My goal was to give him a nice looking, functional, user-friendly, easy-to-maintain website. He wanted to use it to tell others about the church and to communicate to his congregation members. Unionrestoration.org is what we came up with after much discussion and tweaking. It’s still a work in progress, like every website, but the basic elements of the site are in place and I’m pretty happy with it.

The site is built with WordPress.org software, which is a popular CMS most often used for blogs but also capable of being used for more complex websites. I modified an existing theme and worked with Sang to come up with a good architecture for the site’s pages. I used other church websites like Garden Christian Fellowship (my old church in SoCal) as inspiration. It was a lot of fun to work on the site, especially discovering stuff like Tiltviewer (a cool way to display photos).

It was also fun to work with a friend from grad school, Dan So, on the church’s logo. He worked with Sang to come up with what I think it a pretty cool look. Dan’s super-talented!

Please visit the site and take a look. I’m interested in getting feedback on the design and usability of the site. Is there anything that doesn’t work or could be improved? What aspects do you especially like?

Building the Next Generation Public Library Website with Drupal
John Blyberg, Darien Library, CT
Eli Neiburger, Ann Arbor District Library, MI

John Blyberg
Drupal in engineering terms and what is a public library supposed to be
Drupal is a CMS (Content Management System)

• import or create documents
• fluid management of blog entries
• effective user management
• delegation of roles
• version control
• separation of form from content (allows your web designers to design and your content people to create content)
• user participation (solicit opinions/comments/questions from the public)
• searchable

As opposed to…

• screwing around with dreamweaver
• fussing with ftp
• WTF do I do with all these files?
• Circ vs. Reference vs. Youth vs… (turf wars)
• (Battling for the unsustainable)

It’s 2007, does your website still suck?

• Unless you’re absolutely sure it doesn’t it probably does.
• Most public libraries suck
• Our websites need to be a public representation of a cohesive and comprehensive technology strategy
• Don’t bother with a new website unless you’re completely and absolutely committed to making it excellent…implementation, not necessarily equipment

What are some key components of a good PL website?

• a firm commitment to not settle
• single sign-on (very critical to customer service)
• integrated opac (users don’t care that it’s difficult for us to overcome this…all they know is that it’s difficult to use the opac and website)
• significant quantities of content generated everyday
• usefulness
• understand your community
• youth
• staff buy-in
• website is an extension of the library experience, not a resource.

Drupal is a means to an end, not the end itself

• simply installing drupal won’t make your website great.

Drupal is

• open source
• written in PHP (very accessible, easy-to-use scripting language)
• relatively low hardware requirements
• can be run on open source platforms
• free (though the time is not)
• pronounced Droopull not Droo-pal

Taxonomies

• classify content
• site organization
• cross-post stories, blog entries, etc.
• can be extended to custom nodes

Theme Engine

• separates form from content so you can change the theme without affecting the content
• closely integrated with drupal’s API
• supports multi-site or civic spaces
• completely customizable
• several templating engines available
• PHP Template, Smarty

API

• application programming interface (like a wall outlet)
• API allows you to move data back and forth seamlessly between software
• Hooks (do stuff when something happens)
• Search functions (create custom content types that are instantly searchable; use the search hook to query external databases, or just about anything…)
• Form Generation/Validation
• Create forms rapidly and validate forms easily
• Menu System
• menus are complex, even when they’re not
• menus are contextual
• manage menus easily
• api.drupal.org

Eli Neiburger
aadl.org (started project in Dec. 04 and launched in July 05)
saw Drupal as the best tool to meet their design goals
Joomla! is a serious competitor to Drupal and is very similar
When you choose a product, you want to make sure there is a vibrant community behind it so you can learn from others and share knowledge with others…makes it more sustainable
July 05 – 600 registered users
July 07 – 40,800 registered users (averaging 30-50 new users everyday)

Top five entry pages (what are people doing on the website):

• front page
• catalog start page
• rss feeds (almost a quarter of their traffic)
• card catalog image
• my account

aadl.org by the numbers

• 40,000 registered users
• 32,000 registered patrons
• 70% of active cardholders (similar to % of patrons who have provided an email)
• 4,250 content nodes
• 10, 833 post comments (at least 9500 from teens)
• 13,000 contact us comments
• 85 posting accounts (everyone in the organization is invited to contribute content as long as they have permission from their manager and take a 30-minute training session)
• 248 taxonomy terms in 7 vocabularies
• 274 patron reviews, 2092 patron tags (most on the manga materials)
• 3,473 catalog card notes, 5,931 saved cards

Materials blogs, events blog, services blog, research blog

• promoting more than just books

Contact us page (with browsable comments and responses)

• great way to let it all hang out and show everyone the great customer service you provide (growing trend in corporations to be more transparent), even to the most difficult patrons

My Account Page

• check request status
• check-out history (purely elective service)
• fine and fees
• personal card catalog
• my tags (does not replace subject headings, in addition to them)…view as list and view as cloud
• reviews and comments
• wireless devices
• request ILL

Publishing content

• can link to subject headings, titles, authors, wikipedia articles, external websites, etc.

Wrapping the Catalog

• Browser -> Drupal -> ILS
• single sign-on (easy user authentication)
• customizes your data before it goes back to the user

When Nancy Pearl, the model for the coolest action figure on the planet, was the Executive Director for the Washington Center for the Book, she asked the question, “What if all Seattle read the same book?” Well, she made that thought come to life by creating the first-ever “One City One Book” program and soon after libraries all around the country began creating similar community-wide reading programs.

For the past 6+ months, I’ve been a part of a dedicated group of people (mostly Library staff) committed to bringing this “One City One Book” concept to Thousand Oaks. It’s easily the biggest project I’ve been involved with since I started here, and I have to say, it’s going to be an incredible program. The book that the committee chose for the inaugural Thousand Oaks Reads is Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. If you haven’t read it yet, you really should pick it up.

In the Fall of this year, there will be several weeks when book discussions (at the Library, coffee shops, bookstores) and special events will take place all around the City. Jonathan Safran Foer is even visiting Thousand Oaks to talk about his book and his work. I’m really excited about this project because it really represents many of the positive things that libraries bring to their communities. It’s meant as a celebration of reading and literature…it’s meant to strengthen the community…and it’s meant to enrich people’s lives.

If you’re interested in learning more, check out the project’s website at thousandoaksreads.org. Working on the website has given me the chance to become more familiar with WordPress and learn a bit more about web design and CSS, so I’m very happy about that. It’s very much a work in progress, so if you have any suggestions on how to improve it, please let me know.

By the way, when I was in grad school at UM-SI, I heard Nancy Pearl give a lecture on campus and she was truly inspirational. Afterwards, I approached her to say hello and have my Nancy Pearl action figure autographed (yes, that makes me a certified librarian geek!). I told her that I planned on becoming a librarian and she asked me what type. I told her I was interested in public and academic libraries, and she encouraged me to become a public librarian. I believe her exact words were, “Public. Go with Public. We need more good people in public libraries.” I took her advice

Before I came out to Thousand Oaks, I lived in Ann Arbor, MI and I had the wonderful opportunity to work at the Ann Arbor District Library when they were rolling out their innovative website. It was great for me because I was exposed to so many new advances in how libraries are providing creative, new services to their communities. Well, the folks at the AADL have done it again! They just announced a whole new batch of features for their website, including the ability to rate, review, and tag items in their online catalog. For more details, take a look at their blog entry introducing the enhancements, their catalog page, and a blog kept by one of their key innovators, John Blyberg.