Skip to main content
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • ’Cuse Conversations Podcast
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
STEM
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • University Statements
  • Syracuse University Impact
  • |
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
Sections
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • University Statements
  • Syracuse University Impact
  • |
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • ’Cuse Conversations Podcast
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
STEM

Small awarded grant to redesign web evaluation tools

Wednesday, August 8, 2012, By News Staff
Share
School of Information Studies

School of Information Studies (iSchool) faculty member Ruth Small received a $21,800 SPARKS! Ignition Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to redesign the Website Motivational Analyis Checklist (WebMAC).

smallOriginally designed in 1999, WebMAC has seven web site evaluation instruments used by teachers, librarians and web designers. Due to great technology changes over the past several years, WebMAC users needed a free, automated and web-friendly tool to use in order to evaluate website content more effectively.

Working alongside Professor of Practice Marilyn Arnone, information management graduate student Ryan Backus and library and information science graduate student Julianne Wise, Small will create, deploy and evaluate a redesigned WebMAC to help students, educators and school librarians critically evaluate web-based information resources for class assignments using new metrics and additional reporting functions.

Because the redesign idea was originally conceived by Backus and Wise, Small is providing these students with the financial support and opportunity to expand the project. “We are so excited about this grant because it allows us to reward students who show initiative and demonstrate their motivation and creativity,” says Small.

SPARKS! Ingition Grant projects are expected to test and evaluate specific innovations that will facilitate the ways in which libraries operate and the services they provide. With this one-year project, Small hopes to create a web-friendly and interactive tool that will encompass a broader sense of evaluation. “We are thrilled to be able to revise and automate a valuable and popular web resource evaluation instrument and make it freely available to librarians, educators and others who will use it themselves or teach others to use it,” says Arnone.

Small is a founding director of the Center for Digital Literacy at SU, an interdisciplinary, collaborative research and development center partnering the iSchool, School of Education and S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, to understand the impact of information, technology and media literacies on children and adults and the impact of these literacies on people, organizations and society. As a Laura J. & L. Douglas Meredith Professor and director of the iSchool’s nationally ranked school media program, she has received two national research awards for her scholarly work, the 2001 Carroll Preston Baber Research Award from the American Library Association and the 1997 Highsmith Research Award from the American Association of School Librarians.

  • Author

News Staff

  • Recent
  • 2 Whitman Students Earn Prestigious AWESOME Scholarship
    Tuesday, June 17, 2025, By News Staff
  • Whitman’s Johan Wiklund Named a Top Scholar Globally for Business Research Publications
    Tuesday, June 17, 2025, By Caroline K. Reff
  • Katsitsatekanoniahkwa Destiny Lazore ’26 Receives Prestigious Udall Scholarship
    Tuesday, June 17, 2025, By Jen Plummer
  • WiSE Hosts the 2025 Norma Slepecky Memorial Lecture and Undergraduate Research Prize Award Ceremony
    Friday, June 13, 2025, By News Staff
  • Inaugural Meredith Professor Faculty Fellows Announced
    Friday, June 13, 2025, By Wendy S. Loughlin

More In STEM

WiSE Hosts the 2025 Norma Slepecky Memorial Lecture and Undergraduate Research Prize Award Ceremony

This spring, Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) held its annual Norma Slepecky Memorial Lecture and Award Ceremony. WiSE was honored to host distinguished guest speaker Joan-Emma Shea, who presented “Self-Assembly of the Tau Protein: Computational Insights Into Neurodegeneration.” Shea…

Endowed Professorship Recognizes Impact of a Professor, Mentor and Advisor

Bao-Ding “Bob” Cheng’s journey to Syracuse University in pursuit of graduate education in the 1960s was long and arduous. He didn’t have the means for air travel, so he voyaged more than 5,000 nautical miles by boat from his home…

Forecasting the Future With Fossils

One of the most critical issues facing the scientific world, no less the future of humanity, is climate change. Unlocking information to help understand and mitigate the impact of a warming planet is a complex puzzle that requires interdisciplinary input…

ECS Professor Pankaj K. Jha Receives NSF Grant to Develop Quantum Technology

Detecting single photons—the smallest unit of light—is crucial for advanced quantum technologies such as optical quantum computing, communication and ultra-sensitive imaging. Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) are the most efficient means of detecting single photons and these detectors can count…

Rock Record Illuminates Oxygen History

Several key moments in Earth’s history help us humans answer the question, “How did we get here?” These moments also shed light on the question, “Where are we going?,” offering scientists deeper insight into how organisms adapt to physical and…

Subscribe to SU Today

If you need help with your subscription, contact sunews@syr.edu.

Connect With Us

  • X
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
Social Media Directory

For the Media

Find an Expert Follow @SyracuseUNews
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
  • @SyracuseU
  • @SyracuseUNews
  • Social Media Directory
  • Accessibility
  • Privacy
  • Campus Status
  • Syracuse.edu
© 2025 Syracuse University News. All Rights Reserved.