Reflection on the interview

Reflection on the interview

This is a first in my experience.  A project which actually had access to an abundance of funds
Probably the most important thing learned from this experience; yes, read the marketing literature, yes read the professional literature, but nothing beats talking one-on one- with someone who has actually used the system.  I'd almost go so far to say, if you can't find someone to have this discussion with, take that product out of consideration.

Choosing a Content Management System: One Librarian’s Experience.

Choosing a Content Management System: One Librarian’s Experience.

Interview conducted with Deborah D. Tritt Instruction/Reference Librarian and Assistant Professor of Library Science Gregg-Graniteville Library University of South Carolina Aiken by Carol L. Waggoner-Angleton for MLIS 7505

Deborah will be speaking about the adoption of Content DM by her previous institution Nova Southeastern University where she was Reference/Subject Specialist Librarian for the Social Sciences, Alvin Sherman Library and Information Technology Center. Deborah received her MLIS from University of South Carolina in 2006 and her MIT from Nova Southeastern University in 2010

CWA: What previous experience did you have with content management systems (CMS) before implementing ContentDM at Nova Southeastern University (NSU)?

DDT: I had gained a lot of experience with content management systems while interning with the Digital Library of Georgia in the summer of 2006.  It was this experience, my knowledge of using CMS to manage digital collections which led me to be a point person for the implementation of ContentDM at NSU.

CWA: What were the motivations of NSU in adopting a CMS?

DDT: One of the prime motivators was the 50^th Anniversary of NSU.  The University had a rich archive about the history of the institution and they wanted to leverage this archive in celebration of the anniversary. Obviously, they looked first at mounting an anniversary exhibit through their existing website.  This was a perfectly viable option.  They had sufficient funding, a robust hardware infrastructure and a large University Systems Development department.  Additionally the Alvin Sherman Library and Information Technology Center, as the largest of the undergraduate library, had access to resources through the Library Computing Services department.  However, there were two drawbacks to using the existing website structure.  It could handle the ingest and management of metadata for individual items and we couldn’t set up browsing and searching features in a manner that was appropriate for user needs when searching archival collections.  Additionally, Systems Development believed that it would be less expensive to contract this project out to a vendor rather than undertaking it in-house.

CWA: How many CMS were considered for adoption?

DDT: Initially more than I can recall. The two candidates that made the cut were an open source CMS Omeka http://www.omeka.net/ offered by the Corporation for Digital Scholarship and ContentDM which is a commercial product offered by OCLC http://www.contentdm.org/.

CWA: Who conducted the evaluation of the CMS?

DDT: Initially, there was an informal committee for this project.  I think now it has morphed into something more permanent like Library Technology Committee for Digital Libraries.  However, the initial participants were the Vice-President for Information Services &University Librarian, the Executive Director of the Alvin Sherman Library and Information Technology Center, the Executive Director and University Librarian for Systems, the Director of Library Computer Services, the Director of Archives and myself.  My role was to educate the group on the benefits of a CMS system and to explain the advantages of open source systems versus the advantages of proprietary systems.  When we moved from the committee to the project stage, we also added a cataloger to the group.

CWA: What questions were used to compare the two systems features and to evaluate the pros and cons of open source versus proprietary?

DDT:  Well there were quite a lot of factors.  The committee wanted a system that was easy to use and that could be hosted, which at the time did cut Omeka out pretty early on.  I think it was the parameters of the project which guided the choice more than a list of questions. We had, amazingly, a surplus of funding for this project, but the end of year deadline to expend the funds was coming up really fast when we started our evaluation. Additionally the project had a pretty tight production deadline because of the 50^th anniversary, so I think the fact that we had funding and we didn’t have a lot of time to implement a system that wasn’t “straight out of the box”, so to speak, were the determining factors.  Additionally Omeka did not have the robust user community and support network it has now.  ContentDm, as an OCLC product, had a much higher comfort level associated with it.  ContentDM does have a great turn around on service and support.  That did make the learning curve less steep than it may have been with Omeka. Also we were able to implement ContentDM in phases.  First we were able to try out the free trial that’s offered and then, because of our partnership with another institution, we were able to implement it as a pilot project and then we went to final contracts for the service after we had been able to really put it through its paces.

CWA: How steep was the learning curve?

DDT: At the time I’d had some experience as a ContentDm user but the curve as an administrator was steeper.  There were a lot of steps to the upfront configuration and there was tweaking of the PHP code to handle data ingest and the user interface.  The project itself added to the learning curve to devise the workflows and to make sure we were complying with best practice.  We had instituted a fairly rigorous selection process for items that we included in the project so this had to be managed as well.

