Group paper

Just finished my contributions for the group paper. Mollie, Kate, and I did ours on wikis. When we covered wikis as a class (and used wikimatrix.org) I felt pretty stumped by the concept of using wikis in libraries. This paper, however, has been a great exercise for learning about the various ways they can be implemented. Altogether it's been a challenging class but I have learned a great deal in a short amount of time, and I'm inspired to see what other technologies are out there. Gotta keep up!

Here's my group's final paper!


https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jZlbqdVG9gkdNH7_w0pA6fhEQccxjwewhDYp7w9UyeE/edit

CMS Interview

My interviewee is a Library Systems Developer at a public university in Kansas. We corresponded via e-mail and they were able to provide some very insightful answers for this assignment. Her library uses Joomla! and, unsurprisingly, she cites ease of use as a major factor in deciding on a CMS because among the people contributing content there is a wide variety of skill levels. In my personal experience with Joomla! this is understandable: unskilled users can still navigate the system and contribute, but more advanced users have a wide variety of options at their disposal.

Here is the interview:

•       How and where did you hear about CMS?

I think the basic concept has been around for longer than the term ‘CMS’, so our knowledge probably came from existing homegrown database-driven websites. In a way an integrated library system is like a CMS, and our library has been using those for decades.




•       What were your motivations to adopt CMS for its use (library website or any other purpose)

Our university was switching to a CMS for all campus webpages. It’s a proprietary system, and is very limited in scope. It was really designed for department assistants to put text, pictures, and links in webpages for academic or support departments on campus. It didn’t meet the needs of the library, so we looked for an alternative system. We had to go through many channels to get approval to use something else, and had to list many reasons why the university CMS wouldn’t work for us (which included our need to add widgets/search boxes/dynamic content to the page). Eventually the university CIO gave us permission, and we proceeded from there.


•       What were your decision making criteria? and What is the name of CMS used?

We needed something that was easy to use. We have over a dozen people in the library adding and updating content on the website, and their skill level ranges from coding experts to not confident at all. We looked closely at both Joomla and Drupal, and decided that they both had pros and cons. Drupal has a larger community of library users, and is very extendable, but we felt Joomla had a more intuitive backend for the staff.




•       What are the important benefits or advantages of a particular CMS  over an old system or another CMS system you've used in the past?

We hadn’t previously used a CMS for our website. There are many advantages over our old system (which was static HTML pages). It provides a template, so that out webpages have a cohesive look, and we can update the template (such as changing the header) in one place, and it changes on all pages. It evens out the skill-level issues we had previously. Joomla also offers a large developer community, and lots of extensions to plug in and use (such as calendar widgets, dynamic library hours, Twitter feeds, etc.) that we don’t have to code ourselves.


•       How was the learning curve?

The learning curve depended on the user. Most people were able to use Joomla with only a single 45 minute training session, for basic users. I’m the administrator, and it took a few weeks to get comfortable with the server directories, and re-coding some modules to work better for our library.

CMS

Recently finished making a site with Joomla! for our module on Content Management Systems. The demo video was very helpful and it was an all-around good learning experience.

Domo arigato, Mr. Blogger

I just commented on someone's blog post, and before I could publish my comment Blogger asked me to please prove that I wasn't a robot. Apparently the test for proving one is not a robot is just typing two distorted, psychedelic words into a text field and submitting. This...is brilliant. Who knew weeding out android impostors was so easy? Unfortunately, this simple methodology shatters the plot of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and other great science fiction novels. Robots are awesome!

A Wiki Rookie!

My wiki experience is based solely on my use of Wikipedia, so the prospect of designing a wiki for my library (say the University of Georgia Main Library) is daunting. My first question would be, "Why does my library need a wiki?" and frankly, I am somewhat stumped. Wikis allows users to both read and contribute information on a given subject and the wiki is designed to be edited continuously over time. While I've seen several sources report that wikis can play a role in library services, I'm not sure why a library would want patrons or non-library affiliates to contribute to their information.

That being said, I experimented with the WikiMatrix Choice Wizard with the University of Georgia Main Library in mind. I figured that page history, WYSIWYG editors,  and Wiki software (as opposed to the hosted option) were important features for this Wiki, but only narrowed my pool of choices down to 70 potential wikis. Even if I had narrowed it down to two, the factors by which the wikis are compared are overwhelming. I'm not sure what kind of wiki my library would need in terms of data storage, hosting features, system requirements, or a wide range of other things. 

I come away from this part of the assignment with more questions than answers, but of course that's not a bad thing. I would be interested to hear from my classmates concerning the role of wikis in libraries.

Neu!

Twitter, Blogger, RSS Feeds...I'm probably either underconnected or overconnected. Or maybe I'm just the right amount of connected. I sometimes get the feeling people are reading my content on the big jumbotrons in Times Square. Working my way to toward completing Assignment 1. So close, yet so far.

Greetings!

I have created this blog to document my experience in a class for Valdosta State University's Master of Library and Information Science Program. In MLIS 7505: Applied Library Tech Practice, we will survey the influence of various technologies on libraries, starting with Web 2.0. I haven't had as much experience with Web 2.0 as some of my peers, and have perhaps been too reluctant to embrace it, but I recognize the benefits for libraries and the world at large. I'm eager to learn about the wide array of technologies out and their effect on libraries!