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.