Newsletter of the Biological Survey of Canada (Terrestrial Arthropods)

Volume 25 No. 2, Fall 2006


 

Web Site Notes
General information and editorial notes

News and Notes:

Bio-Blitz 2006

Canadian Journal of Arthropod Identification

Summary of the Scientific Committee meeting

Project Update: Briefs and Similar Documents Prepared by the BSC

Lost Collections – Fate or Fault

The Quiz Page

Canadian Perspectives: Life-cycle Types in the Arctic

Web site notes

Arctic Corner

Update on some Insect Biodiversity Activities in the Arctic during 2006

Invertebrate Community Structure in Lakes of the Central Canadian Arctic

Selected future conferences

Quips and Quotes

Requests for Material or Information Invited

 

The web site of the Biological Survey has undergone a face lift. Although the site is continuously updated it was time to implement an overall redesign. The former look of our web site was created in 2000 (although the Survey had a simpler web site for a few years prior to that). Over the years we continued to add content to the site to the point where the menu structure had become unwieldy, where the route to sub-pages was not always clear and where the meaning of some titles — as necessarily abbreviated in the original format — were not easily understood. Running the web site is only one of the tasks of the Survey Secretariat and therefore ease of maintenance was a consideration. For example, the former menu was graphical in nature and more difficult to update than the current text-based menu.

Highlights of the changes include:

•The new menu aims for a more logical grouping and most options are given to the user at a glance.

•The page layouts were simplified and made more functional.

•Each page has a similar look (menu and title graphic) which provides a ‘brand’ to the site but also is easier to maintain.

•The titles of some pages have hopefully been made more intuitive. For example:

-‘Annotated List of Workers’ becomes ‘Database of Entomologists’

-‘The First 25 years’ (originally a document prepared for an operational review) has been edited to become ‘Overview’ (an overview of the BSC)

-Faunal Analysis Project becomes ‘Numbers of species’

-Request for Material or Information’ becomes ‘Specimens Sought’

•The home page has less introductory text and space is now devoted to news or other project highlights.

•A section on ‘Information for Students’ has been added to provide a home for information on the BSC postgraduate scholarship and to highlight the BSC brief on funding sources for graduate students in arthropod biodiversity

•Some streamlining was done. For example, the short page about the Biological Survey Foundation was removed and the information included on the ‘Overview’ page; and the seldom-used ‘Site Map’, ‘What’s New’ and ‘Order Form’ pages were removed.

•The publications page has been simplified so that scientific monographs are listed chronologically rather than in the former groupings (Monograph series, Taxonomic series, Other).

•A new search engine provided by the popular Google software was installed.

•‘Important notices’ (those necessary legal notices) were removed from the home page and put on a separate page.

•Text throughout the site was edited and updated.

The web site continues to be maintained also in a parallel French version.

The BSC web site is at: www.biology.ualberta.ca/bsc/bschome.htm
(English)

and

www.biology.ualberta.ca/bsc/cbchome.htm
(français)

 

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