Using Drupal In Libraries

USING DRUPAL IN LIBRARIES Tanya Finney 2008 PaLA Annual Conference: Leading for Life

Drupal
What is Drupal
Why use Drupal
Reason to use Drupal
Libraries Case Studies
CTLS (Cheltenham Twp Library System) Staff Intranet
Getting Started with Drupal in your Library

What is Drupal

What is Drupal
Open-Source Content Management System use to help organized, acquire, store, index, retrieve, and present content. By providing a back-end structure/framework Drupal enable user to accomplish all the above task.
Often refer to as “Content Management Framework” due to the fact that Drupal is not a fixed system but a framework on which you can build your own systems.
Drupal separates content and formatting to let you create a powerful, dynamic web sites.
Open-Source software whose source code is made available, most often subject to certain conditions, for use or modification by users or other developers s they deem fit. – David Mercer

Why use Drupal
Flexible; easy to implement changes .
Cost Effective; only start-up cost is for the web server or hosting services.
Easy to set up and run.
User friendly.
Gets your feet wet with open source CMS.
Provides a framework for creating, managing, and publishing web-based content.
Provides extensions for enhanced capabilities.
Provides a secure environment with managed user roles.
Multi-authors without sacrificing site security.
Good for libraries or organization with limited technical resources or support.
Offers high level of stability, security and performance.

Reason to use Drupal
Public Website
Staff Intranet
Resource Directories
Education
Art, Music and Multimedia
Community Information
Human-readable Knowledge Base
Staff/Classroom Blog

Libraries Case Studies
Schlow Centre Region Library
Bloomingdale Public Library

Schlow Centre Region Library
211 South Allen Street, State College, PA 16801
http://www.schlowlibrary.org/
Size of Library: 133,224 items (35,000 square foot building)
Population Size: 79,406
Time to Construct: 16 months from our 1st information-architecture committee meeting to launch.
Developer : Nathaniel Rasmussen, Computer Systems Administrator
Technical Skills: No php guru, but I have pretty high skills otherwise.
Reason for choosing Drupal: “Chose to learn Drupal over 3 years ago to do staff intranet--at the time it seemed like one of the most flexible open source CMSs out there. I'd venture to guess it's even more so today, but learning another CMS seemed silly when we began our public site overhaul.”
Additional Info: The site is on drupal 5, and is a multisite install (with http://centralpalibraries -- our district site also hosted). Hopefully, we'll get to version 6 soon (as soon as panels, cck and views are fully ready, and I find the time). The plan in 2008-2009 is to provide drupal sites for our district libraries as well as porting over our community resources database ( http://centrecountyinfo.org ). I'm also very much interested in integrated patron authentication, and an easy mechanism for OPAC integration & extension (reviews, freetagging, etc). We'll see what technology and time permits .

Bloomingdale Public Library
101 Fairfield Way, Bloomingdale, IL 60108
www.mybpl.org
Population Size: 22,000 in Village of Bloomingdale (a Chicago suburb)
Developer : In house staff constructed the web page, another member of computer services and the Computer Services Dept Head was primarily responsible for it, and non-technical staff members from every department are responsible for maintaining content.
Reason for choosing Drupal: “We selected Drupal based on the impressions I got from the 2005 Internet Librarian conference and because it seemed the most accessible method for non-technical employees to be able to control and update their own sections of the site. “ – Sean Luster, Computer Svc. Dept Head.
Additional Info: Currently run 2 Drupal sites, the public one and the internal test sites we use for developing future changes.

Libraries Using Drupal
Public libraries:
Ann Arbor District Library Brawley Public Library Camarena Memorial Library Douglas County Libraries ExploreOhio (sponsored by OPLIN ) Great River Regional Library (Central Minnesota) Hoover Alabama Public Library Jackson District Library Kinderhook Memorial Library London Public Library Metropolitan Cooperative Library System (Los Angeles) Monterey Park Bruggemeyer Library New York Public Library Red Deer Public Library San Anselmo Public Library West Lake Porter Public Library West Linn, Oregon Public Library
School (K-12) libraries:
Genesee Valley BOCES - School Library System School Library System of Genesee Valley Boces
Special libraries:
Idaho Commission for Libraries The Newberry Library - ChicagoAncestors.org Southwest Ohio and Neighboring Libraries (SWON Libraries)
University libraries:
Alaska Pacific University Cowles Library at Drake University Florida Center for Library Automation (FCLA) Florida State University Libraries Hamline Law Library Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis Rochester Institute of Technology Libraries Simon Fraser University - Multicultural Canada St. Lawrence University Library planning site
Library services:
MaintainIT Project
Original list by Ellyssa Kroski, copied from presentation by Kieran copied from a post by matt_paz

