Drupal in Libraries

"Drupal in Libraries" is the subject of the May / June edition of Library Technology Reports. (http://www.techsource.ala.org/ltr/drupal-in-libraries.html) Authors Andy Austin (aaustin) and Chris Harris (cgharris) present an overview of Drupal for the library audience hoping to show why and how libraries can get started using Drupal.

Library Technology Reports is published by ALA Techsource, a unit of the publishing department of the American Library Association. The ALA Techsource website also runs on Drupal.

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Drupal is hot in the library world. There have been/will be sessions devoted to Drupal to most of the major library conferences dealing with technology issues including:

• ALA Annual Conference
• Computers in Libraries
• Access 2008
• LITA Forum

Libraries vary is size and populations served. The traditional divisions are public, K-12, academic and special libraries. But within all of these groups, libraries have found a reason to use Drupal.

Support and Financial Concerns

Libraries never have enough money. Like many non-profits, many libraries turn to Drupal as a powerful tool with a low cost of entry.

To cut costs, libraries are well organized in to systems and consortia. The Idaho Commission for Libraries has led the way, leveraging the multi-site features of Drupal to provide sites for libraries across Idaho. Using Drupal, they are able to streamline site maintenance as well as professional training while allowing libraries to customize their own sites and maintain their individual identities within their own communities.

Unified Web Services

Libraries aggregate and provide access to many different resources. Libraries end up with several independent systems with separate search interfaces. Anne Arbor District Library, made a major splash in the library community by deploying one of the first websites that provided a library catalog search within the context of their library's home site and not as a separate web application. They did this using Drupal.

Funded through a Mellon grant, the University of Rochester is currently heading a consortia of academic libraries to create the eXtensible Catalog, an aggregated search from multiple sources, including library catalogs and subscription journal. For the front end of their project, they are using Drupal. For their own library website, they also working with Drupal and the mysite module to allow the library to be customized to the resources down to the individual patron.

The Web 2.0 Experience

The School Library System of Genesee Valleys has been using Drupal as a learning tool in K-12 Schools. After a very successful initial pilot, they offered each of the libraries in their system a Drupal site. By importing the catalog records from the school libraries in to Drupal as nodes, the library catalog becomes a social experience where students are able to rate and review books, motivating students and ultimately helping them to become better readers.

Drupal makes a powerful platform for learning. Libraries use Drupal to provide a support and community for conferences and trainings. The American Library Association itself is using Drupal to support its publications and is also using it to facilitate professional communities. Jenny Levine who is leading this project says:

We're using Drupal to revamp our "Online Communities" service, which has been wildly underused. You can read more about it at
http://itts.ala.org/update/2008/05/08/online-communities-update-with-doc..., but basically we're creating a virtual collaboration space
where members can do the "work of the Association." In phase two, we'll be adding professional networking components that facilitate mentoring
programs, personal learning groups, a Craig's list-like exchange for libraries, advocacy tools, online resumes, an event planner for our
conferences, etc. And it's all being done in Drupal, or at least, it will be.

These are just some of the libraries that are using Drupal to meet their own needs. The Drupal community has provided a powerful and flexible tool that libraries everywhere are helping libraries everywhere.