Initially learning Drupal was harder than I thought it would be. We couldn’t get our heads around how it worked, as it was so different to anything we had ever used before. We knew it would be challenging, particularly in choosing Drupal over Joomla, as it was known to be so. However, there were some frustrating moments early on, whilst we struggled with unfamiliar concepts.

Our plans to learn all about Drupal first and then build the website once we had, soon changed as we continued to struggle with the unfamiliar. In the end, we started transfering content over and learnt how to do things as we did so. When we came across something we didn’t understand, we looked for answers, in the books we had, on the Drupal forums, on other websites and on the odd occasion, from our ISP and more often than not, from my husband who has done work with Drupal.

As the new site continued to build, we became more comfortable with everything, the way Drupal was structured, how it all fit together and how to get everything working the way we wanted it to.

Of course, the things we wanted the most, the bling to make it all look lovely and appealing, were the hardest things to get working. It took weeks and trying out different methods and modules before we succeeded with the first of our trilogy of stumbling blocks – the Upcoming Events. Our new books images and events slideshow were the next and once we had the first, the second followed quickly. Our biggest struggle there was working out how Drupal works with images – the answer there: it doesn’t do it very well.

So anyway, it took 22 weeks from installation of Drupal on our web server to the point where we had a website ready for testing. We posted to the existing website, asking for users to check it the new website and provide us with feedback.

Our users were wonderful, happily giving us feedback, all which was constructive, encouraging and reaffirming of what we had built for them. Staff were also supportive and gave us some great suggestions and input. After a few weeks of leaving ourselves open to these responses, we closed down the test site and got ready for the official launch.

In Library Week 2009, we quietly launched our new website, with little fanfare (allowing for Murphy’s law of course) but with great results. We have continued to receive positive feedback from our users and as expected, have continued to refine and tweak the new site. There are still some bugs to be ironed out and there is a continual update process required with Drupal, but its not onerous.

Next step is to add some more features and to get some other staff editing and adding more content to the site. We will also do some more investigation into how the website is being used and by whom.

It’s been a challenge and an awesome learning process, which at times has been so incredibly frustrating, but ultimately very rewarding. Its not been easy, but with the resources we were able to find – print, personal and online, we have done it. A very satisfying result all round.

Off to a cautious beginning in November 08, culminating in the launch in the last week of May 09, my partner in crime and manager at work – Linda and myself have built our new library website, using Drupal – an open source content management system.

First off, some quick explanations.  Drupal is a content management system (CMS) – a software package that enables the user “to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website.” (Drupal 2009)  CMS’s can be used to organise many different types of digital content, but ours was to be used for the library website.  Drupal is also open source, which means the software is free and there are many modules which can be used with it, which have been developed by the programming community around the world.

But let’s start back at the beginning.  Our library website was long past due for an overhaul.  It needed a new look and a bit of content reorganisation.  Some of the dross needed to go and we needed a bit more glam.  The website hadn’t had any more than a minor tweak and small additions since 2005 – a long time in web terms.

We had been looking to use a vendor product which would enable us to have a combined OPAC and website, but unfortunately that didn’t work out as hoped and so we had another look at our options.  We narrowed them down to two, either in-house development using a content management system or purchasing an out of the box CMS.  It was agreed that it would be done in-house and Linda and I began looking at our options for open source CMS’s.

There were many options there also, but again we narrowed our choices down to two – Drupal and Joomla.  Both had a lot going for them – including compatibility with Web 2.0 tools, WYSIWYG functionality and much more. We opted to go with Drupal, mainly because it had a large library user base in the US which we could use for inspiration and help and for the access to local support from our ISP. It didn’t hurt that my husband, a computer programmer was also using it to develop a website.

So having made the decision in November 08, it was time to get started.  We developed a timeline of learning about Drupal, developing the new website and moving the content over.  As with many projects, the plan was revised a few times and although the project never worked the way it was planned in terms of what activities happened when, we were pretty much right on the dot for the timing of it all.

Our next step was to work with our ISP – Vicnet, to get Drupal installed and ready for us to start building the new website.  They were incredibly supportive and helpful throughout the whole process and got us out of a couple of interesting situations which could have been very problematic.  Initially, we had at the software installed on our part of one of their webservers, but when we needed a more current version of PHP to make things happen, it moved to one of their development servers.

And we were off and running.  Problem now was – how do we use this thing?  It was installed for us, we had IP access and log-in details, but very little clue about how to work with this software.  The clue that I did have came from working with the blogging software Word Press, on both my blog and Libraries Interact – thank goodness for that experience alone!

So we did what all clever librarians do in these situations, we looked for resources to help us learn about this wonderful new toy we had to play with. This ended up being mostly a decent book with great instructions on how to do various tasks, a great series of online videos and Drupal forum posts.

That’s enough for this post.  Stay tuned for the next enthralling episode, where we really get down to the nitty gritty of building the website.

The reason I have been frantically busy is that our biggest library, Narre Warren has been closed this last week for recarpeting and repainting and I have been part of the moving team, meaning lots of extra hours, both in preparation for the move and for the move itself.  Its been a very interesting process which I will blog about another time.

In other news, I applied for and was granted a place in the 2009 Aurora Leadership Institute – an annual leadership program, held over 5 days in February in Thredbo, NSW.  I am doubly fortunate to be able to attend with the support of my work and grant assistance from the State Library of Victoria and in the company of some librarian friends, both local and interstate.  I am very excited about this great opportunity and will no doubt have lots to blog about when its done.

At work, I am very excited about the start of a project that I had never imagined would happen.  We are starting the process of creating a new library website and it will all be done in-house under the direction of myself and my partner in crime – Linda.  After some serious consideration, we have opted to use Drupal for our content management system.  This is all new for all of us, so we will be blazing some trails here for our library service, but again I am very excited about this project, which will take many months and look forward to starting on serious work for it in coming weeks.

Then to top off all the excitement, next week I will have both the honour and the privilege of being able to attend the Shanachie Tour Down Under when it hits Melbourne next week, followed on the next two days by NLS4 which I am presenting at, as well as enjoying as a delegate.  So expect some more blogging with all these events happening.

Add to that my friend Kathryn Greenhill (from Librarians Matter) receiving the VAL A Travel Scholarship and it all adds up to being an awesome time to be a librarian, with so much more yet to come.

I love sharing happy news!