[lita-l] Using Sharepoint as a CMS/public-facing site

[Jean Graef]

Librarians following this thread might be interested in our article "What librarians should know about SharePoint." See http://www.montague.com/review/sharepointlibrarians.html

Jean Graef
The Montague Institute

From: Web technologies in libraries [mailto:WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of miles stauffer
Sent: Thursday, December 08, 2011 10:51 AM
To: WEB4LIB at LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [WEB4LIB] [lita-l] Using Sharepoint as a CMS/public-facing site

Hi Everyone,

I have had a very positive experience with SharePoint, especially within the library environment. I few years ago a wrote a small article for MS about this same topic:

http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blogs/GetThePoint/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=242

My key takeaways from this process:

1) The Business Data Catalog is amazing. This tool is revolutionary to me. Essentially you can create a custom SQL or web services query to index your library data and seamlessly integrate the resources into your SharePoint instance.

2) If you want to do more than just basic integration you will need a C# developer. There is a portal editor which is quite interesting as well.

miles stauffer


On Thu, Dec 8, 2011 at 7:15 AM, Ryan Hess <mhess8 at depaul.edu<mailto:mhess8 at depaul.edu>> wrote:
Hi Alison,

We are expected to move to SharePoint as well early next year and I've been blogging about our preparations thus far, which has led to many emails from other institutions that are having SharePoint brought to them by their IT departments. So it seems like this is emerging as a trend. What I'm also picking up is that people who have used SharePoint loath SharePoint for some of the reasons you cite, compatibility issues, etc. My own concerns rest in two areas:

 1.  How much of a community of practice is there with SharePoint in libraries, from which we can draw for advice, ideas, solutions. This is definitely true with Wordpress and Drupal, but from what I can tell, it is very early days for SharePoint as a library CMS.
 2.  Interoperability and standards. We all know how well Microsoft plays with others and how they tend to develop their own standards.

Still there is at least one success story out there. Sandia National Laboratories (a special research library) has a public-facing SharePoint site, which they presented at Internet Librarian. Danielle Pollock was the presenter.

I would also offer up DePaul's (www.depaul.edu<http://www.depaul.edu>) main homepage as an example of what a public-facing SharePoint site can look like. The project team here did a very good job in terms of design and I have to say I was impressed (and soothed) by what I saw.

I've worked a little bit with Drupal and can say that the CMS world is definitely a quirky one for people used to hand-coding and working within Dreamweaver. And with Drupal, at least, it definitely starts to feel "patchy" in that to get the system to do everything you want, sometimes feels like more work than if you just built it from scratch.

I'm also building back-up pages in LibGuides these days (our current CMS is unsupported and not stable) and am actually quite surprised at what you can do with a little creative thinking. And I would recommend looking into that option as well. It's actually not that difficult to create a regular-looking, fully functional site that looks nothing like LibGuides' boxiness.

Good luck and do report back to the list on how it all pans out.


M Ryan Hess
Web Services Coordinator
DePaul University
JTR 120, DePaul University, Lincoln Park Campus, 2350 N Kenmore Ave., Chicago IL 60614
office: 773-325-7829<tel:773-325-7829> | cell:  650-224-7279<tel:650-224-7279> |  fax: 773-325-2297<tel:773-325-2297>  | mhess8 at depaul.edu<http://mhess8@depaul.edu>
On 12/8/11 8:46 AM, "Pruntel,Alison" <Alison.Pruntel at fauquiercounty.gov<http://Alison.Pruntel@fauquiercounty.gov>> wrote:
**Apologies in advance for cross-posting**

Our county is considering the use of Microsoft Sharepoint for our public-facing site; all county departments will be expected to use this as our CMS. As we already find using it as our intranet laborious/inefficient, am hoping for feedback from other libraries using Sharepoint for this purpose (public site, CMS) and pros/cons. I realize there has been great success using Joomla, Drupal, WordPress, etc., but the decision-making entity is keen on Sharepoint. Would love links to successful local government/library "for the public" sites using Sharepoint.

Also, if you considered Sharepoint and went with something else, can you send me your "Wow factors" for choosing something other than Sharepoint. (Note: When given a list of reasons for going with tools other than Sharepoint, a key decision-maker asked for "Wow" factors -- no elaboration given -- that would make him consider something other than Sharepoint).

Thanks for considering,


Alison Pruntel
Electronic Resources Librarian
Fauquier County Public Library
11 Winchester Street
Warrenton, VA 20186
540-422-8515<tel:540-422-8515>
alison dot pruntel at fauquiercounty dot gov
FCPL Web Site: http://library.fauquiercounty.gov <http://library.fauquiercounty.gov>
My Blog: http://fcpleresources.blogspot.com <http://fcpleresources.blogspot.com>


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