WEBMASTERS COMMITTEE MEETING MINUTES

September 12 , 2006

Present: Jamie Bethel, Tom Harmon, Charlie Kerlee, Jill Lenz, Erin Napier, Linda Tarnoff, Sallie Varner. Guests JoEllen Linderer, Development Office, and Ken Blehm, Assoc. Dean for Undergraduate Education.

Erin Napier began the meeting at 9:10 a.m.

New Business

1. CVMBS 100th Anniversary in 2007 - JoEllen Linderer, Development Office. JoEllen distributed the CVMBS 100th Year Anniversary PR/Promotions Tool Kit to interested attendees as part of the internal publicity campaign. Contents include stickers, a disk with electronic versions of the anniversary logo and more for CVMBS staff to use on correspondence or other items; for example the 100th anniversary logo was used on the PVM lecture notes CD this fall.
   
   The external publicity campaign includes a year of special events such as alumni reunions at conventions, a traveling exhibit at conferences, and something special for normally scheduled events such as the VTH Open House and PVM graduation. Promotional items include pen lights, banners to borrow and mugs are on order.
   
   A website has been created at http://www.cvmbs.colostate.edu/development/100yearcelebration.cfm which explains the college's history and progression of buildings on campus. An events calendar is available at http://www.cvmbs.colostate.edu/development/100yearcalendar.cfm.
   
   Discussion followed about adding this to the college home page, maybe add a flyout under the "Development" left-hand navigation link, maybe add the logo and a link to Development to the "In The News" section and publicize the special events in this area, too, maybe reorganize the items in the columns such as moving "In the News" to the bottom left quadrant and shortening the South Campus verbiage to a single line as a bullet point, adding a key story above and links to the 3 departmental newsletters at the bottom (see item #4 below), maybe adding an "Upcoming Events" category for activities in the next month. Tom Harmon and Erin Napier will work on these suggestions.
   
   JoEllen said their intern is collecting stories from the past 100 years if you have any to share, please contact JoEllen.
   
2. Undergraduate Commencement Information on College webpage - Ken Blehm, Assoc. Dean of Undergraduate Education. Ken distributed a 2 1/2 page copy of the Fall 2006 graduation instructions that he would like posted on the web, avoiding duplication of general info listed on the http://commencement.colostate.edu/ site such as hotel info, and linked from the college home page in an easy to find place, but where?
   
   Ideas included the "In The News" section during peak times (Oct-Dec and Feb-May) and moved down under the Insight logo during non-peak times, links on department pages to "commencement" and the "Students" page. This brought up the question, what about graduate and DVM commencement, may need a new page created. Initially the U.G. commencement page will be a .pdf file then an html page later. Ken will work with Linda on creating the page and hopes to have it live soon as he is already getting questions about December undergraduate graduation.
3. e-Insight and Insight Magazine links on CVMBS Homepage - Erin Napier. Many are confused on the difference between the two as explained on the Insight and E-Insight home page at http://www.cvmbs.colostate.edu/insight/. Suggestions include to break them up somehow, possibly into two columns, only display one year's worth of issues, add a link to an archives or "Previous Years" page to be created that would display the rest of the issues, remove the "HTML" designation, make the month name the link instead, and keep the PDF and size information. Jill will pass these suggestions along to Carol Borchert, the owner of the Insight web pages and report her response back to the committee.
4. Links to Department Newsletters on CVMBS Homepage - Erin Napier. Currently MIP and ERHS have departmental newsletters, and BMS will have one in 2 weeks (Clinical Sciences doesn't publish a newsletter at this time). Links for each are proposed to be on the College home page, but where? It was agreed there would be a bulleted list to the three department newsletters at the bottom of the "In The News" section.
5. New CSU web logos available at: http://graphicstandards.colostate.edu/index.asp?page=download_logos_web . Here's the June 2, 2006 email that announced this change.

   Colleagues,
   
   Please be informed that the University is retiring the tagline, “Knowledge to Go Places.”
   
