It Keeps Sucking Us Back In…

Every time we go to delete the blog, we find something so mortifying that we just have to share.  Can you find the misspelling on this announcement?  It’s just promoting a visit by Camila Alire, President of the American Library Association, so it’s not that embarrassing…

http://www.pratt.edu/calendar/view/camila_alire_president_of_ala_is_giving_a_talk_february_9th_2010_at_500_pm_/

New Site

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

The Thing That Made My Eyeballs Bleed Today

Go to the Pratt SILS site. Click on Mission. Prepare yourself for typos, rampant run-on sentences, a broken link and a cacophonous layout.

Seriously, take away all of the design issues for a minute. Please, for the love of God, proofread! It would be unacceptable to hand-in a paper that looked like this. Why is it acceptable for the public face of Pratt SILS to be riddled with typos and incomprehensible sentences?

A Contest

Can you find the typo on the Visit Us: Open Houses page? It may be a little hard to locate, since your eyes could start bleeding, but give it a shot.

pratt.edu/%7Einfosils/openhouse.html

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

The Thing That Made My Eyeballs Bleed Today – Reader Contribution

Thank you to one of our dear readers who noted the “ridiculously out of context” pictures of students and their tattoos. I know they are Pratt SILS students and even why photos of their tattoos were taken at School. Unfortunately for us all, no one else does. No explanation is given, the students aren’t even named and, quite frankly, this isn’t the place for the pictures inclusion. The whole page looks bizarre and sloppy. I guess this is the Dean getting edgy and Web 2.0?

Good thing she’s not interested in any feedback from the actual students! Too bad no one has offered to completely overhaul the site! Oh wait. Yes, they have. Well, Tula probably knows best. Just look at the Student page for proof.

The Thing That Made My Eyeballs Bleed Today

There’s still a link to the PULSE program.

It actually says “Spring 07.”

Do they know:

that the PULSE program has ended? or what year it is?

Out of date and misleading information does a disservice to the school, to the faculty, and to both current and prospective students.