Library Interview

The interview was conducted by email.  Benjamin Dudley, Systems Administrator at East Central Georgia Regional Library answered the questions for this assignment.  His answers to question two show how technology has changed and how CMS has reduced work time to creating web pages, on what once was time consuming.  Our last assignment helped me to understand his decision to use Joomla for their library’s CMS.  The basic process I did with the assignment, I saw how it would help to track the information and keep it in one location. 

1.       How and where did they hear about CMS? I heard about content management systems quite a long time ago when they were first coming out. That was prior to me taking the job here with the library.
2.       What were their motivations to adopt CMS for its current use (library website or any other purpose)? When I first took the job with the library, the original website was all static HTML based. There were no templates and every page had to be created "by hand" with the same formatting. Since the site contains a lot of information, I decided to switch it over to a CMS system to make it easier to manage and easier to modify the look of the website.
3.       What were their decision making criteria?  And what is the name of CMS they are using now? We are currently using an open source CMS called Joomla. I chose it since there is tons of extra plug-in capabilities. In addition, many people around the world are constantly updating it.
4.       What are the important benefits or advantages of CMS they are using now over the old system or another CMS system they’ve used in the past? The benefits include one central location to create new pages. Also, the central database makes it easy to keep track of all of the information. Joomla also includes extra features that helps keep the website up-to-date by removing outdated items from the main page.
5.       How was the learning curve? Since I am IT, it was not that difficult. The hardest part was installing it on the server (and that only took 5 minutes). Of course, for most people, you can host a Joomla site on numerous for free and for pay web hosts and not have to worry about the complications of setting up the software. Other than that, it took a little time figuring out the administrator interface since it can be a little overwhelming at first.