Because our Web site is such a prominent public face for the bureau, it is important that we make a positive impression. The site represents both the university and the State of New Mexico and as a result, we need to maintain high standards regarding the content we choose to post. Our site is a very powerful tool for easily and rapidly disseminating information to the public. This can cause problems however, because we allow content visible to the world to be posted on staff and other pages without review.
We want to encourage you to use the Web to post information about your work at the bureau. However, if you do provide content for our site, and especially if you have direct access to page editing and authorship, please take a moment to review what is and isn’t appropriate to post. There may be some things that you have not considered regarding site content. In particular:
What we should never post
- Information we don’t want public (like a home phone number)
- Partisan political content
- Controversial content outside the context of a rigorous scientific investigation.
- Copyrighted content (see below)
- Content that is being supplied from outside Web servers without express permission to do so.
- Advertising or promotion of any outside commercial product or service. Mention of a product or company is OK if it is intended as information and not promotion. For instance, describing laboratory equipment makes and models is acceptable because it is relevant to lab capabilities.
- Obscene content
Copyright
Please DO NOT post copyrighted content such as PDFs of journal articles without consulting the publisher or the SHERPA RoMEO site (http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php) regarding what is acceptable for that publication. Keep in mind that, although the bureau retains the copyright on the content of your published work, we do not own the copyright on the presentation. It is always OK to post abstracts and link to external sites for full-text articles, but that this doesn’t mean that you can copy a Web page from GeoRef or a journal site and re-post that page in its entirety on our site. Please review any such postings on your Web pages and make sure that you are not infringing on the publisher’s copyright.
Target audience and style
Most sections of our site start with pages written for a general audience and proceed to more technical material. Please keep in mind that besides our technical audience, our visitors may range from elementary school students to our congressional delegation. Because of this broad audience and our reputation as an unbiased research institution, please try to write with a politically neutral point of view, and as clearly as possible.
Staff pages
Your staff page is your opportunity to present yourself to the world and can be very useful to users trying to assess whether to contact you to ask a question, discuss a collaborative project with you, or provide you with research funding. Your page should include all of your contact information, your professional experience and education, your vita, and a brief biographical sketch that explains your interests. See other staff member pages for examples or look at the sample page at: https://geoinfo.nmt.edu/staff/homepage_sample.html It is also important for staff members to keep their pages current and up-to-date. Staff members will need website account credentials to edit their staff pages. If you are in the Headen building on a wired connection, or are using the bureau VPN, you should see a 'Staff Login' button on the top-right of our website and should be able to create new login credentials by clicking the button. Otherwise, contact the Webmaster for help setting up a login.
Personal pages
Within reason, you are free to post content regarding you, your family, or your outside interests. However, some content, like things you have for sale, is never appropriate for any pages on our site (see list above). Also, it is not appropriate to post material that will only be of interest to you and your immediate family, like a long series of family photos or naked baby pictures (even if they’re adorable). Except for egregious violations of copyright, we will not be editing individual staff pages or personal material. We may modify the formatting of your homepage, though, to make the site look more consistent.
Page structure and file size
Make an effort to structure your document so that the formatting has semantic meaning and a logical structure. Also try to make any files you place on the website, including images or downloads, as small as possible. Large downloads may time-out and fail, or visitors with slow connections will get frustrated and leave. If you must post a large file on the web, be sure to specify the size and file type near the link.
See https://geoinfo.nmt.edu/about/about-page.html for more information on page authoring.
Editorial review
Routine edits may be applied to high-visibility site pages—for clarity, style, consistency, spelling and grammar, etc. We will not make substantive changes without checking with the individual creators of that content, and we will not be editing the content of individual staff pages. The editorial staff is happy to review any page before or after it is posted.
Terms of Use, Privacy, and Accessibility
I would also draw your attention to three pages on our Web site linked to the bottom of every page. One is titled Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, which outlines our policies regarding privacy, security standards, content disclaimer, etc. The second is titled Accessibility, which discusses how our site is trying to be accessible to those with disabilities. The third is titled Copyright, which explains to our visitors that content on our site or in print is not in the public domain.
If you have questions regarding content or policy, feel free to contact either the Webmaster or the Director.