CIL2008: Drupal and Libraries

CIL2008: Drupal and Libraries, presented by Ellyssa Kroski
Uses a course page she set up for her library school course as an example. Students each had a blog; could tag their blogs and posts; favorite things within the community; share things via email; upload videos and photos; create and take user polls; buddy lists; guest book (i.e., Facebook Wall). A class chat room and tag cloud for site’s tagged content. What’s new on site — recently added/updated content.
Drupal runs on Apache, MySQL, and PHP. Has 3 components. 1) The core CMS that lets you organized and publish content to the web. This core functionality is well maintained, with a release schedule and bug fixing. 2) Contributed modules — things added by the user community. A bit of the “wild west” with these; not much oversight or control. Some are very well done; others not. 3) Themes. The skin on the site. Created with a combination of HTML, PHP, CSS.
A very active/engaged user community. Including many libraries. Most recognized, probably, is Ann Arbor District Libraries. Wrote a custom module to place OPAC into Drupal framework. L-Net staff intranet. Manages 65,000 virtual reference transcripts. Franklin Park Public Library uses Drupal. Done by one person, not an IT guy. St. Lawrence University Library — staff intranet as a communication tool for student workers on evenings and weekends. Using Drupal to plan redesign. Public web site, launching in fall 2008, will combine all library web sites. Includes course resources module that will allow faculty to build course resource lists; students will be able to vote on them and upload images, etc. IUPUI Library — pulls databases from Metalib, via X-Server, and organizes them into appropriate subject guides by categories. Librarians have subject guides, more frequently updated than before (ease of updating).
Simon Fraser University library uses Drupal for workshops page. Users can register, wait-listed, etc. Staff can manage registration lists. Uses Drupal events module. Florida State University Libraries. Content is currently managed through pages, but are moving into more of a true CMS implementation. Red Deer Public Library. And many other examples.
Slides and links are available at
http://oedb.org/blogs/ilibrarian/2008/drupal-and-libraries-at-cil2008/