About UF Law

Web Policy


Statement of Purpose

The University of Florida Fredric G. Levin College of Law maintains a Web site to support the instructional, research, and administrative activities of the College, and to foster communication within the College community and with the greater electronic community around the world. The purpose of this site is to:

  1. Serve as an instructional resource in support of curriculum and learning.
  2. Provide information about the College of Law with clarity and accuracy to both the College community and the outside world.
  3. Provide a common point of access to networked resources for the use of students, faculty, staff, alumni, and others.
  4. Enable members of the College community to publish information in a suitable Web format, within the general guidelines which follow.

Site Management and Compliance
Policy and Procedures

Oversight. The College of Law Technology Committee oversees the policy and procedures for the College of Law Web site.

Compliance. All College of Law users agree to abide by the highest standards of responsibility to their colleagues and agree to comply with all College of Law and University policies, and with applicable state and federal laws concerning appropriate use of information technology. Non-compliance is a serious breach of University standards which may result in disciplinary and/or legal action.

Retention. Individuals and departments are responsible for adhering to the Web site retention periods required by the Florida Public Records Law. Official university Web pages are treated like e-mail and subject to the same guidelines set forth in the "UF Policy on E-mail as Public Records."

Design

Design and content organization for the College of Law Web site, including departmental and standardized faculty/staff home pages, shall be the responsibility of the College of Law Communications Office.

For reasons of effectiveness and simplicity of use, the design criteria for the College of Law pages shall include an objective of simplicity and clarity, both in graphical content and in the number and types of entries (links). The design criteria for the College home page shall include responsiveness and performance for a diverse range of user clients as a specific objective; i.e. as much as possible design and navigation should be functional for a wide range of browsers and users who have special needs.

Commercial Pages

Using UF Web pages for personal gain is not permitted. Any private commercial use of UF Web pages must be pre-approved pursuant to existing University policies and procedures regarding outside employment activities. The university may require pages involving commercial use to reside on a specific domain such as ufl.org or ufl.com. For advertising, Web page authors should be familiar with the university's policies regarding "Advertising and Donor Recognition on WWW." UF students, staff, and faculty involved in enterprises distinct from their UF role(s) are cautioned explicitly that advertising of those other enterprises via UF's Internet resources and/or the ufl.edu domain signature is prohibited.

External Links

UF accepts no responsibility for the content of pages or graphics that are linked from UF pages. However, Web page authors should consider that such links, even when clearly labeled, can be misinterpreted as being associated with the University. Links to pages where you have a personal monetary interest are likely to violate policies regarding advertising and commercial use and should be avoided.

Excessive or Disruptive Use

Excessive or disruptive use of University resources in the viewing or publishing of Web pages is not permitted. Units owning or administering the resources involved will determine whether specific usage is considered normal, excessive or disruptive.

Departmental Site Requirements

Official College of Law pages (including units, departments, offices, centers, institutes, etc.) represent the College and are intended for the official business functions of the College. "Departmental" includes programs where a faculty member, students and other contacts are involved. Department Directors, or their designee, will be responsible for periodic review and revision of the departmental Web site content, including accuracy and timeliness.

Web pages should be grammatically correct with no spelling errors. Authors are strongly encouraged to have Web page content reviewed by another party for typographical errors and similar problems before text is posted on the Web. Acronyms should be used sparingly and never as a first reference.

Each official home page must use an address that ends in ufl.edu and be registered with the University's Webmaster who will then include it as a link from the UF Web Sites page. Pages that are subdivisions of the College of Law site do not need to register independently.

Departmental and standardized employee pages, will be formatted into the Collegewide design and will incorporate University of Florida requirements for approved graphics, mandatory information, etc. These pages will be maintained and formatted by the Communications Office.

 The following information must be readily accessible on each main page:

Faculty, Staff, Student, and Organization Site Requirements

NOTE: Creators of original material should post an explicit notice of copyright.

