University World Wide Web policy in place

A university policy governing World Wide Web pages and other electronic publications is now in place for faculty, staff and students.

The policy was initially formulated by the WWW Task Group after many hours of research, according to Bennet George, chair of the group.

"We looked at the existing web policies of about 100 colleges and universities around the country," he explained. "We asked for comments from the university community and modifications were made before we presented it to the Information Technology Oversight Committee for their review and suggestions."

ITOC recommendations were incorporated and the final draft was presented to the Executive Council and approved.

The policy states that official Mississippi State documents on the web are official communications and electronic publications, therefore subject to the same policies and standards as print publications. The policy covers both personal and official web pages.

Official MSU pages are defined as those publicly accessible electronic documents which represent the university, colleges, departments, offices, services, or other units, as well as officially registered student, faculty or staff organizations.

Personal pages, according to the policy, are those on university computers or using an address in the university's Internet domain (msstate.edu) which are created by and represent an individual.

All official university pages must include the Mississippi State wordmark, the date of last revision, the name and an e-mail link to the person responsible for maintaining the information on the page, and a link to the university home page at http://www.msstate.edu/.

Official pages should also be constructed so persons with disabilities may obtain essential information.

Personal pages may not include any of the university's trademarked graphics, such as the walking bulldog or the wordmark. They must also conform to applicable federal and state laws and university policies and standards.

Personal pages must not be used primarily for personal business or personal financial gain and all must contain the following disclaimer: "The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page author. The content of this page have not been reviewed or approved by Mississippi State University."

"All the requirements must be met except in extremely rare cases when it's clearly inappropriate," George said. He added that the policy does not affect pages inaccessible to the public, such as those requiring a password.

The Office of University Relations is responsible for maintaining the university home page, other menu pages containing links to campus units and general information about the university.

For more information, contact George by telephoning 325-3442 or via e-mail at georgeb@ur.msstate.edu.

The World Wide Web policy is available in full at http://www.msstate.edu/web/policy.htm.