Module III- Introduction
I wanted to interview the librarian at my library for this assignment, but she is on vacation. I am currently on the “website committee” to change our website using our institutions CMS. I found out that our school uses a combination of systems that include, Joomla, Drupal, and Wordpress. We are currently hiring for the position of Webmaster.
Our website is currently powered by Springshare. According to (Connell, 2013), Springshare is a product that can be used as a CMS but is not necessarily a CMS. Additionally, Springshare markets their product as a content management system as seen on their website. http://www.springshare.com/libguides/
For this assignment, I contacted by email and phone the library director at a neighboring university. I explained to her that I am enrolled in an MLIS program and was currently working on an assignment. I asked for her help in forwarding my contact information to the person that maintains or manages their library website. She was gracious enough to assist me with the interview and also responded that the campus department of Technology Resources manages the web pages for the library. The university used several CMSs in the past.
Transcript:
Interviewer: Student - Wanda S. Thomas
Interviewee: Director of Library Services
Interviewee: Webmaster
(Start of interview)
Interviewer: My name is Wanda S. Thomas and I am currently enrolled in the MLIS program at Valdosta State University. I am calling you today for information for my Applied Library Technology class assignment. I would like to ask a few questions to the person in your library that manages or maintains the library's website.
Interviewee (director): I’d be happy to assist you as I can with your assignment, but would need to know specifically what questions you have in order to direct you to the correct person. At [Redacted] the campus Dept. of Technology Resources manages the web pages for all departments/units, although we can make suggestions for layout and design to some extent. Please send me your questions. If I can’t answer them, I’ll provide the contact information for the appropriate person.
(Start of interview with the webmaster via email)
Interviewee ( Webmaster) Hello Wanda, I will try to answer these to the best of my abilities. Good luck on your project.
Interviewer: Thanks, I am so glad you are able to help me. My first question is what is your background in Information Technology?
Interviewee: I’ve been a webmaster for an enterprise organization for about 6 years. I have a M.S. in Applied Computer Science and B.S. in IT. My current website is well over 1,000 pages.
Interviewer: Okay, you have extensive experience, so how and where did you hear about CMS?
Interviewee: A Content Management System is a key software some organizations use to organize and work on websites. It helps non-technical users contribute content to the website in designated areas while giving central administrators the ability to control these users with permissions, workflow, and templates/branding. There are lots of CMS’s out there in the world and they all have different designs, functions, and limitations. In the past few years, the market has started developing CMS’s specifically targeted to certain audiences. I began learning about them during my undergrad a number of years ago as ways of managing large websites.
Interviewer: My next question is what were the motivations to adopt CMS for its current use whether is is from the library website or other uses on your campus?
Interviewee: CMS’s can increase the number of people working on a website and provide non-technical users a friendly interface for editing web content. A good CMS will not require users to know any HTML, JS, XML, or other web-based languages and scripts. Typically “the technical people” do not know intricacies of business processes so allowing the people that know the content to make edits can lessen the burden on the IT staff and provide better information sharing since knowledgeable users are writing the content. Basically though; more authors = more changes that can be done faster.
Interviewer: What were their decision-making criteria? and What is the name of CMS your school is using now?
Interviewee: When we created the website, we decided NOT to implement a CMS for a few reasons that weren’t necessarily in our control. 1) No Money 2) No Time 3) Reduced ability to react to change. A CMS is essentially “boxed software” and what happens when you design yourself into a box? You’re stuck with it! You have to make decisions early that will exist during the entire lifetime of the software. You may ask “What do you make your website with if you don’t use a CMS?” to which I would say the web team has officially become a SCRUM teamhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(software_development) and handles the main website as our ongoing project. The Library staff are but one set of clients the web team works with. In all, I would say we have over 50 clients easy (Library, Admissions, ARC, Foundation, Marketing, etc.). Some would say the process is naturally driven as long as the populace knows to contact the web team for changes.
Interviewer: So you do not use a CMS?
Interviewee: Not currently but before consolidation we used a CMS.
Interviewer: What are the important benefits or advantages of CMS you are using now over the old system or another CMS system you used in the past?
Interviewee: Originally we used Adobe’s Contribute product in conjunction with Adobe Dreamweaver templates. In addition to Adobe ending support for Contribute, we felt the methods for maintaining Dreamweaver templates would be too cumbersome for some of the unique challenges that would arise in consolidation. One example is that we didn’t even fully know our color scheme until just a week or so before launch. Since then we’ve changed designs, colors, organization, and logos multiple times; all tasks that would be cumbersome under Contribute’s model. In the future, and I’m not sure how far into it, we will most likely shift back to a CMS model for maintaining our website. Even without one we’ve been quite effective at providing useful web services.
Interviewer: Is it easier to learn a CMS system if you have had experience with others?
Interviewee:YES! Once you get the underlying concept of what CMS’s can do then it’s more of a matter of which is best for your solution. They all have their ups and downs. At one point we were really considering Cascade Server, which I still consider to be my favorite FULL WEBSITE solution for us. It sort of has its own scripting language built in and some powerful XML transformations too. The downside was the $40,000+ price tag. Wordpress is free and powerful but it does not scale well to sites over 1000 pages, require workflows and folder restrictions, and the various templating/branding abilities we need. Knowing what you want to do with your website is key before you choose a CMS (or no CMS).
Interviewer: What are some of the CMSs you have worked with in the past?
Interviewee: CMS’s I’ve investigated and/or work(ed) with over the years. (1=lowest knowledge|5=highest knowledge):
· Contribute - 5
· Wordpress - 5
· Joomla - 2
· Cascade Server – Higher Ed Focused - 2
· OmniWeb/OU Campus – Higher Ed Focused - 2
· Percussion - 2
· SidHelp – Athletics Related - 1
· Umbraco - 1
· DotNetNuke – 1
· Drupal – 1
· Kentico - 1
· Sharepoint – 2
· GoDaddy’s Sitebuilder thingy - 2
· Custom homegrown database driven applications - 5
Interviewer: That’s all the questions I have for you. Thank you so much for your help with this project. You have great experience and I have learned a lot from this interview. Thanks again!
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