I was surfing through the ALA site to see what resources were available in regard to digital collections and came across the online journal, Information Technology and Libraries.  An article that caught my attention was called “Content Management for the Virtual Library”.  The author’s perspective is that traditional, larger libraries, in addition to online resources, have a physical location with services to entice students to congregate.  A totally virtual library for an online university has only its online services to offer.  Therefore, it behooves small libraries to be very user-friendly and be set up in a way to make retrieval of information easy.  The university of focus in the article is the Northcentral University, a for-profit virtual university with an enrollment of approximately twenty-one hundred students. 

The library together with the IT department developed a home-grown content management system comprised of a database (SQL) and server pages, although a purchased package could be used as well.  I learned about content management systems while researching for my collection proposal.  Content management systems (CMS) may function as a way of handling the storage of business documents.  The advantages for the CMS for the library were: 1) developed templates to have a consistent image/design on the site; 2) the ability to revise information from a single location; 3) the ability to create and maintain interactive pages; and 4) with an editing interface(JSpell Iframe), librariance could do the editing once the system was in place.

One of the ideas I thought was beneficial was to consider how the site would be maintained.  The creation of templates and use of an easy-to-use interface takes into consideration that not all librarians have knowledge of computer programming; it also decreases the dependence on the IT staff who have demands from other areas of the university.  After initial implementation, usability testing was done.  The article mentioned the challenge of finding students to participate in testing and somehow found a local class; however, I think other university resources could be tapped to identify and contact students and faculty for evaluating the site.   I think it would be particularly important to locate students throughout the university system because this is a totally online learning center.

 

Salazar, Ed. “Content Management for the Virtual Library”. Information Technology and Libraries 25(September 2006): 170-175.