[MCN-L] CMS - Drupal users?
Hi Anne, At the Indianapolis Museum of Art, we have used Drupal extensively for almost three years now. We currently run our main website ( www.imamuseum.org) on a Drupal framework and have developed many smaller exhibition micro-sites as standalone Drupal installs. In addition we have done a ton of development and extension of Drupal to do somethings which are pretty out of the ordinary for the run-of-the-mill content management system. Some Examples: * Our Dashboard tool (an open-source statistics tool for museums) which features a bit of a different user-interface layout and about 40 authors from the museum. * We built a custom project management tool called Athena, which we've used in-house for about 18 months now. This is integrated with our collection management system, digital asset management tools, and does all the typical file, task, project blogging, etc... * ArtBabble.org is an HD streaming video website with a lot of back-end customizations built all on top of Drupal. It also happens to run entirely in the cloud using Amazon's Web Services tool. The Drupal community has been great, and there are a lot of benefits for a choice in this direction. Of course, there is no perfect tool... and each of these sites was a lot of work, but Drupal really worked for us, and not against us! We'd love to answer any more questions either online or in person if you're interested. Sincerely, Rob Stein Chief Information Officer Indianapolis Museum of Art On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 1:38 PM, Anne Botman wrote: > Hello, > > Who is using Drupal as their CMS? > > We are considering it and I would appreciate talking to folks with > practical > experience and how they find it. In particular, I would love to know if > anyone uses it to produce bilingual sites and if there are any known issues > or things to watch out for? > > Thanks for any advice! > > Cheers, > > Anne > > __ > Anne Botman > Head, Web Services / Chef, Services Web > Canadian Museum of Nature / Mus?e canadien de la nature > > Tel: 613.566.4243 > Email: abotman at mus-nature.ca > Web: http://nature.ca > > ___ > You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer > Network (http://www.mcn.edu) > > To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l at mcn.edu > > To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: > http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l > > The MCN-L archives can be found at: > http://toronto.mediatrope.com/pipermail/mcn-l/ >
[MCN-L] CMS - Drupal users?
Drupal comes with some amazing tools that facilitate maintaining a bi-lingual site. You effectively can have several versions of each page, as well as of menus and templates set up for different languages. These can be invoked automatically when the default language of the browser matches, or visitors can use the conventional buttons (e.g., a button at the top of each page to switch to the other language - "Spanish" when the "English" version is shown; then the opposite). The system also makes it easy NOT to have the entire website translated, so some pages may only be in one language or the other. ari On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 1:38 PM, Anne Botman wrote: > Hello, > > Who is using Drupal as their CMS? > > We are considering it and I would appreciate talking to folks with practical > experience and how they find it. In particular, I would love to know if > anyone uses it to produce bilingual sites and if there are any known issues > or things to watch out for? > > Thanks for any advice! > > Cheers, > > Anne > > __ > Anne Botman > Head, Web Services / Chef, Services Web > Canadian Museum of Nature / Mus?e canadien de la nature > > Tel: 613.566.4243 > Email: abotman at mus-nature.ca > Web: http://nature.ca > > ___ > You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer > Network (http://www.mcn.edu) > > To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l at mcn.edu > > To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: > http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l > > The MCN-L archives can be found at: > http://toronto.mediatrope.com/pipermail/mcn-l/ >
[MCN-L] Online collections and content management systems
Later this year or next we will be implementing a content management system for our web site. Currently we do not plan to content-manage our online collections search. It would run on its own, with its own separate underlying database. But I've lately been wondering whether this is the best approach (though it is certainly simpler and less expensive, at least in the short run). Do some of you run your online collections through your cms? Yes or no, was this a conscious decision and if so what was the rationale? Will Real Carnegie Museum of Art Pittsburgh, PA
[MCN-L] CMS - Drupal users?