   Five years ago, the university instituted the “Knowledge to Go Places” marketing/branding campaign that required the application of the tagline on all communications to promote and track general awareness of
   CSU.
   
   I am pleased to report that the effort was largely successful. During the five-year period, survey respondents who said they were either “somewhat aware” or “very aware” of the University rose to 96% statewide, the highest level ever.
   
   Though such progress is gratifying, everything must eventually come to an end, and such is the case now for “Knowledge to Go Places.” The University is working on a new branding effort and it is the decision of leaders of this effort and administration that the tagline be allowed to quietly fade away. There will be no replacement in the foreseeable future.
   
   Accordingly, please discontinue putting the “Knowledge to Go Places” tagline on university publications, websites, advertisements, signage or any other communications.
   
   Departments and units may use up existing publications before instituting the change on new ones. Most other communications may gradually be changed over with the intended goal of retiring the tagline completely by the beginning of the fall semester, 2006.
   
   The university main page and many other major entryways onto the colostate.edu domain have already been changed or will be by July 1. Other websites should follow the goal of retiring the tagline by the beginning of the fall semester.
   
   Thank you,
   
   Mark Minor, Director, Communications and Creative Services, phone: (970) 491-6432

   Note that the logos are now in .PSD format and require a little more work than in the past. You will need to have a program that can open Photoshop files to be able to use these logos and convert them to a web-ready format. If you have questions or problems, contact chris.weller@colostate.edu.
6. Discussion - Update of college brochure at http://www.cvmbs.colostate.edu/cvmbs/brochure/ - Linda Tarnoff.
   
   To do - While Linda maintains a majority of these pages, each department and the Diagnostic Lab's webmaster need to review their respective pages for content updates and make changes as needed. Tom will make sure these webmasters have access to these files.
7. Discussion - permission to use photos of people on the web - Sallie Varner.
   
   According to Jill's web design workshop materials, the "CSU Web Site Requirements, Guidelines, and User Responsibilities" used to have the following bullet point "Photos of people, including Colorado State University faculty, staff, and students, should not be used without express written permission from the subject or a parent or guardian." Back in the early 2000's, this was listed under the "requirements" section, then moved to the "guidelines" section in 2003, and at this meeting we see it was dropped entirely.
   
   Many of our webmasters have made the effort to get written permission for photos on the web and we wondered if we need to continue or disregard this practice now. Jill will check with the contact on the web page, Mark Minor from Communications and Creative Services (formerly University Relations until July 2006) and Sallie will check with University Legal Council.
   
   Addendum to this topic - Sallie and Jill
   
   After the meeting Sallie had a couple of conversations with the University Legal Council office who directed her to contact Communications and Creative Services, who sent her questions on to Mark Minor who sent her the same reply as Jill received (see below).  Although this seems still a bit vague in Sallie's opinion, it will have to do for now.
   
   

   Sallie,
   
   I am not a lawyer, but this came up just last week and the university’s legal counsel was consulted, so I will give you my understanding of the situation. The university has no set policy regarding the use of photos of individuals in university publications, web sites, promotions, etc. because to create such a policy would create an enormous and costly legal responsibility to university entities that use photos.
   
   Instead, CCS takes the position that the university has the right to promote its programs, etc. and that includes some use of the images of individuals who are students, employees or individuals that have voluntarily chosen to take part in university activities. The distinction of what qualifies as fair use lies mainly in only publishing pictures of individuals taken in public settings (i.e. in class, on the oval, at a football game, those individuals have no "expectation of privacy" because they are in a public setting.
   
   If, however, you are publishing a story about one particular individual and you take their picture in their dorm room or office or some other space where one would reasonably assume some privacy, then you should seek that person's permission. If you have further questions, I would refer you to the Donna Aurand, of the university's legal counsel for clarification.
   
   Mark Minor, Director, Communications and Creative Services, phone: (970) 491-6432

   
   

The meeting concluded at 10:07 am.

The next meeting will be held on Tuesday, October 10th^th, 9:00-10:00 am, W1 A/Z.

Minutes submitted by Jill Lenz.

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