[Web4lib] decentralized web content

[Hess, M. Ryan]

At DePaul's libraries, I'm also in the middle of outlining our CM plan. We're moving our site to SharePoint this year from (gasp) Collage so I'm seeing this as a big opportunity to make some changes. Currently, we have distributed editorial permissions for a number of librarians, but the unreliability of Collage is a big disincentive for librarians to make the effort, so few changes are made outside my team.

After we move to SharePoint, of course, it will be much easier and much more intuitive to make changes, and I'm excited about how this will empower our content curators, as I'm calling them here. My plan is to train/remind these curators of web conventions/usability issues and then let them make changes to their areas of the site as needed. From time to time, our new Web Applications Librarian and I will be reviewing the site and advising these curators of any issues we find. My hope is that this distributed model has the right balance of freedom and control to keep our librarians engaged in the site while also ensuring the site's usability.

M Ryan Hess
Web Services Coordinator
DePaul University

-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org on behalf of Varnum, Ken
Sent: Tue 1/11/2011 10:38 AM
To: web4lib at webjunction.org
Subject: Re: [Web4lib] decentralized web content
 
We -- the University of Michigan Library,  http://www.lib.umich.edu/ -- moved to Drupal about 18 months ago and distributed authoring responsibilities to people across the library.  Roughly 100 people have "page author" permissions (out of a total population of about 400 in the libraries).  We are not using any workflow management within Drupal; the people authorized to manage their unit's content are expected to behave properly and discuss anything that might raise an eyebrow with their management/colleagues before doing it.  Content is live when published or edited. This has worked well for us, so far.  Page authors can create or edit content within their unit (we use Organic Groups to keep content 'siloed' for editing purposes), and can delete any content they create.

We have a second role, "content manager", of which there are about 20.  Content managers are responsible for their unit's content overall; they can delete any content in their unit, in addition to the creating and editing that page authors can do. Content managers also have the ability to edit the unit's navigation menus.


--
Ken Varnum
Web Systems Manager                   E: varnum at umich.edu
University of Michigan Library        T: 734-615-3287
300C Hatcher Graduate Library         F: 734-647-6897
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1190              http://www.lib.umich.edu/





On 1/10/11 7:24 PM, "Angela Christofferson" <Angela.Christofferson at spl.org> wrote:

Our library is in the process of decentralizing our web content for our public website.  Our goal is for employees throughout the Library to enter content into a content management system.

Does your library use a content management system and have a decentralized web content model?  If so, could you share your experiences and workflow?  For example, what roles (Author, Approver, Editor) have you created?  How does content move through the process?  How do you maintain standards, consistency, oversight, etc.?  Can employees post directly to your website?

Thanks in advance for sharing.

Angela Christofferson
The Seattle Public Library
Information Technology
206-733-9688

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