CLTS Staff Intranet

Cheltenham Twp Library System
215 S Keswick Avenue, Glenside, PA
http://cheltenhamlibraries.org/staff/
Size of Library: 4 Branches
Population Size: 38,465
Time to Construct: 6 – 12 months. However journey continues……
Developer : Tanya Finney, Automation Technology Coordinator
Technical Skills: Technical, not mid-level when comes wed development.
Reason for choosing Drupal: Staff intranet that will serves a way of improving internal communication between the four branches. Had all the components, we needed: blog, forum, forms, polls, etc.. Very intuitive and user friendly. Cost-effective, and easy to set-up.
Project Phases: This project was broken down in four stages.1: Staff Survey (to determine user needs and requirements) 2. Research (Based on user needs and requirement choosing the software that fit these needs). 3. Development (once a software was chosen design and adding content was next) 4. Usability testing (staff’s feedback of any problems in the system.)
Additional comments: Our public web-site is hosted by company that uses C-Panel which uses 3 rd -Party add-on that includes Fantastico > Drupal. So installation was friendly easy.

CLTS Staff Intranet Content
Contact Form
Forms
Forums
Links
My Account
News Feeds
Polices and Procedures
Polls
Reports
Schedule Meetings
Staff Blog
Staff Corner
Technical Support
A blog entry is a single post to an online journal, or blog .
A book page is a page of content, organized into a collection of related entries collectively known as a book .
A forum topic is the initial post to a new discussion thread within a forum.
Page If you want to add a static page, like a contact page or an about page, use a page.
A poll is a question with a set of possible responses.
Stories are articles in their simplest form: they have a title, a teaser and a body, but can be extended by other modules.
Block used for brief snippets of info .
Created Content
Content Type

Issues/Challenges
Security
Staff Skill Sets
Contribution Content
In-house Product headaches
RSS Feeds Updating themselves
Using C-Panel and 3 rd Party Fantastico challenges adding different modules, and updates.

Next 10 slides demonstrates creating a simple public library web site under 15 minutes. The site only consists of six pages: About Us, Branch Information, Library Services, Programs/Events, Using the Library; a Contact Form; and a Library Hours block.
Creating a Simple Web Site

Getting Started with Drupal in your Library

Site Configuration – Site Info

Configure your website

Enable additional functionality

Customize your website design

Choosing a Theme/Custom Logo

Start posting content

Creating a Page

Blocks, Menus, Contact Forms, and Post Settings

User Management

Lazy Cat Public Library

Resources
Articles
Library Technology Reports http://www.techsource.ala.org/ltr/drupal-in-libraries.html
Blogs
http://mydrupalblog.lhmdesign.com/
http://chicagolibrarian.com/
Books
Drupal: Creating Blogs, Forums, Portals, and Community Websites by David Mercer
Building powerful and robust websites with Drupal 6 by David Mercer
Facebook
Drupal for fbPlatfomr
Drupal
Groups
http://groups.drupal.org/libraries

Resources
Listserv
http://drupal4lib.org
Websites
http://drupal.org/
http://www.drupaldude.com/
http://drupalib.interoperating.info/
On YouTube
Drupal Overview - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Q2aPi9ZEgs
Drupal Music Video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ-s3DRZJKY

Resources
Workshops
Do It With Drupal – 3 Day Seminar, New Orleans, LA December 10-12, 2008 http://www.doitwithdrupal.com/
Other Services
Acquici - http://acquia.com/
Fish4Info - http://fish4info.org/
Ellyssa Kroski - http://oedb.org/blogs/ilibrarian/2008/drupal-and-libraries-at-cil2008/
Slide Share: Drupal and Libraries; Drupal for Libraries

Tanya Finney
Email: [email_address]
[email_address]
Website (Slides): http://ourtechnogang.blogspot.com

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