trail of the quarterly survey should be
  published and comments provided on any problems

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QA Focus Policy Example (2)

• QA Policy Links
• Internal links within the Web site should always
  work
• Links to remote sites should work when page
  created
• Links to key remote resources should be fixed if
  broken
• Links in 'publications' need not be fixed if
  resources allow it, broken links may be flagged.

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QA Focus Procedure Example (2)

• QA Procedure Links
• When creating or updating resources the
  ,checklink tool should be used
• At least quarterly a recursive link check of the
  Web site should be carried out using ,rchecklink
• An audit trail of the quarterly survey should be
  published and comments provided on any problems

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Any Questions?