CWA: What features did you find most useful in ContentDM?

DDT: It was very easy to export metadata out to other functions.  You could also create your own controlled vocabulary for local items but you had access to all the standard vocabularies and thesauri right there at your fingertips. Also, if an image was ingested as a tiff file, the system would automatically create a jpg use file and add a watermark to the jpg file. If you ingested text, there was an OCR extension that made the file immediately OCR searchable.  These features were known as stewardship files.

CWA: The marketing literature stresses ContentDM support for Dublin Core metadata.  Is this the only metadata schema it will support?

DDT: No, the system will support any metadata schema you choose so you can use EAD, Premis or MODS, for example if you choose.

CWA: If you had to make a decision about implementing a CMS today, would you automatically choose ContentDM.

DDT: Well, I’d definitely put them in the line up after having such a good experience with them and I’m pleased to see that they are constantly reinventing themselves and have made the administration experience smoother, no more dabbling in source code.  But I’d doubt that money wouldn’t be an issue in a new implementation and the open source options are much more robust and have contracted with vendors in some cases to provide hosting and robust user support if it was needed.  I’m pretty sure I’d go through the whole evaluation process again.

Please give yea or nay opinions

Have been having discussion with various people.  I use LibGuides in my library to create subject guides and newsletters.  But I know other people who use it  make simple websites or search interfaces for archival collections.  So this says to me, LibGuides is a content management site. Especially when you can add widgets to do polls and search boxes and analyze hit data for pages.  But several folks are trying to convince me it is not a content management system.  What do you think?  Is it or isn't it a content management system

This is more pertinent to our subject matter.

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We're very concerned about this at ASU these days

Study: To Improve Student Engagement, Focus on Individual Programs and Student Services
This report commissioned by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario observes that student engagement surveys show clear patterns of engagement that vary dramatically by academic program. The study's authors say a program-specific engagement strategy is likely to be far more effective than a faculty-wide or institution-wide strategy based on benchmark goals. More...

Well I am pleased. I now understand the WAMP acronym.  The W stands for the operating system which in this case is Windows but could be any operating system the most common being Linux and Macintosh.  A is for Apache which is software that runs the server M is for MSQL which  communicates between the the server and the client and P is for PHP which is a programing language which interprets HTML into the data formats you see on the webpage.

Wiki Assessment

Library: A Library A State University

Library type: Academic Library

Population Served: 7000 students, faculty, staff and community users. Majority of students are undergraduate but there are graduate programs in business, education and psychology

Budget: Cannot be divulged.  However, line items for staff development and outreach, the two functions the wiki would be most likely to support are limited

Purpose of the Wiki: to improve staff communication

Past history with Wikis: Deployment of a wiki was tried in 2006.  Staff did not adopt it.  They found page creation difficult and there was either no adoption or inconsistent use by upper management.

Using the tools provided on WebMatrix, further questions were answered.  A page history was chosen to allow for information backup in case faulty information was posted or pages were inadvertently lost during editing.

Most of the librarians and staff who would be using this product are not comfortable with mark up languages so the WYSIWYG editor is a necessity

Options that could be introduced without professional support were preferred since the budget could only stretch to the purchase of software or service.

Additionally space on the library server is limited, a hosted service would be preferable

The wiki needs to be easily identifiable as library property and integrated into the existing website if possible.  Therefore, branding capabilities and the use of our own domain are preferable.

Of the 13 choices suggested by WebMatrix, wikis based on open source code were preferred.  The sites could be maintained if the services became defunct, though server space would then have to be found to accomplish the continuation of the service.  Additionally open source code could allow for programming applications the company did not offer.  This narrowed selection to three choices.

Wagn was eliminated because it did not clearly state which operating systems it was compatible with.

BusinessWiki was eliminated because the information in WebMatrix was out of date.  The company is now Video CMS and further information on the product could not be obtained without communicating with a vendor.

MindTouch TCS was a viable candidate. While using it as a software as a service with outside hosting would incur fees the basic code was available as MindTouch Core, a freely downloadable open source program.  This product could be deployed on a stand alone computer and staff could be trained on it before the service was bought to see if it was truly user friendly and to help create staff buy-in or the product could be deployed as is if server space became available to host the service.

I am checking my RSS feed to my Google Reader

The Beginning

Panic.  I don't know anything about Library 2.0.  Which is why I thought I ought to take this class. I'm not the least bit sure I've set this up right. AHHHH