WebJunction

We have a number of supervisors that would like to be able to edit their own "program" part of the website conforming to the HTML template I have designed.

Do any libraries use any particular CMS? I know there are discussions about this at TechSoup, but I thought I'd see what the REAL librarian's have to say about this.

Thanks,

Ryan

Here's a few other sites that might help you plan this project. These cover some of the pitfalls that can arise from such projects and may be worth a look.

Whether you even need a CMS:

"There are many cases where an organization might really benefit from a CMS, but as I’ve experienced myself, for many what they really need is distributed authorship. While a CMS can provide distributed authorship, it’s usually like hitting a thumbtack with a sledgehammer. Probably not the right tool for the job."

http://www.7nights.com/asterisk/archive/2004/10/content-management-no-system.php

Why Content Management Fails by Jeffrey Veen
http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000315.php

Making Your Content Management System Work for You: An Interview with Jeffrey Veen
http://www.uie.com/events/uiconf/articles/veen_interview/

If you are looking into open source CMS systems you can try demo's of most of the PHP/MySQL based ones at: http://www.opensourcecms.com/

Hope these help.

Ryan,

Great question. While I'm not a librarian, I do spawn and respond to these kinds of CMS related questions on TechSoup....

While I would tend to agree with some others that sometimes using a CMS system could be overkill just for web page management, I think the larger picture should be evaluated. For simple template-based distributed authoring, desktop software packages like Macromedia Contribute can be used with minimal technical skill by content authors.

The Larger Picture.
What does CMS stand for? Is it Content Management System or Community Management System? The lines are bluring between slashdot style sites, blogging, distributed publishing, etc. In other words, what are you using your website for? and what could it be used for? More and more, community participation becomes an effective way to create ongoing interactions with constituencies and can perhaps make an organization's community more invested in its success.

Therefore, I see the real value in moving to a website managed by a software backend (what we typically think of as a CMS), is the possibility of engaging a consitutency in a different kind of way and enabling the community.

Now, this is outside of the original post. However, I thought I would toss this food for thought out there.

One open source CMS out there called CivicSpace Labs (http://www.civicspacelabs.org) is an interesting blend of content, community, communications, and avocacy tools and its pretty simple to setup on most any shared hosting ISP.

Happy New Year,
John Lorance
Compumentor/TechSoup