My name is Amelia Luzzi, and I manage the web content for student support at a UK university. Since “student support” covers 15 websites over 9 departments, and each department has its own idiosyncratic approach to site content, a better description of my job is: I herd cats. And I blog about it when I have the time.

My days are mostly spent educating staff members about websites and online tools; anything from training staff on wikis to persuading directors to mention the website in their plans for the service. Yesterday I showed Google Calendar to a colleague as a way of putting together a cross-university Fresher’s calendar. A week ago I presented a service-wide web strategy to our senior managers. Today I produced one-page guidelines on writing for the web in response to a staff request. I’ve only been here six months, but I can see people’s attitude towards the web change from “I don’t get it” to “oh, look, I can do it, and it’s useful”.

Being a librarian by trade and training stands me in good stead now. The look of the site isn’t under my department’s control (there’s a University-wide template for pages) so I help people focus on improving the quality and relevance of their content. As an information professional I have the expertise and tools to do that.

I also carry over from my library days the idea that students (or other end-users) are really important, and we should probably make our websites useful to them. Even small projects – persuading departments to let students sign up for workshops online – have had tremendously positive response from students.

I put work hard at advocating the web as a great way of connecting with students. I am proud of the results I achieve with even simple projects, and prouder still that I communicate my enthusiasm for the web to other staff, who are beginning to develop their own ideas. This is what being a Shover and Maker means to me – not just doing stuff, but pushing other people to try it for themselves.