[Web4lib] Keeping library web pages in-house

Fri Oct 27 16:14:07 EDT 2006

I'm in a similar situation myself.  On our campus all webpages are
managed by one person in the PR department.  The pages are static html
and while I can ask her to make changes to the content, I don't have
access to the server and the changes can take awhile to go live.

When I was hired, I was told the we had the VPAA's support to redesign
the library's website and so I did.  I put a year (part-time) into my
Plone site with 40+ dynamically generated subject guides (the current
site has just 4 pages that only list databases), RSS, and room to add
many portal functions.  I even negotiated with PR on 'look-and-feel
issues.  Then the VPAA was fired.  Then the college hired an Executive
Director of Information Technology who decided that only his staff could
run servers, even though we have our ILS on a Sun box and his IT shop
only knows Windows.  My library website was up for a total of one day. 
We've kept the ILS for now but the issue keeps coming up.

Meanwhile the IT director has informed us that the college's website
may move to a CMS in 3-4 years.

So I have to persuade our newly hired VPAA to persuade the president to
have the IT director restore my server's DNS entry.  Some faculty have
used my site on-campus and that helps my case.  And I recently did a
poster session on my site at a conference, and that helps but it will be
an uphill battle.  I'm even thinking of offering to set up an online
respository for faculty publications (showcasing faculty pubs is a
recent interest of the pres.), running it off my Plone site, of course.

Maybe we'll even end up hosting it off-campus.  We'll see.

Good luck with your site Lara!

Larry Milliken
Reference Librarian 
Neumann College Library

>>> "Kate Pitcher" <pitcher at geneseo.edu> 10/27/06 3:13 PM >>>
I would second Dave's comments.  Our CIT implemented a homegrown CMS
and 
wanted all college offices and academic departments to use this system
--  
regardless of content or applications that we might use.
They never actually demanded that we use the CMS, just thought it would
be 
"easier" without actually asking anyone if it would meet our needs.  We

decided to test it out and found it certainly could not meet our needs
due 
to the very things Dave is talking about in his email below.  The
library is 
unique on our campus because of these very functions -- ILL, electronic

reserves, catalog -- why should we be pigeonholded into a system that
is 
really designed for informational pages?

By the way, our library web pages are housed on a campus server, but we

maintain our own servers for our ILLiad system and electronic
reserves.
We redesigned our site this summer and are very happy we didn't go with
the 
campus CMS!

Kate

*******************************************************************
Katherine E. Pitcher
Reference/Instruction & Web Development Librarian
Milne Library
SUNY at Geneseo
(585) 245-5064
pitcher at geneseo.edu 
http://www.geneseo.edu/~pitcher 
*******************************************************************
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Walker, David" <dwalker at calstate.edu>
To: "Lara Little" <llittle at pfeiffer.edu>; <newdirmentor-l at ala.org>; 
<web4lib at webjunction.org>
Sent: Friday, October 27, 2006 3:00 PM
Subject: RE: [Web4lib] Keeping library web pages in-house

>> What arguments have you used to keep
>> control of your site's design and
>> content?

Having fought this battle a number of times over the past five years,
the 
one thing I noticed was that most of the people in marketing and IT who

advanced the argument that the library needed to conform to a
particular 
template or CMS (erroneously) assumed that the library's website only 
consisted of informational pages about the library; really little
different 
from any other department or college website on campus.  In fact, some
even 
made that exact comparison.

So my goal was to show them that the library was actually an academic 
*application*, consisting of not only the top-level pages that they had
ever 
bothered to look at, but also the catalog, the interlibrary loan
system, 
electronic reserves, and a half-dozen other servers and systems.  The 
library's website was actually quite large and complex, and used by
people 
for actual work, rather than just a glorified online brochure.

Nobody in marketing or IT wanted to force applications like the student

grade system or the learning management system into a campus template,
so it 
made no sense to force the library system into that extraneous
navigation 
and design, either.

That actually held the day.  Our backup plan: Librarians in the CSU are

faculty, and we would have thrown down a "you can't tell faculty how to

design their pages" argument.  That would have *definitely* won the
day! ;-)

--Dave

-------------------
David Walker
Library Web Services Manager
California State University
http://xerxes.calstate.edu 

________________________________

From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org on behalf of Lara Little
Sent: Fri 10/27/2006 10:00 AM
To: newdirmentor-l at ala.org; web4lib at webjunction.org 
Subject: [Web4lib] Keeping library web pages in-house

Hi all,

Currently our library maintains our website on our own server in our
building. All of the design, maintenance, etc. is done by library
staff. The university is currently re-designing their website (they
have contracted it out and it is being done with a content management
system). I have flat-out refused to give up control of our site, and
the library staff is in full agreement! So far it seems that the
powers that be have no problem with us maintaining our own site on
our own server, but they want us to "match". So far I have suggested
the compromise of adding some aspects of the overall design and
colors to our design (although I hate the colors), but based on a
conversation today I have a feeling I may to have to fight to keep it
at that. I am also afraid that they will try to impose their CMS on
our server or otherwise try to take us over. I should mention that
our library website includes our digitized archives, which are being
added to every day! My questions for other folks who have dealt with
this is basically: What arguments have you used to keep control of
your site's design and content? Thanks for any suggestions!

Lara

--
Lara B. Little
Reference/Periodicals Librarian & Library Coordinator
G.A. Pfeiffer Library/Pfeiffer University
Misenheimer, NC 28109

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