A little about the interview

I contacted a few libraries for this assignment this week. One of them was at a public library and exceptionally busy, but told me they could discuss things next week. Another public librarian was also rather busy. I decided to get in contact with the director of Reinhardt University library where I volunteered last semester. I was not really sure what CMS they used or if the director knew much about it since he is relatively new to the position.

I would have preferred to go down there, but they are on summer hours and close early (I volunteered after work once or twice a week). It really only has been about three weeks since I was there last. I decided that email would be best, and the easiest way to keep a transcript of the interview. Below is the interview with Joel Langford, Library Director of Reinhardt University. Their content management system is called Cascade. You can take a look at the Reinhardt UniversityLibrary website.

The overall impression I get from the director and seeing how their web page works when I volunteered there is that the system is fairly easy to use. The overall look of the library site was designed by the University to match the rest of the University webpage. Regular up keep is comparable to posting new articles on Joomla! or new blog posts on Wordpress. There are feeds for the Library Twitter and Blog on the side of the library home page. The blog is kept up by one of the staff, and Twitter by one of the librarians. The Twitter account was used by the library to let students know that the library was not closed after it had flooded after Snowpocalypse.

Mr. Langford mentioned that they had recently added a How To page for Ancestry.com on their web page. I knew that they used Ancestry.com as a resource and had been promoting that in the fall semester. The Reference Service Librarian had created the page, and she found it easy. The video was created by students, giving them some experience in web creation (J. Langford, personal communication, May 29, 2014).