Hi Anne, We just redid our web site using Drupal http://peabody.harvard.edu We're not doing any bilingual pages yet so I can't comment on that, but Drupal comes from the Netherlands and is popular all over Europe, so I have to expect that they can handle it well. It isn't easy, but what is? The code is free and there are lots of freelance developers that can work with it, so you're not chained to a particular consultant or company that are the only ones who can support you. If you go here: http://drupal.org/search/apachesolr_search/museum you'll see information about Drupal being used for museums. Good luck. -Steve > Hello, > > Who is using Drupal as their CMS? > > We are considering it and I would appreciate talking to folks with practical > experience and how they find it. In particular, I would love to know if > anyone uses it to produce bilingual sites and if there are any known issues > or things to watch out for? > > Thanks for any advice! > > Cheers, > > Anne > > __ > Anne Botman > Head, Web Services / Chef, Services Web > Canadian Museum of Nature / Mus?e canadien de la nature > > Tel: 613.566.4243 > Email: abotman at mus-nature.ca > Web: http://nature.ca > > ___ > You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer > Network (http://www.mcn.edu) > > To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l at mcn.edu > > To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: > http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l > > The MCN-L archives can be found at: > http://toronto.mediatrope.com/pipermail/mcn-l/ > -- Steve Rothman, Systems Administrator Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology 617-495-9968 - srothman at fas.harvard.edu
[MCN-L] CMS - Drupal users?
Hello, Who is using Drupal as their CMS? We are considering it and I would appreciate talking to folks with practical experience and how they find it. In particular, I would love to know if anyone uses it to produce bilingual sites and if there are any known issues or things to watch out for? Thanks for any advice! Cheers, Anne __ Anne Botman Head, Web Services / Chef, Services Web Canadian Museum of Nature / Mus?e canadien de la nature Tel: 613.566.4243 Email: abotman at mus-nature.ca Web: http://nature.ca
[MCN-L] Success with Web 2.0 requires risk
On an archives list I'm on, there was a recent back and forth discussion about the role and purpose and usage of their organisational Facebook and recalling similar (although often more heated and confused) discussions about Web 2.0 ideas and concepts in institutions, I was encouraged to find the following rather good article about Government Departments and the adoption of Web 2.0 projects. While it is about Government Departments, you could apply most of it to almost any top down institution - big or small. http://fcw.com/articles/2009/06/08/feature-social-media-government.aspx "Social-media gurus often sound like Zen masters when they try to explain their discipline to initiates or skeptics. To take control, give up the illusion of control. Learn from your audience and embrace the unexpected. Failure is one of the surest signs of success. Social-media pioneers and proponents from government, academia and industry gathered in Williamsburg, Va., last month at the Government Leadership Summit, which was sponsored by the 1105 Government Information Group, the parent company of Federal Computer Week. Many of their conversations focused on the paradoxical nature of tools like Twitter and Facebook. It?s not that social media defies logic, like a Zen riddle. But its logic does not necessarily fit easily into government?s traditional models of governance. Agencies typically take a top-down approach to deploying new applications, with a central office providing the resources and defining specific rules of engagement. That won?t cut it with social media, which works best at the grass-roots of an organization. Successful deployments involve a push-pull balance between the two. Agency officials need to define basic goals and parameters for the use of social media, but they also need to let an application take on a life of its own. This way of thinking is a challenge for the federal workforce, said Robert Carey, chief information officer of the Navy Department and one of the first federal CIOs to have an official blog. Some guidance might be needed ?to get us out of this very bureaucratic structure into a more collaborative, flat environment,? Carey said. "... more above Almost everything in the article is reflected in my own recent experience when I was involved in some exercises about "re-visioning" or "re-imaging" an institution. There were lots of good ideas (though most introduced from the top down) about making everything more customer/client oriented, about moving from being a top-down to being a bottom-up organisation, about moving from unilateral decision making to shared decision making, from "management" to "leadership" and so on. And in the whole process Web 2.0 came up. Lots of excitement about the potential. Lots of verbal commitment that this was a way to go to open up the institution, help bring it into the 21st Century etc etc. Excited as I was by the potential in all this, the cynic in me managed to sneak out and... I asked if we were really committed at all levels to what this would involve. Did people realise what this would involve to put these ideas into effect and follow through with them. I was assured we as an institution were committed. Several months later my caution