Call for Proposals: Website Designer/Developer
Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations
Deadline: November 25, 2013
The
Society for Historian of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) seeks a
Website Designer/Developer to enable the organization to have a dynamic
online presence for its members
and for others interested in foreign relations and international
history.
SHAFR
promotes excellence in research and teaching in the history of U.S.
foreign relations. The organization’s mission is to promote the study,
advancement, and dissemination
of knowledge about American foreign relations. Our members work and
live in over 40 countries and in fields ranging from U.S. history, world
history, international relations, area studies, and beyond. They
include historians in colleges and universities, government
offices, archives and museums, nongovernmental organizations, and
secondary schools, as well as graduate students.
The
current SHAFR
website provides
information about the organization and its activities, and facilitates
SHAFR activities like conference registration and annual elections. It
is also an important
resource for members and others interested in foreign relations
history, with links to SHAFR publications, to teaching resources, and
occasionally to online commentary on current issues in foreign policy.
SHAFR also has a
Facebook page and is on
Twitter.
SHAFR’s
goal for a website redesign is create a site that makes SHAFR
activities and resources more easily accessible and extensively
utilized, and that is a more effective social
media presence for the organization and its members.
The
current website is powered by WordPress and uses the Event Espresso
plugin for conference registration services. It has the following
components:
·
The Home Page
has
basic information about SHAFR and links to other pages. It features
current news, including calls for papers, with an image slider for
important highlights. The new Home Page should make the full array
of site resources more apparent to all visitors, and should highlight
both SHAFR activities and commentary on current matters in foreign
policy and international affairs.
Previously
the Home Page had an opinion blog, however it fell into disuse. Some
form of dynamic display of news and commentary is needed, including,
perhaps, links to op-eds by SHAFR members that appear elsewhere. It
should be in a form that is less dependent on SHAFR bloggers and more
easily managed. Content on this page and elsewhere should be more easily
shared through social media.
•
Publications:
Diplomatic
History is
the flagship journal in the field. Its principal audience is
academics. Because foreign relations and international history informs
contemporary foreign policy, the journal is also
of interest to a broader readership. SHAFR also publishes Passport,
a newsletter with essays on scholarship and teaching, and news about the field and SHAFR members.
Diplomatic History and Passport are published by Oxford University Press, and
DH is behind a paywall.
The
new website should make information about SHAFR publications easier to
find and easily discoverable by search engines, and should make it easy
to
share links via social media. Better integration with the Oxford
University Press website is needed.
•
Research:
This section of the website has great potential, but currently has only
lists of links about archives and research funding. It should be a
central resource for scholars and others involved in international and
foreign relations research. At a minimum, materials
on this site can be reorganized so that, for example, archive
information is organized by region and country. Ideally, the site will
be interactive, enabling members to contribute content, so that
researchers can share their experiences, offer advice, and
perhaps network with each other.
•
Teaching:
This section should be a primary resource for instructors of foreign
relations/international history on the college and university level, and
for secondary school teachers who are seeking to enrich their
classrooms. The current site has links to course syllabi
and some primary sources for course use.
The
revised site should be reorganized. The main Teaching page should
include an introduction and links to sub-pages with particular content.
Images
and video will be especially important to the Teaching pages. Users
should be able to perform word searches in order to find relevant
resources quickly. It should be easy to share and link to pages, and to
print individual documents on the site. If possible,
there should be an opportunity for SHAFR members to interact on the
site, perhaps to discuss teaching or comment on particular resources.
•
About SHAFR:
Other aspects of the current site (pages for Members, Governance, the
Annual Meeting, etc.) should be integrated into a new
page with information about SHAFR membership and leadership, SHAFR
election information, conference submissions, etc. Registration for the
Annual Meeting currently uses Event Expresso Plugin for WordPress and
FirstData credit card processing.
Overall, the new SHAFR website should
be more visually attractive. It should include more images; some pages should feature video;
and all aspects of the site should be easier for search engines
to find and for site visitors to share. Ideally some interactivity
should be built into the site, and moderating that content should be
easy to do. So that all aspects of the site can be
regularly updated, the site should be easy to add content to.
Timeframe: The Website Designer/Developer would work with the Committee on SHAFR and the
Web and the webmaster to create a website ready to launch by July 1, 2014.
Deadline: Proposals should be submitted
by November 25, 2013. Please include: information about your
company and/or your c.v.(s); your web design experience (including work
samples and references), and a proposed schedule. Include a budget for
up to $10,000. Submit by email to: Mary L. Dudziak,
Emory University, Chair, Committee on SHAFR and the Web,
mary.dudziak@emory.edu. The subject line of your email should say: SHAFR Website.
