Introduction
Content Management Systems (CMS)
are an active part of the new future of libraries. They will bring efficiency, ease of access,
ultimately lower costs, and user appreciation to each library who invests. In reviewing websites for the multiple local
public libraries and a handful of college libraries around me, I was
unfortunately unable to find many who appeared to use a CMS. I proceeded to return to previous academic
librarians I had interviewed in earlier classes and reached out to them for an
interview regarding their own CMS. The
librarian I had engaged with early in this program at a local college law
library did not have much experience with the school’s CMS and was unable to
assist me. However, my second contact
finally led to a discussion about a school’s CMS and I was provided some great
information.
I reached out to Ms. Amanda
McKenzie, the library director at East Georgia College and whom I’d previously
communicated with during my management course.
This small state college serves primarily students and faculty while
being open to the community with a borrowing policy as obligated by the
state. Most students and faculty served
are a part of a two year program while some are connected to the brand new four
year Biology program. Ms. McKenzie
shared that there is an archival collection; however, it does not get
circulated to students or members of the community, and rarely to faculty. Due to the small size of the college, the
small size of the collections compared to larger four year universities, and
the few library staff, this library is not departmentalized; certain staffs do
certain things. There is one other
librarian who handles most reference questions and is at the desk almost all
day. There is also a library associate
who is about to finish a master’s in industrial design and who is working
toward professional standing in the library due to her experience and upcoming
degree completion. The associate handles
Interlibrary Loan and most of the circulation desk. Lastly, for full time staff, there is also a
library assistant.
The
Interview
At the end of this paper is the
actual email responses to my inquiry and questions about the school’s CMS. However, for be more easily followed, I’ve broken
up her responses in a question and answer form.
How and where did your
library hear about CMS?
We
[the library] have had little input on our current CMS—it was all determined by
our IT department at the institution level for the entire institution.
What was your motivation
to adopt CMS for its current use (library website or any other purpose)? /
What was your decision making criteria? What
is the name of CMS you are using now?
The
CMS that EGSC uses is called Expression Engine and it was adopted right at two
years ago. I can tell you that the
reason that the institution adopted it was because the platform that they were
using before required the webmaster to update all facets of our institution’s
website for everyone—Expression Engine is more of a “gooey” interface that is
easily trainable, so the IT department has been able to turn over department
pages management to the individual departments, which was the goal. I do not know what the old system was called,
but it was very simple in design compared to Expression Engine.
What are the
important benefits or advantages of CMS you are using now over the old system
or another CMS system you’ve used in the past?
I
can also tell you, however, that this particular CMS does not necessarily work
well for the library portion of the site and is difficult for our users to
navigate—the design locks you in to particular templates that you have to
choose from, and none of those templates make our types of information be able
to be organized in a way that works particularly well for our users. Our web designer is currently trying to write
some new code that will allow the library portion of the site to look different
from the rest of the site in order to address our specific needs, but, because
we only have one web designer for the entire campus, this is taking some time. Also, certain types of code will crash the
site, such as PHP. But, the institution as a whole really likes it because it
is easy enough for each department to manage and not mess up the entire
website, which was the goal, and the use of templates lend the website a homogenous
look, which was another goal.
How was the
learning curve?
The
learning curve for my library staff with using Expression Engine was not very
high, but we were all experienced in using blogs, Libguides, and other web
tools. Expression Engine works in a
similar way in the back end. And, in the
HTML edit mode, you can write code very simply if you have experience with
writing code, but we have not had do that yet ourselves.
Reflection
While it was encouraging to see
the institution was able to find and use a CMS that would add efficiency and
ease, it was disappointing to see how little input the library had in the
decision process. It was also
disappointing to read how many struggles the library has with this system. Crashing, few ways to customize the library
page to fit specific needs, a single web designer for the whole school, and
difficult to use for library patrons makes me sympathetic for staff and
students. The positives, however, seemed
to be that the system is easy to train on and that the library staff are fairly
knowledgeable in Web 2.0 technologies in general, making basic use of the site
easy enough.
Email
response #1 from Ms. Amanda McKenzie:
I
hope that you are doing well! I do not know of how much help I will be to you
on this particular project as we have had little input on our current CMS—it
was all determined by our IT department at the institution level for the entire
institution. The CMS that EGSC uses is called Expression Engine and it was
adopted right at two years ago. I can tell you that the reason that the
institution adopted it was because the platform that they were using before
required the webmaster to update all facets of our institution’s website for
everyone—Expression Engine is more of a “gooey” interface that is easily
trainable, so the IT department has been able to turn over department pages
management to the individual departments, which was the goal. I do not know what
the old system was called, but it was very simple in design compared to
Expression Engine. I can also tell you, however, that this particular CMS does
not necessarily work well for the library portion of the site and is difficult
for our users to navigate—the design locks you in to particular templates that
you have to choose from, and none of those templates make our types of
information be able to be organized in a way that works particularly well for
our users. Our web designer is currently trying to write some new code that
will allow the library portion of the site to look different from the rest of
the site in order to address our specific needs, but, because we only have one
web designer for the entire campus, this is taking some time. Also, certain types
of code will crash the site, such as PHP. But, the institution as a whole
really likes it because it is easy enough for each department to manage and not
mess up the entire website, which was the goal, and the use of templates lend
the website a homogenous look, which was another goal.
Email Response #2 from Ms. Amanda McKenzie:
I
don’t think I addressed the learning curve part—the learning curve for my
library staff with using Expression Engine was not very high, but we were all
experienced in using blogs, Libguides, and other web tools. Expression Engine
works in a similar way in the back end. And, in the HTML edit mode, you can
write code very simply if you have experience with writing code, but we have
not had do that yet ourselves.
