December 08 Issue - Employee Monthly Magazine

Creating portals to science

“Web lady” helps share Lab knowledge

Ann Rafferty of Communication Arts and Services. Photo by Dixon Wolf

If you’ve visited the Laboratory’s external Web page recently, you probably noticed some big changes, especially the vibrant images and more gripping content.

The woman behind the site’s compelling new look is Ann Rafferty of Communication Arts and Services (IRM-CAS), who was named a 2008 LANL Star by the Women’s Diversity Working Group. Known to many simply as “the Web lady,” Rafferty is the project lead and liaison for the Laboratory’s Corporate Web Team. As a CAS Web developer, her responsibilities include establishing a communications Web strategy for the external Web site. According to Rafferty, “that means supplying a content management system for collecting content and distributing it, developing a video and media center for the Laboratory, and enhancing search engine optimization through the Lab’s Web site.” Rafferty added that the next project she and her team are preparing for launch involves incorporating video into the Web site.

Rafferty, who has a background in the Web and design fields and holds degrees in piano performance and literature, said creating science portals on the external site allows Lab science to be widely disseminated. “I feel strongly that the Lab has important stories to share with the world,” she said. To make this sharing easier, Rafferty and her team added a more interactive element to the external Web page. It now has a large selection of text boxes and information buckets containing valuable, timely, and updated material, links to click on, and many vivid images.

Rafferty sees the Web as a valuable medium for collaboration and social networking and as a primary means of distributing information. “I enjoy being a part of helping the people at the Laboratory enrich others with our knowledge, dispelling misinformation about what the Lab is doing, and disseminating factual information about the breadth and depth of its science,” she said.

—Tatjana K. Rosev

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