Digital Initiatives Update - 11/13/09

Latest News
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been laying the groundwork for an upgrade to our website’s content management system. Now – with most of the issues ironed out, I will be upgrading the LIS site to Drupal 6 this weekend, Nov. 14-15. The LIS site will remain available for normal use throughout the weekend, however a brief downtime will occur on Sunday afternoon when I “throw the switch” from the old version to the new. Just to make sure that nothing is lost during the transition, I’ve asked LIS folks to not add any new content over weekend.

Drupal 6 will not bring many noticeable changes to our site’s interface, but will improve the security and future flexibility of our site from the administrative side.

A few changes users will notice:

• slight changes to tabbed interfaces (Library Research page)
• ability to send a page via email or display a “print-friendly” version
• different formatting and options for delivery of subscribed blog content

A few changes were applied during this week’s maintenance window in preparation:

• increase PHP memory to 96M
• update PHP version

On the Horizon
Usability testing on the LIS site will resume following the site upgrade. Invitations to participate will be sent to those at the top of my sign-up queue shortly.

There are a number of other DI projects being actively researched, and I will share more details in coming weeks. Here is a brief rundown of some of our larger projects:

• Digital Repositories – we are examining a number of systems to meet the digital content storage and display needs shared by LIS and other collection-holders on campus.
• Online Library Guides – we are testing systems that provide easy access to subject and course resource guides, and also allow intuitive and flexible guide creation/administration! Currently, we are considering an array of open- and closed-source systems.
• Site Chat – we are looking at a handful of options (anyone seeing a theme here??) that can allow users of the LIS site to chat in real time with librarians or other LIS staff
• LIS Site Usability/Remodeling – we’ll be spending more time the rest of the school year (and beyond) planning for the future of the LIS site