New OpenScholar Website System Now Available to A&S Faculty

The Arts & Sciences Dean’s Office is pleased to announce that College faculty are now eligible to have their faculty and lab websites developed in the OpenScholar web content management system. OpenScholar will allow for the quick creation and easy management of websites that can be supported by the digital communications group in the Dean’s Office.

In February, a pilot program began with 68 A&S faculty participating. A number of those websites are now live and operational.

Maintaining an inviting and informative online presence for a scholar’s work has grown increasingly essential. Professional and lab web pages are often the first place that current and prospective students, academic colleagues, funding organizations, journalists and the general public look to learn more about you and your work.
  
OpenScholar was created with this in mind. Developed by Harvard University’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science several years ago, it has been used to create more than 9,000 websites at Harvard. Designed specifically to showcase your training, research and accomplishments to external audiences, it is now also being used extensively at Princeton, Arizona State, and a number of other universities.

Presently, we have several generations of faculty websites that have little in common regarding look, feel or functionality. Using a flexible system such as OpenScholar will allow our sites’ connections with UVA and A&S to be readily identifiable, while maintaining plenty of room for customization and personalization. The new system also ensures our sites will display well on cell phones and tablets.

In addition to our local support staff in the Dean’s Office, our arrangement provides a staffed help line for support and on-line help resources at OpenScholar.

There is no requirement that faculty must use OpenScholar. The intent and the reason for obtaining this system is to enable faculty to have an excellent online presence without requiring too much time, effort or expense. There is no cost to faculty or departments.

For further information, or to request an OpenScholar website, visit the A&S OpenScholar webpage, or contact Zach Wheat, director of digital communications.