Purpose and status: The World Wide Web (WWW) is an important electronic publication medium. This policy statement is intended to promote appropriate use of this medium which enhances the mission of UW-L by clarifying responsibilities of authors and promoting accurate, useful, and attractive publications. The guidelines in this policy statement are based on work by a volunteer task group and formulated here as a working draft. They should be flexibly interpreted and applied, and are open to revision in the light of experience and comments.*

1. Scope: This policy applies to publication of UW-L information on the Internet and specifically to WWW publication (information accessible by HTTP, Gopher, ftp and related protocols). A publication is deemed to be UW-L information for the purposes of this statement if it is (a) published on servers owned by UW-L, (b) published within the UW-L Internet domain (uwlax.edu), or (c) published elsewhere under direction or control of a UW-L department, organization, or individual, and the information is identified as UW-L information.

2. Departments and other units, including recognized student organizations, are encouraged to publish information from their units on the WWW, provided such information supports the mission of the University and does not violate articulated policies or procedures which would apply to printed publications.
Department or unit heads are responsible for the content of WWW publications of that department or unit, including the accuracy and timeliness of information provided, and links to other documents. Each WWW document from the unit must clearly indicate an e-mail address of the responsible person to contact regarding information in that document.

3. Individual faculty, students, and staff (absent objection of their department) may publish information identified as personal (typically as a "personal home page") as needed resources are available. Such publications are subject to the Guidelines for Responsible Use of Computing and Communications Facilities. These Guidelines will be used to resolve questions about or challenges to appropriateness of personal WWW publication.
Personal publications linked to a department's WWW publication, or to a campus-level directory of personal WWW publications, must be preceded with a disclaimer (that is, in the UW-L publication linking to the personal publication) stating that information in the personal publications is not official University information and that readers agree not to hold the University liable for the contents.

4. Publication standards: All WWW publications which are the electronic equivalent of a printed publication will begin with the UW-L official "masthead," which will be made available in electronic form suitable for WWW publication. In addition to the UW-L masthead the publication should also clearly identify the name, and, optionally, a graphic logo, of the unit publishing the document.
The UW-L University Relations Office (URO) will approve UW-L's "home page" - the top level WWW document representing UW-L (www.uwlax.edu) - for accuracy, consistency, currency, adherence to publication standards. Top level documents for departments or other units should follow URO guidelines. Departments and other units are encouraged to consult with URO for appropriate and effective WWW publication design.

5. Technical support: Information Technology (IT) will maintain the campus WWW server and top-level links to units' publications, whether on IT servers or elsewhere. IT will identify, evaluate, and provide technical support for software tools for the creation of WWW publication. IT staff will consult with authors on the appropriate tools for their needs and provide scheduled workshops on WWW publication.

6. Copyright: UW-L WWW publications are of course subject to copyright law. Permission is required from the owners of copyrighted material in any form to use it in a publication. Authors are encouraged to consult with the IT's Copyright Center, part of Murphy Library, concerning copyright restrictions and obtaining copyright permissions.

*Comments and questions concerning this policy statement should be addressed to the Chair of the Campus Web Committee, Debbie Veglahn <veglahn.debo@uwlax.edu> and the Chief Information Officer/Associate Vice Chancellor for Information Technology, John Tillman <tillman.john@uwlax.edu>.

Updated 12/19/2005 (MKC)