[Web4lib] CMS or something else?

[Tyson Tate]

Be careful with allowing librarians to edit and add content. It's not
that they're incapable, of course, it's that having a wide array of
people with varying experiences with web content and organization can
lead to a poorly organized and poorly coded site. They're certainly
capable of creating valuable and useful content, but it's much better
to have a "gatekeeper" who prepares content for the internet.

This gatekeeper should be a web person who has a firm grasp of the
organization of your site as well as the ability to use the proper
code and styles to make new content fit in with the design and
standards of your overall site. They'll be able to keep track of
content and remove old content when needed. Perhaps you don't even
need a CMS. You may simply need an organized system of allowing
librarians and other staff members to submit content for translation
to your web site. They could submit Word documents through a web form
which allows them to specify where they want their new content to go.

-Tyson

On 9/1/06, Keith D. Engwall <kengwall at catawba.edu> wrote:
> Our director has requested that we look into providing some way for
> librarians to add content to our web site (http://www.lib.catawba.edu).
> On one hand this is pretty much in the realm of CMS, but I would like to
> find something that works behind the scenes, rather than something with
> the content management controls right on the page.  In other words, I
> want the staff to be able to log into a back end interface that allows
> them to add/edit files, while the front end is good ol' XHTML/CSS, same
> as what I'd put up using vi on the server itself.
>
> I've looked through the CMS matrix, but thus far have not found quite
> what I'm looking for, and I'm not sure that a CMS is quite what I'm
> looking for.
>
> Any suggestions would appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Keith
>
> ---------------------------------
> Keith Engwall
> Head of Library Systems and Technology
> Catawba College
> Salisbury, NC
> kengwall at catawba.edu
>
> "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public
> relations, for nature cannot be fooled." - Richard P. Feynman
>
>
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