HEROES AND CHIMERAS: A SEARCH FOR ELECTRONIC CITATION STANDARDS AND THE DISCOVERY OF SUCCESS THROUGH NEVER-ENDING FAILURE

摘要

The failure of Web sites to continue to function properly as they grow is a common and natural phenomenon. In Web sites, as in other human constructions, new forms arise when something must be done to correct the shortcomings of what were once improvements. The Office of National Drug Control Policy site contains extensive resources, including drug use data, press releases, publications, program descriptions, and policy papers. As the site has continued to grow, however, its resources have become increasingly hard to access. The Publications section began falling short of its objectives as a result of 1) the constraining nature of a flat list of publications, 2) the infeasibility of implementing a nonflat solution at the time of the original design, 3) a lack of adequate citation standards, with a tolerance for ad hoc standards, and 4) a site maintenance workflow that placed the burden of document cataloging on the HTML coder. A review of electronic citation standards, metadata initiatives, and strategies for displaying publications data informed the redesign of the Publications section. A database back end was developed to allow documents to be retrieved and sorted by multiple topics and secondary elements. Consistent citation is achieved through the standard imposed by the data entry utility. The user interface has been designed to facilitate topic-based browsing of the resources and provide a visually coherent display of query results. Failure, when used as an agent for change, is the Web manager's ally in support of ongoing Web site growth and metamorphosis.