Julian Richards: 30 years of the University website

What was your role in setting up the University of York website? 

At the time my role was IT lead in the Archaeology department. As a department, Archaeology championed putting course information onto our existing Information Server so I was approached to act as a representation for academic departments when this project began. I helped Archaeology to migrate their course content onto the website, providing an example for other departments on how the website would look and work.  

Websites were a relatively new thing when the UoY website launched. How much did you know about them before you were approached to be the academic representative?

I had a little bit of awareness, York was quite early on in setting up the website, but as I had a background in IT I was aware of how IT was developing. Creating our own University of York website was exciting. All the course material which we wanted to include had to be hand coded in HTML, this was the first time I’d done this. I think there was a rudimentary HTML editor. Some academics may have  struggled with this hand coding but support from Professional Support Staff was available. I found that the majority of colleagues in Archaeology liked getting their hands dirty and playing with the code.

What did academics think about the idea of creating a University of York website? 

People had got used to the idea of putting information online (with the Information Service) so they welcomed the opportunity for this information to be more accessible via a website. The website was largely seen as an internal tool at first. Only through time did the University realise it could be used externally to promote the organisation. Academics (in Archaeology) were enthusiastic about the launch of the website. It helped us go from using paper handouts to having our content online, this both made what was being taught to our students more transparent and increased accessibility. Gradually having course content online took off with other departments too.

How was the website received when it was first launched?

It was seen as a really positive move, the University has always been good at keeping ahead with IT developments. This project was very much a whole University activity, it required a lot of effort from departments as they were all required to have some sort of web presence. 

The University was ahead of many businesses and even governments with the launch of YorkWeb (the original name of the website). This was a time when not everything was online as it is now, so the University really was pioneering. YorkWeb was set up before Google was launched so even finding things online was hard. No undergraduates had computers so they relied on computer classrooms to use YorkWeb.

It was a pedagogical change for Archaeology, as all our course content was online we had to introduce students to using the internet in their first week. I think a byproduct of this was that it meant our students were computer literate which employers were just starting to look for as a skill. 

Find out more about how YorkWeb was set up in our interview with Mike Brudenell.