Course catalogs are a beast of a publication. The documents are traditionally printed on regular intervals and offer a complete listing of requirements and courses of study for an academic institution. For some students, these books become the bible by which their lives revolve around for 4+ years of professional education. They become a carefully studied map guiding them through the courses required to earn a very expensive piece of paper.
I followed my bulletin closely and kept a copy of it in a secure location. I would refer to it after every semester to make sure I was still on track. Sure there were minute changes, but this was a mammoth printed catalog… and acted as a binding contract between the school and the student.
As the electronic era has progressed, we’re offered new opportunities for publishing these large documents, be it PDF, HTML or even print on demand. At some point I’m sure typesetters were working on this document and it was rarely updated. At some point it was transferred to an electronic format, but still printed to paper. But recently I had the opportunity to transfer one of these large publications into an electronic format, that will hopefully become a long lasting appointment.
I’m referring to, an online course catalog or bulletin of courses. In this instance, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s graduate bulletin. Not to a PDF, but to a solely electronic based medium that will act as the permanent location of the publication.
The old file was a meticulously updated FrameMaker document, which offered some flexibility in output, but nothing to the extent required. The process took probably 3 months to complete, and went online last November to some quiet fanfare. But today, I felt one of the most gratifying moments any web developer could ask for… an end user expressed an unprovoked appreciation and testimonial of the website.
There may never come a day when someone acknowledges the revisioning features, the XCRI XML output format, the simple URL structure or the ease of editing – but after today, it was all worth it.
With that, here’s the link – I commend everyone else that has transferred one of these large publications into an online format, it is no easy task.