Faculty and Staff Pages

Employee pages represent the individual in his or her primary role as a UF employee. Faculty and Staff who wish to publish personal information not related to their University functions should use an Internet service provider rather than using university Web resources.  Standardized pages for all faculty and professional staff will be posted and maintained on the College of Law site by the Communications Office, with content approved by individual faculty/staff. Those pages will include a link to independent Web sites created and maintained by faculty/staff at the request of those individuals. Faculty and Staff who wish to post additional College of Law related material will be permitted 10Mb of space on the College of Law server. This limit may be reviewed for possible expansion as needed.

Additional sites, independent of the College of Law site, may be established on university accounts. Individual Web pages authored by faculty are subject to the policies in UFRFC-8, to the provisions of the Faculty Handbook, and to the provisions of the individual's employment contract. Individual Web pages authored by staff (A&P, USPS, OPS) are subject to the policies in "UFRFC-8" and to the provisions of the individual's employment contract.

Student Pages

Personal pages representing an individual as a private person are permitted for students only. Space for these pages is available on University servers, not the College of Law servers. UF students, staff, or faculty interested in establishing a home page may contact the university Help Desk at 392-HELP (392- 4357) or via E-mail to ufhelp@nervm.nerdc.ufl.edu for advice. Suggested content for student pages would include resume, contact information, writing sample, etc. Keep in mind that potential employers may look at the page. Student organizational Web pages and student individual pages are subject to "UFRFC-8" and to the policies in the UF Student Handbook.

Organizations and Other Groups

Organization pages represent recognized organizations, clubs, associations, sororities, fraternities, workgroups and committees affiliated with the University and must comply with university Web policies. Student organization Web pages are subject to the same regulations as student pages (see above.) Authors of student pages in either category (organization, individual) are accountable to the Office of Student Affairs. Extra-curricular organization sites are to be housed on CIRCA, grove accounts.  Co-curricular organizations have the option of housing their sites on CIRCA, grove accounts or on the College of Law server.  Creation and maintenance of all student organizational sites is the responsibility of the individual student organizations.  The College of Law site will maintain a set of links to student organization Web pages.

Universitywide Preferred Practices

Each UF document contributed or linked to UF CWIS (Campuswide Information Services) services should have its mandatory contributor data (document author, reviser, or manager, as appropriate) displayed clearly, either at the end of the document or as a direct link to those data. Where date of update could be helpful to users (e.g. to show development of the contents of a document), contributors are encouraged to post the date of the original as well.

For html documents, an explicit button for an action is preferable, if appropriate, in context. If a clickable word or phrase in a sentence is used, it is preferable to highlight that word or phrase by formatting and not depend solely on colors (underscoring in monochrome). The practice of embedding the clickable word "here" in text is discouraged strongly.

Stubs to intended destinations which supposedly or actually are under construction should not be activated for use until enough construction has been completed to provide something useful. A mere announcement that construction is under way is not useful.

Photographs, complex graphics, video clips, audio clips and other elements which require time-consuming loads should not be compulsory parts of usage of a document. When large graphics or A/V files are used, these should be user-selected options, e.g. "Click on this button for a message from our Director". Graphical and sound elements should have relevancy to official content.

Whenever a UF document is created or amended substantially, consideration should be given to posting an explicit notice of copyright. Similar consideration should be given to the posting of a disclaimer (for example, of warranty) for material (for example, shareware) which others might use with unintended or unexpected results. Model disclaimers are available from the UF home page.

Because WWW documents and other CWIS documents are easily obtained and often appealing, all members of the UF community are reminded that all of the usual laws and standards associated with intellectual property, copyright, citation, plagiarism, etc. apply just as much to these documents as hard-copy versions. If a document belonging to someone else is appealing, the preferred practice is to link to it. If one wishes to copy it for reuse or for purpose of alteration, then the express, prior permission of the document owner(s) must be obtained. Evidence of such permission should be retained by the receiver.

Related Links

Sources

February 20, 2008.

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