The authors of academic library home pages: their identity, training and dissemination of Web construction skills

This article reports on a study designed to identify the authors of academic library home pages and to investigate the nature of their training and their use of newly-acquired Web design skills. The major finding of the study is that librarians more often than non-librarians are assuming the responsibility for writing home pages for academic libraries in very large public colleges and universities. In addition to professional identity, factors such as length of service to an institution, current job title, and prior education play a role in determining the likelihood that an individual will write the home page for his or her employing library. Learning the skills needed to write a home page requires time for training. Institutional support for training is considered vital and well worth the investment because training is very often disseminated beyond the home page authors. Teaching others Web construction skills is one of the ways library home page authors most frequently apply their newly acquired abilities.