Content Management Systems are a hot tool in libraries right now. At our place alone, we’re using Drupal for our main website, WordPress as a basic CMS for multiple sites, and we are helping one of our member libraries build a new site with Joomla. Libraries are becoming interested in making their websites more dynamic and getting more staff involved in site content. That’s a good thing.
Drupal 6.0 and Joomla 1.5 were recently released. These new versions make it even easier for libraries to get up and running with a CMS. Drupal is my personal favorite. We have several custom PHP scripts and Drupal allows us to easily integrate them into the content management framework. Drupal is also being used in cool libraries like Ann Arbor and Cleveland Public. Miami University is playing with Drupal as a faceted catalog and ALA has decided to move it’s website to Drupal.
There are growing options for Drupal support as well. Back in November, the DRUPAL4LIB discussion list went live. There’s a fair amount of traffic and of course there are several experts on the list to answer your questions. You can also keep up with Drupal in libraries and visit the forums at drupalib. There’s a post in the forum there on Drupal help websites.
If your library hasn’t considered a CMS yet, maybe it’s time. Even small libraries can benefit from basic CMS features like those found in WordPress. There’s even a free hosted version at WordPress.com that makes it easy to get started.






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[...] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptContent Management Systems are a hot tool in libraries right now. At our place alone, we’re using Drupal for our main website, WordPress as a basic CMS for multiple sites, and we are helping one of our member libraries build a new site … [...]
[...] is Moving to Drupal I’ve previously mentioned my preference for content management systems over traditional websites. We use Drupal at MPOW and it allows almost everyone in our office to [...]