CMS Interview

I interviewed two librarians regarding their experiences with a Content Management System (CMS). I conducted both interviews via email.  The first librarian I interviewed was Donovan Lambright, who is the Automation Librarian at SELCO.  SELCO is one of Minnesota’s 12 regional public library systems.  The membership of SELCO is comprised of a federation of locally autonomous public libraries and 11 counties in southeastern Minnesota.  As Donovan explained, SELCO uses two CMSs, WordPress and Confluence.  WordPress powers their organization’s website as well as the websites of many of the libraries in the SELCO region (which SELCO hosts).  SELCO uses Confluence to maintain their "team pages", which is an internal, private wiki for SELCO staff.

I asked Donovan what SELCO’s motivations were when adopting WordPress for its current use as their organization’s website.  Donovan explained that SELCO actually used Confluence for its previous, pre-WordPress website.  Confluence worked well for providing documents and other content for the member libraries, but not for creating modern-looking websites.  SELCO wanted to make their website less the document portal it was with Confluence and more a website about the organization.  SELCO wanted a solution that could be hosted by a commercial web hosting company and that also could be used by a wide range of staff with varying degrees of technology knowledge.  It was decided that WordPress would meet these criteria for both SELCO and the libraries it serves.  Confluence was kept for the team pages at SELCO, and is found to work well for its purpose as an internal, staff-only wiki.

I asked Donovan how the learning curve was for the CMSs used.  He felt the learning curve regarding WordPress has been very manageable, and that most of the staff at SELCO and the member libraries find it pretty easy to work with.  Donovan felt the learning curve for Confluence was a bit steeper.  He believed this was due to Confluence being less a blog and more a document management platform.

Donovan mentioned that of the 35 public libraries that SELCO serves, 28 of those libraries are using WordPress through SELCO.  One of those libraries that uses WordPress through SELCO is Chatfield Public Library.  The second person I interviewed for this project was Monica Erickson, the Library Director of the Chatfield Public Library.  I asked Monica what the advantages were to using WordPress through SELCO vs. any prior systems the library may have used.  Monica mentioned numerous disadvantages of their prior website.  The Chatfield Public Library began with a website hosted through a computer company in a nearby town.  The library was completely dependent on a trainer from the computer company for all of their training.  Unfortunately there were things that the computer company would not teach library staff.  The library would have to request that certain things be done and then the computer company did them when it fit their schedule.  Monica also felt that the format of this website was very rigid, and not user friendly.

Monica explained that she actually started using WordPress before SELCO was supporting it.  She knew of WordPress because her husband had worked with it and had liked it.  Monica finds many advantages of working with WordPress.  She appreciates that there are so many options for themes, and that people all over the world are always developing new plug-ins and widgets that she can then use for free.  Monica appreciates the flexibility of WordPress.  She likes that the library can use WordPress as both a blog and a website.  She has both static pages and day to day posts.  She can reorder her blog posts and can edit posts whenever she wants.  She loves that SELCO is now supporting WordPress, because she now has a go-to place when she runs into trouble.

The only disadvantage Monica mentioned to using WordPress regards an experience she had.  She spent a great deal of time searching for a perfect theme, setting it all up the way she wanted it, then used it for years (and it became part of the library’s branding), only to realize one day that the theme was no longer being upgraded and supported by its developer.  She had to give it up and pick a newer theme, which was a cause of frustration!

I then asked Monica how the learning curve was for WordPress.  Monica feels that it is definitely doable for the “normal joe”.  She finds that she sometimes forgets how to do things that she doesn’t do on a weekly basis, but she usually is able to figure things out with a little trial and error.  She also appreciates that she can find a lot of help online with her questions.

From these interviews, I learned a couple of ways that libraries are utilizing Content Management Systems.  These include the use of WordPress for websites and Confluence as an internal, staff-only wiki.  Both Donovan and Monica speak very positively about their experiences with using WordPress for their respective websites.  While Confluence wasn’t found to be what SELCO needed for their website, they still do find that it works well as an internal, private wiki for SELCO staff.  I also learned through these interviews that both the staff of SELCO and Monica at the City of Chatfield found WordPress fairly easy to work with.

Lastly, I just want to thank Donovan and Monica for their time and help with this assignment!