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| Figure 1. Screen capture of Gwinnett County Public Library's website, retrieved from http://www.gwinnettpl.org. |
Q: What is your name and title?
A: Michael Casey
Division Director, Information Technology
Gwinnett County Public Library
Q: What type of library do you work for?
A: Public
Q: How did you hear about content-management systems?
A: I've been following CMS applications for over 10 years.
Q: What prompted you to adopt a content-management system for its current use? What did you hope to accomplish?
A: Our library's CMS, Drupal, has been in use since 2010 and was adopted because of its efficiencies, both in staff time and cost. Multiple staff serve on the Web team and use Drupal to update and manage the library's website. We moved off of an expensive and proprietary CMS when we went to Drupal, and the ease-of-use and cost savings have been significant.
Q: What criteria did you consider when deciding to use your CMS?
A: • ease of management, both at coding level and WYSIWYG editor for general staff
• ability to tailor design via CSS
• future development growth (steady application development and upgrade releases)
• move to HTML5 and CSS3 (while this was not out when we migrated, it was in the pipeline and scheduled for release)
• cost
• preference for an open platform
Q: Which CMS do you use now?
A: Drupal version 6. Moving [to] Drupal 7 this summer.
Q: On an average day, how do you use the CMS?
A: We use it daily to update website content and calendars.
Q: Did you find it easy or difficult to learn?
A: Drupal's learning curve is not steep when compared to some proprietary systems or hand-coding, but it can be a step up in complexity from WordPress or SquareSpace.
Q: Do other employees also use the CMS? If so, how was the learning curve for them?
A: Yes, approximately 10 staff use it almost daily. We held training classes, but for most staff it is relatively simple. Only two or three people delve into the CSS and coding sections for Drupal. Most staff use WYSIWYG page-editing tools.
Q: Who provides training and technical support for the CMS?
A: IT [Information Technology] does.
Q: How does this CMS compare to others you have used? What are some of the advantages to using this one?
A: Drupal offers a lot of customization options via either modules or code adjustment. It can be made as simply or as complicated as we want. When we migrated our website from the older proprietary CMS, we were tasked with keeping the website's look unchanged. Drupal allowed us to do this. Seeing so many other large sites going to Drupal (such as the White House and many Executive Branch departments, other major public libraries like NYPL) also made the decision rather simple. The fact that Drupal is open-source and has an active developer conference (DrupalCon) also helped.
Q: Have you encountered any limitations/frustrations when trying to use this CMS?
A: There are always issues with the basic WYSIWYG editor and getting the true look and feel staff expect. However, some basic HTML training usually fixes this.
Q: How could the CMS be improved?
A: [I] would like two-factor authentication for admin login. [I] would also like a better way of managing digital assets.
Q: Is there any other information about content-management systems that you'd like to share? If so, please do.
A: I'll just add that we are in the middle of a major redesign, which includes responsive design. It's very exciting to finally be able to move to a platform that does not rely upon silo'ed apps on multiple flavors of mobile OSes (iOS, Android, Windows, etc.) and instead relies upon one responsive site to flexibly mold itself to any delivery vehicle.
Q: Wow, thank you so much for your quick reply! I really appreciate the help. One more thing: Our professor would like us to share the transcripts of our interviews by posting them to our public blog. Is that OK with you? If you'd prefer, I can post the transcript without your name.
A: You're welcome to post to your blog. Thanks for asking!
Reflections: As I said before, I was excited to hear that a library had found a CMS that was inexpensive and – for the most part – easy to use. Additionally, it sounds like Drupal offers many of the same features as Joomla, including responsive design and a WYSIWYG interface. Thanks to the latter, staffers who don't have coding experience can still contribute to the library's website and keep pages current. Suffice it to say, I'm much more optimistic about CMSes now; I'm even tempted to try out Drupal to see for myself how it compares to Joomla and the CMS I use at work, Medley. Thanks, Mr. Casey, for your time and all the great information!
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