USING DRUPAL IN LIBRARIES
Tanya Finney2008 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 LibraryBrawley Public LibraryCamarena Memorial LibraryDouglas County LibrariesExploreOhio (sponsored by OPLIN)Great River Regional Library (Central Minnesota)
Hoover Alabama Public LibraryJackson District LibraryKinderhook Memorial LibraryLondon Public LibraryMetropolitan Cooperative Library System (Los Angeles)
Monterey Park Bruggemeyer LibraryNew York Public LibraryRed Deer Public LibrarySan Anselmo Public LibraryWest Lake Porter Public LibraryWest Linn, Oregon Public Library
School (K-12) libraries:
Genesee Valley BOCES - School Library SystemSchool Library System of Genesee Valley Boces
Special libraries:
Idaho Commission for LibrariesThe Newberry Library - ChicagoAncestors.orgSouthwest Ohio and Neighboring Libraries (SWON Libraries)
University libraries:
Alaska Pacific UniversityCowles Library at Drake UniversityFlorida Center for Library Automation (FCLA) Florida State University LibrariesHamline Law LibraryIndiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
Rochester Institute of Technology LibrariesSimon Fraser University - Multicultural CanadaSt. 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 3rd-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 3rd 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 protected]@drexel.edu
Website (Slides): http://ourtechnogang.blogspot.com