Unit 2 & the CMS

The article that I reviewed is Regina Beach and Miqueas Dial’s “Building a collection development CMS on a shoestring.” The key players in developing the CMS for Texas A&M University – Kingsville (a small campus of 5,000) started out by considering all students as potential distance learners, and from there developed a collection development CMS that could be used remotely, whereas the previous protocol had been to require that faculty and students submit paper forms (yikes!). I think it’s interesting that a faculty member (also one of the co-authors) was invited to help develop the CMS. This seems like a great idea in developing library services – to get the faculty’s input especially where access is concerned.

I thought it very interesting that the authors mentioned that the long term professional and paraprofessional staff who had worked together for several years were in fact crucial to the smooth implementation of technological change. It has not always been my experience that long-term staff are open to change, so I thought this refreshing and that it also said much for the author's positive and empathetic approach to this project. The overall focus of the authors’ article is moving from a book request system using paper forms to online forms. The article goes on to address the ease of access of the new system, and how much of the record data input was automated.

Having myself experienced the transition from a library website based on Dreamwever to a CMS (Joomla), I can honestly state that the CMS has allowed for greater ease and freedom in making changes to the website, ultimately benefiting the users in that information is disseminated as quickly as possible via the website. I'm not sure that the same ease, flexibility and (most importantly) speed in making information readily available would be possible if we were still using Dreamweaver.