I had the pleasure of writing a review of Mike Ellis’ brilliant book about Managing and Growing a Cultural Heritage Web Presence for LLC, you can find it online here.  It was my first book review since A-Level English Literature wibbling on about smouldering prose of Kazuo Ishiguro, so I was quite nervous about producing an academic review. They couldn’t have given me a better book to start with.

I really enjoyed reading Mike’s book, which acts as an excellent guide of best practice when it comes to managing a cultural heritage web presence, as well as providing an insight into how both large and small cultural institutions manage it themselves.   I really wish it had been written a few years ago when I was starting out at Geevor.  I really could have done with a step by step guide of good practice, because I was completely lost when I first started.  It was really nice whilst reading through to be able to flex my management muscles again and think strategically about the best ways to harness digital projects. I do miss my job at Geevor for that; I like thinking about the bigger picture, and planning and strategy. You can tell I really liked it from the multitude of post it notes sticking out of it.

The book covers everything from an audit of the current operating environment, internal context of a cultural heritage institution, how to write a web strategy document, content and web content management systems, to the social web, mobile and Open Data.  It provides a broad overview which is easy to read and impressively detailed.  I really do think anyone everyone who has anything to do with digital presence in cultural heritage should read it, whether they are new to the cultural heritage sector or not.

You can find out more about Mike’s book over on the accompanying website http://heritageweb.co.uk/book/