Information Architecture Internship!

Oh wait.  It’s not for Pratt SILS, you say?  It’s for Pratt’s site?  Oh.  We thought since the Dean had publicly promised a site redesign several months ago and students had already completed an IA assessment of the site in Walcyzk’s class…

Never mind.  That would all make too much sense and would not provide the Dean with her chance to give students the middle finger every time we look at the site.

By the way, have you heard about the Dean’s exciting yearly vacation in London, uh, I mean the Pratt SILS London program?  Colleagues must be tremendously impressed when they look at the SILS site and see who will be joining them to delve into e-publishing.  SSS can’t make this stuff up!

Optimism

The increasing willingness of students to openly acknowledge the problems associated with the SILS website and the growing enthusiasm for addressing the related issues has SSS feeling a little optimistic as we begin another semester (Thank you, Jessica).

Do you think Tula will work with students this semester to improve the Pratt SILS site or will she dig in and continue refusing to communicate with students and address this issue?

Wouldn’t It Be Nice?

If SSS or, more importantly, the poorly designed website and Dean Giannini’s responses were included in possible topics?  Instead, this hit SSS’s inbox today:

“Keyword is the newsletter of the Pratt SILS Student Association, also known as SILSSA, also known as YOU!

We are in need of articles, reviews, editorials, and short informative blurbs from any and all who are willing and able. Did you visit a particularly interesting library this summer? Go to ALA’s Annual Conference in Anaheim? Buy a fun new gadget you’d like to review? Maybe you’d like to comment on the librarian who was recently fired for writing a fictionalized account of her workplace, or review the newest search engine, Cuil (pronounced “cool”). Considering attending the Code4LibNYC meeting at Metro or the NYPL Performing Arts Library Reception for graduate students next week? Why not write up a short account for your fellow students?

Writing an article for Keyword is a great excuse to contact your contemporary library heroes and heroines and pester them with questions to your heart’s content–just take good notes and write it up for us! (SILSSA may even be able to help arrange for your favorite librarian, author, designer or programmer to come speak at SILS, in conjunction with an article, of course–just ask us!)

Writing for Keyword not only looks great on your resume, it also helps students share information with each other and keep abreast of developments in library and information sciences. (Not to mention getting practice at professional writing in a relatively safe environment.) If you’re interested in getting involved (and yes, we also need copyeditors), send an email to us at keyword.silssa@gmail.com. The deadline for the first issue is September 15, but don’t let that stop you! We publish every month, so if we get it a bit late for the first issue, you’ll be first in line for the second.

Yours,

Jessica SpeerEditor, Keyword
Vice President, SILSSA
keyword.silssa@gmail.com

Keyword is the newsletter for SILSSA, the Pratt School of Information and
Library Science Student Association and student chapter of the ALA.

Please visit our latest issue at http://pratt.edu/~silssa/keyword/keywod_may08_final.pdf

If you would like to contribute an article email keyword.silssa@gmail.com”

Funny how outraged SILS students are when a librarian is fired for writing a novel based on her library patrons, but there is nary a mention of the Dean’s threat of retribution if she found out which students were behind this blog.

Interesting that SILS was the subject of an entire blog post on LibraryJournal.com, but there is absolutely no call to comment on that noteworthy mention.  (Note:  the Dean’s promises in this post regarding the website)

Wouldn’t it be nice for an official, real, genuine acknowledgement that something is broken and the Dean refuses to fix it, refuses to work with students?  What is broken is the website and the Dean’s relationship with SILS students and it effects YOU.  Pitch that to Keyword.

New Site

Dean Giannini promised Library Journal (and us) a new and improved site that would be launched in June. What do you think?!?

A Response

We read with great interest Norman Oder’s post on the LJ Insider blog about Pratt SILS Site Sucks. Since SSS was not contacted for a comment, we would like to take this opportunity to respond to a few key points.

First, Pratt SILS’s website is not a “temporary” site as Dean Giannini contends. It has been online since approximately 2005 in a similar iteration and can in no way be described as temporary or transitional.

Secondly, we do not criticize the site because it’s not “pretty”. We criticize it because it is hard to use. If, as Dean Giannini says, providing “content is the most important” purpose of the site, poor information design directly impacts its effectiveness for this very purpose. This is not about wanting the Pratt SILS site to be graphically pleasing (although there is nothing wrong with that and, indeed, that does make a site more pleasant to use, which increases user satisfaction). The site is rich in content, but is a hodgepodge of poorly organized information. Websites are not intended to be brochures, as Dean Giannini contends. Rather, they should be information portals that focus on key audiences and provide that information in an effective and useful manner. In addition, sites should reflect well on the institution they represent. It is incumbent upon those who design and implement sites to make them as useful as possible.

