Interview with Jay Rancourt, Cook Memorial Library

I interviewed Jay Rancourt of Cook Memorial Library in Tamworth, New Hampshire to find out more about her library's use of Wordpress as the primary CMS for their website. Here is a link to their lovely page:
http://tamworthlibrary.org/

My questions are in bold, Ms. Rancourt's responses are italicized.

How and where did you hear about Wordpress? Through my daughter.

Did you consider adopting any other content management systems? No

You mentioned your daughter built the website. In your experience, is

building the site more difficult than maintenance? Yes, more difficult to build, but isn't that the whole point of using a content management system? Once it's built, it should be easy to maintain and tweak.

Does a librarian have to be very "tech-savvy" to build a site like

yours with Wordpress? No, not at all, I'm no techy.

What was the motivation to adopt Wordpress? Open source and the ability to develop plug-ins, like Scriblio.

You mentioned in the previous email that you dropped the Scriblio interactive catalog?
We dropped it because the WP upgrades were not compatible with it, so each time we upgraded, stuff broke and was increasingly difficult to fix.

What made you decide to focus on the library website aspect? Every library should have a digital portal. I get many email requests and reference questions via the comment function on the website. Patrons also make suggestions of library programs to present and books to purchase.

Could you tell me more about your decision making criteria for adopting Wordpress? Open source, nimble, constantly developing new plug-ins, themes and functions. easily combined with other online software, like Google products, Facebook, LibraryThing, etc, by using badges, RSS feeds, and widgets. I find I can keep developing new ideas with relative ease - doesn't require a complete facelift to make changes.

What are the benefits or advantages Wordpress offers in comparison to what you were using? Did you use a different CMS prior to Wordpress? WP is my 3rd. The first two website designs were static - no interactivity, remixability, less findability. I am sorry that WP's search function does not search comments.

My class has done some experimenting on Wordpress and it seems much more intuitive and easy to edit that what I've seen of other systems, like Drupal or Joomla. How was the learning curve for this project? Not too bad. I'm no techy, just a hardworking SOP library director(seat of pants - no MLS). I do have my daughter egging me on and getting me out of jams.

Do you have a favorite widget or plug-in? I'm fond of LibraryThing. When we made the decision to ditch the Scriblio catalog and no longer had a "New Book Shelf" built into the website through Scriblio, I was able to create a reasonable facsimile with LibraryThing. I also like Google Calendars. I only have to write an event down once and it gets posted on our Events, and goes to people's RSS feeds from the website. I also just like poking around the new stuff constantly being
developed for WP. I love the whole democratic sharing that is inherent in Open Source. If ILSs were open source (yes, I know, there are a few now), we would have had major design overhauls years ago, and all ILSs would be interactive by now.

Ms. Rancourt brings up interesting points, particularly about Open Source Software. OSS was a major criterion for choosing a CMS, as was the ability to use plug-ins. I agree with her point about libraries having a "digital portal" to engage patrons. There are many libraries still stuck with a "static" library website.