Content Managment System Interview

I interviewed the head (name omitted) Digital Services Librarian for the Cobb County Public Library System (CCPLS). He is a graduate of the University of Tennessee and has been with CCPLS for 12 years. He is relatively new to his position, only five months in, and thus inherited the WordPress Content Management System that he is now using and maintaining. My interview subject had previously worked in an E-resources support role under the previous Digital Services Librarian. While he did not then interact extensively with the CMS and the previous management tools used by CCPLS, he did have enough cursory exposure to them to understand the history of CMSs at CCPLS and was able to adapt to their current CMS rather quickly.

The following is a transcript of a recorded interview with the CCPLS Digital Services Librarian on May 29^th, 2015.

What was it like working with WordPress when you hadn’t before?

Well, whenever you take on a new position you are expected to learn new things. I’ve never been afraid of that. I knew there would be a learning curve. I was lucky to have a great relationship with the previous web designer, so I pretty much knew what to expect. I was able to access WordPress and make little emergency updates if needed. She would call sometimes if she didn’t have remote access and say “can you change something for me” [in WordPress], and she’d walk me through it. I learned a lot from her just due to professional osmosis, I guess you could call it. If you pay attention to what those around you are doing. If you’re curious and they kind of include you, you can learn a lot just by asking questions.

Professional Osmosis?

You know what I mean. Just by being around people, overhearing conversations, listening, asking questions. You can learn a ton of stuff. Our work stations were all very close. We worked really well together.

Did you have any part in your library system choosing WordPress for your CMS?

No. It was all (name omitted). We used [Microsoft] Frontpage 2000 for years. We use Sirsi/Dynix for our OPAC, but our own content was created in Frontpage. I remember those days. It wasn’t pretty. (Name omitted) was the one who led the charge to update to Adobe CS4 around 2010. That’s how long we were using Frontpage. We used Dreamweaver and other CS4 applications until last year when we migrated to WordPress. I didn’t have any part in that. I didn’t use Dreamweaver once…

You were using Dreamweaver and shifted to WordPress?

I didn’t…

Dreamweaver is considered more powerful, isn’t it?

I’m not so sure about that anymore. At least the CS4 version. It was very expensive, by the way. I don’t know all the details but WordPress seems to have advantages over Dreamweaver. It’s easy to use. It’s free. It loads quickly. Even I can use it, so that’s something. CS4 is more of an HTML editor. Maybe newer versions of Dreamweaver are more flexible and user friendly. For our purposes though we realized that WordPress does everything we need it to do. It may not be as pretty as something built with a powerful HTML editor, but we really don’t need that. WordPress gives us what we need. 

What has been your experience using WordPress? What are your thoughts on it?

It’s great. It’s fine. One of the big advantages besides being fast and free is you don’t have to hire a web designer. Or BE a web designer. I saw what (name omitted) went through teaching herself Dreamweaver. There were days she was tearing her hair out trying to get something to work that refused to. WordPress was never like that. The migration was very easy. My experience has been great. It’s a true WYSIWYG. I have some personal experience with them. You can learn code for WordPress, but you don’t need it. I prefer to learn code because it allows for greater flexibility. But if I need help I can ask other staff to make changes and updates without worrying that WordPress will be too confusing for them.

Do you have other staff members helping you with WordPress?

Not yet, but that is the plan. When I say other staff I mean we will be recruiting and teaching certain staff the basics of WordPress. Maybe more than just the basics. That can help in a pinch. The goal is to have personnel available if I am not. If we need something changed immediately like a winter weather closure announcement it will be nice to have options.

What kind of learning curve do you think staff will have?

That depends [upon] who is doing the learning. Seriously. We have a lot of amazing people in our system. There are probably people on staff who already know WordPress better than I do. I’m sure of it. We want to teach people who are excited about technology and aren’t afraid of anything. We have a lot of those people here.

We’ve touched on it a bit already. What do you think are the advantages of using WordPress for your CMS?

Well, as I mentioned cost and ease of use are important. Something else that I don’t think I mentioned was the control over content you have and the support from WordPress itself. Not to get side-tracked but one of the concerns I have about WordPress is that they are considered vulnerable by many hackers so WordPress itself is under constant hacker attack. Just last month many Georgia library websites using WordPress were hacked by some Mujahadeen outfit out of Algeria. They took over our homepage with this scary graphic and ominous music. They had our homepage for about 15 minutes. They got some other libraries too. Catoosa and Cherokee and some others in the state. That’s bad. Here’s the good part. WordPress was immediately on top of it, was able to shut down the attack, created a patch for the exploit for the attack and had us back up and running in an hour. So, support was surprising. To nutshell it – ease of use, loading speed, cost, support, functionality, ahhh…easy to maintain, ability to share it in the cloud, learning curve…

I won't even ask about the Mujahadeen.

Yeah, that was crazy.

So, you’re happy with it?

Yeah. I think we all are.

 Do you think your system would ever hire an official web designer? There’s all this talk about having IT professionals on library staffs.

We have never hired a web designer. We have always recruited staff to whatever we are using. The previous administrator working in Frontpage was a library assistant who took classes to learn it, not some professional web designer. We make due here. I think if you work in a library long enough you sort of become an IT professional. We have in house IT support as it is for our network and our OPAC. But we have always been able to recruit from inside. We might not have the slickest interfaces but we do alright here.

Thank you very much for your time and for answering my questions. It’s been enlightening. Especially the osmosis.

You’re welcome. Yes, ask questions, listen and don’t be afraid to learn new things and to try new things. You never know what it could all lead to.

The WordPress Content Management System allows the Cobb County Public Library to remain nimble and responsive with their in-house web content. The current Digital Services Librarian stressed ease of use, content control, cost, cloud capabilities, loading speeds, technical support, and short learning curves as benefits to using WordPress. Downsides to using WordPress include vulnerabilities to remote hacking and functional limitations with appearance. CCPLS use WordPress as a portal to their hosted OPAC and their many online cloud hosted e-resources. Working with their OPAC provider CCPLS has been able to request certain customizations that give a more seamless feel between their hosted WordPress content and their other hosted interfaces. WordPress is a new CMS for CCPLS and has provided a mostly positive experience and landing spot for their library system.

An area that CCPLS appears eager to investigate is shared administrative rights within their CMS. The Digital Services Librarian made a point of mentioning the wide array of talented personnel that CCPLS can draw from. One point that was omitted from the interview that he made was that this talent wasn’t restricted to just younger staff as is often the assumption when using and implementing newer technologies. Indeed, the DSL was very complimentary towards the tendency of CCPLS staff to be near-universally curious about and supportive of the rapid technological changes librarianship has undergone.

He told me that there are oftentimes playful competitions among staffers in areas like e-resource patron support, flier design and self-taught areas of technology (personal web design, 3-D file design, etc.). By this he detailed how staff will share on their system wide email a particularly tricky technology related patron issue they were able to solve or a new web design technique they employed on a staff blog or personal webpage. Such widespread emails are constant reminders to the rest of the library staff that there are new concepts and interfaces and programs that staff are out there learning. It is also a reminder to staff to stay curious and keep on their toes or be left behind. It might seem potentially contentious and the DSL admits there are a few stubborn holdouts who resent “the showoffs”. But for the most part this playful back and forth within the entire staff has been well received and has led to many staffers who might have been resistant to innovation and change to get on board and have fun. It has also resulted in a surprisingly high level of digital competency among the staff, something the administration is increasingly stressing at CCPLS.


Link to Google Doc