Building library websites with Drupal – and getting help
If you’re looking to completely revamp your library’s website, and Drupal is alluring (as it should be) as a potential content management system, then you may want to take a look at YourLibrarySite. YourLibrarySite builds you a Drupal-based site with some of the more common library-useful modules (Drupal-speak for "add-on" or "application"). In addition to traditional site-development assistance, they also offer a subscription model where libraries can have their sites not only built but hosted by the company at a relatively low cost as hosting services go. One thing I really like about them is that they are very upfront with their pricing. None of this "you get this deal and you don’t" attitude.
Also keep in mind a competing service that has been around for about two years, Cherry Hill’s LibrarySite2. It is also a Drupal-based library website service, with similar parameters — you tell them what you want, they build it, and they’ll even host it if you need a host.
While our library is going with Drupal for our site development, because of the size and scope of our site we’ve decided to go it on our own and build it from the ground up. However, for smaller libraries looking to get some help these types of services may be just what the doctor ordered.
September 8th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
Although my experience with Drupal vs. Joomla would still have me singing Joomla’s praises, I was very impressed with Darien Library site which used Drupal 6 – http://www.darienlibrary.org/
September 9th, 2008 at 12:37 am
Drupal is certainly a good way to approach a library project – some issues we encountered with the respective modules to use it as an library can be time consuming, e.g. uploading large directories of content in regard to special characters and related issues in the bibliographic information. Although this is due in some cases to products like Endnote and the xml they generate when being exported. bottom line is – we agree that it saves plenty of time and headache doing it in Drupal.