As a budding information professional I am uncomfortable with a task that demands of me to produce and publish a whole raft of false information. I asked myself how can the website be "authoritative", as stipulated by the assignment guidance, yet purport to represent an organisation that does not exist? Then I had a try at it:
- I reproduced a photograph of an existing industrial warehouse building, and inserted a Google map location, to give the impression of Chiselworks being housed in a real building at a real location. I deliberately chose a derelict building (surprising to find that in 2012 Central London), hoping for it to be vacant, so that I would not offend any inhabitants. Then I added some interior images of another, similar, building to give a feel of the inside. I would have liked to have provided a virtual tour, however, as I do not have access to a real Chiselworks, I arranged these images together with explanatory text as a substitute.
- To represent Chiselworks' extensive provision of machinery I chose historical engravings of woodworking machinery (obtained from the Wellcome library on Creative Commons licenses), rather than contemporary photographs . This way, I thought, no one will be fooled to think that these really are currently in use by the Co-operative's members.
- As per assignment guidance I invented contact details, people's names and Chiselworks' "address", although, if you look carefully, it does not tally with Google map's details.
- To add credibility, I claimed that Chiselworks is a limited company and registered as a co-operative with the "appropriate registrar".
- To give the impression that my website is about a real place and real people I invented fictional members with fictional CVs. However, not wanting to publish pictures of "real" people I resorted to historical portraits from the Wellcome library to represent individual members of the co-operative. Instead of a group photo I produced a crude sketch.
- A website of a genuine organisation would benefit from verifiable quotes from people and organisations of authority, such as a managing director of an enterprise and a local paper. I duly created a couple of flattering quotes, making sure that I used names that are not associated with real sources.
The purpose of this website as an assessed piece of work also required me to move Chiselworks' events archive from its most appropriate place. Ordinarily it would have been published in one or more sub pages of a blog of current news. But as the blog was taken for reflecting on this website, the archive was placed to become a sub-page of the "About us" page. I employed internal linking - from the "Our history" section to minimise the effect of the unexpected position of this page.