CIL2008: Drupal & Libraries
Posted on April 8th, 2008 by ruth
Ellyssa Kroski, Reference Librarian, Columbia University
Program description on the CIL2008 website.
Presentation on SlideShare.
On the agenda:
- What is Drupal?
- How are libraries using Drupal?
- How to get started using Drupal
Kroski’s first experience with Drupal was to to build a social community for a class she taught. Features of the site included:
- individual students blogs
- tags, keywords, and social bookmarking
- faving and sharing of content within the site
- media uploads, user polls and profiles, buddy list, guest book, chat room
- browseable by tag
- identification of recent and most popular/most emailed content
- course calendar w/signup for events
- access to lectures and reading lists
- online status of site members
The entire site was developed with no .php experience!
What is Drupal?
- a free open-source content management system
- allows creation of social-enabled websites
- runs on apache, mySQL, and .php (which are also open source)
- compatible with Windows, Mac OSX, and Linus
Three components of Drupal
- core program (provides basic functionality)
- contributed modules (plug-ins developed by user)
- structure (themes and styles)
Drupal user community
- drupal groups (can we call them “groupals?” -rs)
- IRC channels
- camps and conferences
- see drupal.org
How are libraries using Drupal?
- Ann Arbor District Library
- custom module reformats OPAC to produce an integrated catalog
- 50,000 unique users
- page views increased by 216%
- developer blog available at www.aadl.org/devblog
- Oregon Libraries Network
- staff intranet
- managment of virtual reference transcripts w/edit, delete, comment capability
- prototyping the creation of subject guides based on VR transcripts
- library website
- used Drupal to combine library website, blog, and wiki into one
- staff intranet
- Franklin Park Public Library
- Library website
- small staff, no IT support
- created by one person
- replaced previous static HTML website
- Librarian and Director’s blogs1
- RSS feeds
- patron comments
- Library website
- St. Lawrence University Libraries
- staff intranet
- website redesign communication tool
- public website
- planning to incorporate Course Resource Module and user-contributed content (photos, bibliographies)
- University of Minnesota Libraries
- library website
- EthicShare
- scholarly networking on the issue of ethics
- Mellon Foundation funded
- HarvestChoice
- combines bibliographic expertise with agricultural resources
- Gates Foundation funded
- Usability Lab
- formal Drupal usability testing
- University of Alaska Anchorage/Alaska Pacific University
- multi-site installation
- staff intranet
- faculty and staff can update their own public pages
- collaborate and share info between departments
- library website
- Distance Learners’ Edition of the website
- Indiana University/PUI
- library website
- retrieves library’s list of databases w/descriptions and categories
- librarians have their own subject pages, which are updated more frequently than when content was held in a queue pending upload
- future plans: librarian profiles, user customization, staff intranet
- library website
- Simon Frasier University
- student learning commons workshops
- allows preregistration for workshops, w/notification of waitlist status
- staff can manage registrations
- student learning commons workshops
- Florida State University Libraries
- library website
- two user groups explore incremental improvements
- Red Deer Public Library
- library website
- news feeds, librarian bloggers, patron commenting
- staff intranet
- staging area where new modules are announced and tested by staff
- staff blogging
- project planning
- library board intranet
- University of Alaska Fairbanks
- library website
- DVD browser
- Top Clicks of most popular content
- Ad Module to advertise library content and services
- Hoover Public LIbrary
- library website
- using Captcha Module to inhibit spam
- listing events and RSS feeds
- several microsites
- using multiple themes for different sections/user groups (kids, teens, etc)
- University of Saskatchewan Library
- library website (visit the site to see all the modules they’re using!)
- new book listings
- room bookings
- staff intranet
- management of staff hours and user permissions
- staff directory
- Cleveland Public Library
- library website
- each library subject area is set up as its own subsite
- multi-site search module was custom-developed to allow searching of all subsites; module is available to the Drupal community.
- user login
- social bookmarking
- RSS feeds
- staff intranet
- Ohio Center for the Book
- Cleveland Consortium
- library website
- Idaho Commission for Libraries
- library website under development
- will include blogging, commenting, social bookmarking, tagging
- “eBranch in a Box”
- provides drupal websites to all state-funded libraries in Idaho
- staff intranet
- library website under development
- Westlake Porter Library
- School Library System of Genessee Valley
- Southwest Ohio and Neighboring Libraries (SWON)
Trends
- Drupal is being used to distribute the management of website content
- Empowers students, faculty, and staff to create their own content
- Used to present new and different views of library content that were too difficult to do w/static HTML
Getting started with Drupal
- Check out some Drupal sites (there are plenty listed here! -rs)
- Browse modules and check which version of Drupal they were designed for
- Talk to other libraries
- Experiment w/installation
- Explore library-friendly modules
- bibliography to manage and display lists of scholarly publications
- bibTex and Endnote import/export
- Millennium Module
- searches III WebOPAC for MARC records
- creates Drupal-based library catalog
- still in alpha stage
Drupal web resources
- Drupal.org
- Drupal4Lib listserv
- Drupal and Libraries group
- drupalib2
- Drupal Camp
- DrupalCONs
- Drupal IRC channels
- Library Technology Report due out in May 2008: “Drupal for Library Web Development”
- Screencast: “Creating a Library Database Page with Drupal”
- Lullabot
- as of this writing, the director hasn’t blogged anything. hmmm… [↩]
- showing one long error message as of this writing [↩]
Filed under: CIL2008, conference notes, libraries, library 2.0, social software, web resources