[Web4lib] Any libraries using Drupal as their website CMS?

[Ross Singer]

Mark,

This is something I keep coming back to (for both the public and the  
intranet), as well, but every time I feel I hit the same limitations  
(not just with Drupal, but with all the OSS CMSes -- Joomla/Mambo,  
Xaraya, etc.).

The first is that I don't feel the workflow management is sophisticated  
enough (esp. for an intranet).  Maybe I'm looking at this incorrectly,  
but all of these projects have just one kind of permission layer (and  
the term "role" and "group" seem interchangeable here).  For real  
workflow (IMO), you need another layer (role within a group:  member,  
manager, proxy, etc.).  I'm not sure how you would route approval  
through hierarchical channels otherwise.

The second is a really specific problem to how I want to see our  
website work.

Rather than a tree of pages of static content (the "article" model), I  
want the nodes to consist of individual bits, each reusable and  
possibly servable on its own (with its own keywords and whatnot).  So  
the "Reserves Policies" page would consist of pieces such as "Reserve  
Policies for Undergraduates", "Faculty:  Putting items on Reserve",  
"Teaching Assistants: getting access to the Reserves List", etc.

For a better example, this of Subject Guides.  Lots of little  
independent bits put together make up a page.

I have talked to others about these points and there is some interest  
in taking one of the major OSS CMSes (they all pretty much have the  
same functionality) and modifying it until it meets these criteria.

The issue then is maintaining it since it will basically be a fork of  
the main project (although there is the possibility of working with the  
project maintainers themselves).

So... yeah,
-Ross.

On Jan 28, 2006, at 1:53 AM, James Jacobs wrote:

> Hi Mark,
>
> I too am a Drupal enthusiast, although I'm using it for non-library  
> applications. In searching google ("libraries using drupal"), I found  
> that Louisville (OH) Public Library (louisvillelibrary.org) is using  
> Drupal. Also Karlstads universitet in Sweden  
> (http://www.bib.kau.se/?_lang=en), Michigan Area Resource Center  
> (http://www.marc-web.org/site/), University of Wisconsin-Madison's  
> Engineering Library (http://wendt.library.wisc.edu/), Library of  
> Bedrich Benes Buchlovan in the Czech Republic  
> (http://www.knihovnabbb.cz/cz/node/870), Genesee Valley BOCES School  
> Library System (http://sls.gvboces.org/). oss4lib  
> (http://oss4lib.org/) is also using drupal, but probably doesn't fall  
> into the "library site" category. And this was just in the first 3  
> pages of results. I would guess that the UW site is closest to your  
> situation.
>
> Strangely, the first library site in the google results was from a  
> web4lib post  
> (http://lists.webjunction.org/wjlists/web4lib/2005-March/036613.html),  
> but when I went and searched the web4lib archives, this post did not  
> come up in the results. I should say that it didn't come up directly,  
> but only as "next message" in the post entitled "PDF versus HTML"  
> (http://lists.webjunction.org/wjlists/web4lib/2005-March/036612.html).  
> Could it be that Swish-e is only searching the titles and not the body  
> of messages (even though I selected title and body in the limit)?
>
> http://lists.webjunction.org/web4lib/search/index.cgi? 
> query=Drupal&submit=Search%21&metaname=swishdefault&DateRanges_date_opt 
> ion=All&DateRanges_start_mon=1&DateRanges_start_day=28&DateRanges_start 
> _year=2006&DateRanges_end_mon=1&DateRanges_end_day=28&DateRanges_end_ye 
> ar=2006&sort=swishrank
>
> Have a good weekend everyone.
>
> Regards,
>
> James Jacobs
>
> On Fri, 27 Jan 2006, Mark Jordan wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> There has been discussion on web4lib of using Drupal for library  
>> blogging, but I'd be
>> interested in hearing from libraries that use it as their main  
>> website CMS. I know the
>> Ann Arbor District Library uses it to great success (they've even  
>> integrated their ILS
>> into it). In particular, I'm interested in your assessment of:
>>
>> 1) Scalability -- how well does it perform (I know that Spread  
>> Firefox and the Onion
>> use it, so it can scaled fairly high)
> Å>
>> 2) Content creation/workflow management (users/groups/roles)
>>
>> 3) Flexibility, particularly with regard to use of existing Drupal  
>> modules or locally
>> developed modules
>>
>> 4) Your experience with creating themes (layout/CSS/etc.) for your  
>> site.
>>
>> I have used Drupal for a couple of non-library websites, but they  
>> were fairly small
>> scale, and am now wondering how feasible it would be to implement it  
>> on a larger scale.
>> I'm interested in Drupal because it is feature-rich, is fairly well  
>> written, and has a
>> pretty active user and developer community. The documentation is  
>> improving rapidly too.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Mark
>>
>> Mark Jordan
>> Head of Library Systems
>> W.A.C. Bennett Library, Simon Fraser University
>> Burnaby, British Columbia, V5A 1S6, Canada
>> Phone (604) 291 5753 / Fax (604) 291 3023
>> mjordan at sfu.ca / http://www.sfu.ca/~mjordan/
>
> **********************************************************
>
> James R. Jacobs
> San Francisco, CA
> radlib at ucimc.org
> http://radicalreference.info
> http://freegovinfo.info
> http://ucimc.org/library
>
> **********************************************************
>
>    (\
>   {|||8-
>    (/
> _______________________________________________
> Web4lib mailing list
> Web4lib at webjunction.org
> http://lists.webjunction.org/web4lib/