was justified. The institution hadn't truly taken into account what the whole thing - especially the web 2.0 social networking aspects - would involve. While staff (especially - but not only - younger staff) were were keen to engage with it all, management at all levels were too entrenched in the traditional hierarchical mould to take the risks involved. Essentially it ended up in a place where, for example, every facebook entry or action, every blog post or twitter etc would have to be "cleared". Nothing could be even close to being off-message The result was the whole idea of any kind of renewal was pretty much stifled - there was no risk taking creativity, no interaction with new constituencies and certainly no wish to encounter external dissenting views.Unfortunately, the organisation was enable to relinquish control to the extent that would allow the new directions to flourish. btw, there is a second article here on business and Web 2.0 which compliments all this from a slightly different direction - The Jazz of Social Media http://www.jeneane.net/?p=74 The problem is that while traditional marketers and MBAs and HR folk understand what it feels like to ?broadcast their message,? they don?t know what it feels like to ?jam,? to play with micromarkets in an already-in-progress composition, an evolving melody, on the market?s own stage, in the customer?s own house... And if you are looking for a fairly simple way to explain Web 2.0 and the move into Web 3.0, I also came across this - Web 3.0 for dummies: http://thenextweb.com/2008/06/26/web30-for-dummies/ http://www.slideshare.net/freekbijl/web-30-explained-with-a-stamp h
[MCN-L] Advice on advanced degree for museum technology
This program might be of interest for you, Kristine, as you investigate online degrees that aim to bridge technology and museum/library professions. Feel free to contact me if it looks interesting as I'm in the program. Best, Dianne Dianne Nilsen Head of Digital Initiatives and Imaging Center for Creative Photography The University of Arizona dnilsen at ccp.library.arizona.edu diannenilsen at msn.com - June 2009 - For immediate release The University of Arizona Digital Information Management (DigIn) Certificate program is currently accepting applications for Fall '09. IMLS scholarships are available. - The University of Arizona School of Information Resources and Library Science is pleased to announce that openings are available in the school's graduate certificate program in Digital Information Management (DigIn), and that scholarships are available for students entering the program in Fall 2009. DigIn combines intensive, hands-on technology learning and a strong grounding in the theoretical principles needed to manage large-scale digital collections in a fast-changing environment. The program supports a wide range of professional careers involving digital collections, including but not limited to libraries, archives, and museums. Graduate certificates are increasingly being recognized as a means for information professionals with advanced degrees to enhance their knowledge and technology skills. DigIn is also open to professionals who are new to the field and who may be considering a masters-level education in the future. The program is delivered 100% online and has no residency requirements. Students generally complete the certificate in four or six semesters (15 months or 27 months). DigIn now accepts applications before the start of the Summer, Fall, or Spring semesters. The application deadline for Fall '09 is July 1. Late applications will be accepted, although we cannot guarantee admission for the fall semester. DigIn was developed in cooperation with the Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records and the University of Arizona Outreach College. Major funding for the program comes from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), which has also provided scholarship funding. Additional details on the program including course descriptions, admissions requirements and application forms may be found on the program website: digin.arizona.edu Applicants may also contact the DigIn staff at: digin at email.arizona.edu. - From: mcn-l-bounces at mcn.edu [mcn-l-bounces at mcn.edu] On Behalf Of Zickuhr, Kristine [kristine.zick...@dva.state.wi.us] Sent: Thursday, May 28, 2009 12:23 PM To: mcn-l at mcn.edu Subject: [MCN-L] Advice on advanced degree for museum technology Hi everyone, Could anyone offer advice on an advanced degree that would helpful for working with emerging museum technology? I've considered a Masters in Museum Studies but the curriculum seems too broad. I'm a Registrar and I'm particularly interested in digital image standards, rotational photography, online databases, virtualization, etc.. We have IT staff at my current institution but I'd like to try to keep up. I know enough to be dangerous, but that's about it! Is anyone aware of a program that merges technology and the arts or humanities? Or is there a straight technology degree or certificate that you would recommend instead? An online degree or one offered in Wisconsin would be particularly helpful. Thank you for your input. Kristine Zickuhr Wisconsin Veterans Museum ___ You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer Network (http://www.mcn.edu) To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l at mcn.edu To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l The MCN-L archives can be found at: http://toronto.mediatrope.com/pipermail/mcn-l/