Finally, we would like to raise a key point about the anonymity of the blog. Direct talks with Dean Giannini about the SILS site have been attempted several times, and she has always been both defensive of the site and dismissive of any offers to work with her to improve it. Many students have volunteered their time and expertise to make the site a highly useful informational tool for the school, and nothing has come of it. SSS hopes Mr. Oder will continue to follow both SSS and the Pratt SILS site. We truly hope to report, along with him, on the new, attractive, and, most importantly, usable SILS site in June. We look forward to the promised redesign, just as we looked forward to past promises. If SSS doesn’t hold its breath, don’t hold it against us.

Things That Made Us Weep Today

According to an anonymous comment, the Dean’s reaction to the creation of this site and the content of our posts was not to evaluate her design and implementation of the SILS site or to to take a hard look at the public image she has created for Pratt SILS.  No, instead Dean Giannini decided she wanted to root out the SSS rabble rousers and…do something to us.  We find it fascinating that the Dean’s response was immediately punitive, rather than reflective.  Not surprising, but certainly fascinating.

How can we discuss the core values of librarianship, including freedom of expression and privacy while the Dean of our School of Information and Library Science wants to hunt down bloggers writing about the School’s site, how it impacts students, faculty, and alumni, and how the site itself reflects an overall Luddite sensibility within the School’s administration?

Nonetheless, SSS knows Tula will not ask herself this question and posing it any other way is an exercise in futility and, apparently, dangerous to your academic (or professional?) career.  No wonder SILSA has quietly created a site that incorporates IA and stopped wasting their breath trying to convince the Dean to improve the SILS site.  No wonder they have not acted as student advocates in this regard.  Why publicly challenge Tula when she has shown she will punish those who don’t fall in line?

Duly noted, anonymous commenter and thank you for the warning.  SSS will be watching its back at the Pratt Institute School of Information and Library Science.  A sad state of affairs, no?

Where is Pratt?

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from developing this blog, it’s that the site appears to be under the total control of the dean. We have a completely embarrassing site which does nothing to sell the school to prospective students or help current ones, and yet faculty and students stay silent.

Now that the dean has floated the idea of creating a PhD program at SILS, it makes the site even more of an embarrassment. What sort of PhD candidates would we get with such a terrible site? How is the school going to become any sort of legitimate research institution without even the most basic web information standards not being followed? The current site does not lend SILS to be taken seriously.

The Thing That Made My Eyeballs Bleed Today

The latest addition to the html atrocity known as the Pratt SILS site:

OUR CAMPUS - Harnessing digital technology, we teach students to design a more usable and understandable world connecting people, information, ideas and meaning. The Master of Science in Library & Information Science prepares students as professionals in this exciting and challenging field.

Wah? I need an “embarassed” emoticon to fully illustrate how much I cringed when I saw this. Will anyone who looks at the site find this little blurb remotely credulous? I’d love to see a little digital technology harnessed to create a more usable and understandable website for Pratt SILS.

As a side note, it is interesting to SSS how people seem to feel personally about Dean Giannini. While that is not the purpose of SSS, we do believe the Pratt Institute Board of Directors and President Schutte may well want to take note of the students’ level of frustration and the Dean’s complete lack of interest, real or perceived, in listening and acting on student feedback. Great academic leaders put student and institutional needs before their own aspirations.

Pratt SILS is so depressing

How can Pratt SILS market classes like “Usability” and “Information Architecture” while simultaneously having a disastrous website and an on-line registration system that doesn’t work semester after semester? What a bait and switch. Too bad the administration, especially the Dean, are so good at talking and so bad at understanding and doing. Especially doing. No one is interested in the Dean’s long winded explanations of why she can’t do or change something. I’d like to actually see some comprehension in her eyes before she begins yet another soliloquy.

Readers – where will Pratt SILS be in the school ranking in five years under the deanship of Tula? I look forward to your predictions.

The Thing That Made My Eyeballs Bleed Today

The preponderance of photos of Tula. Is it more important to have a well-designed, strongly branded website for Pratt SILS or a place for Tula to post overly large photos of herself? Who is the face of Pratt SILS? Students? Faculty?

or