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.

My WordPress Experience

Experimenting with WordPress has not been nearly as difficult as I first imagined. Again, I think I have my blogging background to thank for that.

I like how customizable WP is. The widgets are similar to almost every other external application I've encountered in my Tumblr, Macbook Dashboard and even here on Blogger. I liked playing with the appearance of the site, although I wish I could have browsed more themes to find the perfect one. I added the calendar, blogroll, tag cloud widgets and made sure to keep the meta portion very prominent on the page to avoid the confusion many other teams experienced.

I chose the most light-hearted of the plug-ins available to my team: the Hello Dolly plug-in that gives admins a random quote from the famous muscial. It doesn't have a practical purpose, but not all widgets have to. I like to think of it as a "coffee-break" plugin :)

The difficulties I faced where related to uploading. I had trouble resizing a picture, so the picture of me on my page has an ugly white border. Hopefully, one of my team members can help me fix it. I also accidentally kept a link private, but that was easy peasy to fix. Another thing I like about WP is how easy it is to edit and how it automatically saves drafts for you, but these are also common traits of other CMSs.

Wordpress

Last night's class really helped me feel more comfortable with Wordpress. I created my page this morning and even added a picture, but it looked wonky so I took it down. Editing on Wordpress is really easy. I also changed the theme for the blog and played around with the widgets.

This module has more complicated material, but there is less of it, so that's good. I like working in groups too; it helps me feel less "d'oh!" and more "Oh!" haha.

Drupal and Wordpress

This Drupal stuff is mad confusing. I think I barely grasp what a content management system is and I get that you can make really snazzy websites, digital galleries, etc with it. I guess I just wonder the practical application of it. When I worked in public libraries, I was exposed to how very little technology the general public seems to tolerate. The vast majority could barely master Facebook or Monster.com or creating an email address. It seems like complicated stuff that many if not most patrons won't appreciate or even use.

Wordpress is a little easier to stomach, since I have a decent background in blogging. But it's not nearly as intuitive as other platforms I've used. I was disappointed we didn't get to discuss Tumblr during the Web 2.0 discussions, because it is my all-time favorite blogging platform as well as the most user-friendly I've encountered.

Perhaps I'll feel differently after tonight's class. I can definitely see how exciting the possibilities are. But I question the practicality.