I very much enjoyed talking to Ms. Hughes and Mr. Lo. They were very gracious and accommodating. I found it interesting that the website and the intranet fall under continuing education department. I wish I had asked about the rationale for that arrangement. However, I did observe that Ms. Hughes and Mr. Lo work closely together on managing both sites.
Mr. Lo's educational and professional background is in computer science, which confirms my opinion that at this point only such high level of expertise can properly serve the technology needs of libraries. I hope the time will come when MLIS graduates will have enough training in computer technology. At the same time, the overall management of the web design is done by a librarian, so both points of view are taken into consideration.
The amount of work that came into creating a system that, although not perfect, serves the needs of the library well, really impressed me. It took combining several systems and supplementing them with custom code to achieve the results they wanted.
Mr. Lo's educational and professional background is in computer science, which confirms my opinion that at this point only such high level of expertise can properly serve the technology needs of libraries. I hope the time will come when MLIS graduates will have enough training in computer technology. At the same time, the overall management of the web design is done by a librarian, so both points of view are taken into consideration.
The amount of work that came into creating a system that, although not perfect, serves the needs of the library well, really impressed me. It took combining several systems and supplementing them with custom code to achieve the results they wanted.
It's comforting to know that Mr. Lo, with all his experience, wanted to throw Joomla against the wall too (or at least, that's what it sounded like to me). All Joomla bashing aside, I think it's really cool that CMSs can be strung together to work as a larger system. There really are quite a lot of capabilities, it just takes vision and then perseverance to figure out how to see it through.
ReplyDeleteIn regards to your thoughts about highly experienced computer science types can fulfill the needs of a library, the woman I interviewed is a volunteer at a small library. She had little experience with CMS or website design and has been learning WordPress to build and maintain her library's website. However, her library is not as large as the Dekalb County system, and maybe the larger systems do require more expertise. Or maybe, it can be as complicated as a person wants it to be.
Well, if we could master (maybe that is a bit too strong of a word?) Joomla in a short time and with all the other Maymester nonsense looming in the background, then anybody can do it. It also turns out that Joomla is hardly the most user-friendly CMS out there. It is so wonderful that the technology exists now that makes web site creation and other tasks accessible to mere mortals. What freedom!
ReplyDeleteI agree about the difference in scale. I would be curious to see the website of the library that you describe. DCPL website is so sophisticated and has so many different features. That is probably not necessary for a smaller library. Another issue is tech support. If the smaller library's site goes down, it is a serious problem, but imagine if the entire DCPL site went down. That situation would require immediate action and, because the site is so complex, it would probably be quite involved.