The Decision for Drupal

Current GCLS website.

I interviewed Ralph Bingham, Head of Reference and Digital Services for the Gloucester County Library System (GCLS) located in southern New Jersey. Mr. Bingham has worked in libraries for over twenty years and has more than fifteen years of direct IT experience. Mr. Bingham is currently charged with the strategic vision and day-to-day operations of the IT department, which includes managerial and Webmaster duties. Mr. Bingham was a pivotal player in his library’s decision to implement a new Content Management System (CMS). 

Currently, GCLS uses a CMS called Drupal for its website. The website had previously used different web incarnations that included straight HTML, PHP, and the web development tool Dreamweaver.  Before choosing Drupal, Mr. Bingham had considered using various other CMS’s including Wordpress and Joomla. However, these other services did not seem to adequately meet the needs of the library as well as Drupal.

According to Mr. Bingham, there were numerous key motivations for GCLS to investigate the switch to Drupal. First, Drupal offered greater flexibility for the institution. The fact that website development could be accomplished on multiple machines by numerous staff without onerous installations was very attractive. Another positive was the fact Drupal could be hosted on an outside server, which allowed the library to cut down on in-house IT costs associated with server maintenance. Moreover, the statewide library cooperative LibaryLinkNJ offered tremendous support for libraries switching to Drupal. This support included free training, free to use website templates, and discounted server hosting. These factors, coupled with the fact that Mr. Bingham had heard numerous word-of-mouth positive reviews of the Drupal CMS from other librarians, solidified the choice.

Old version of GCLS website, circa 2004. 

Mr. Bingham warned that there was a considerable learning curve associated with the switch to Drupal. The software required an effort by staff to understand just “how it fit” within the framework of other web languages and applications. Overall, the transition process to a Drupal website took approximately 1 year—with around 6-8 months of focused training. As mentioned above, LibraryLinkNJ offered tremendous support for fledging libraries shifting to Drupal. This support also included a developmental version and server access to build the site before a live launch. GCLS even implemented Alpha and Beta development sites to tinker and experiment with the new CMS before going live.  

GCLS chose to not broadly advertise or use any type of “ribbon-cutting” ceremony to announce the arrival of their new website. Instead, the library employed a soft launch of the new Drupal powered website. After the soft launch, the library used user surveys and Google Analytics to elicit feedback for the site. Overall, the feedback was positive but GCLS was also able to make numerous fixes and changes based on this information.

In Mr. Bingham’s opinion, Drupal offered both advantages and drawbacks. The main advantages included: 1) multiple access points able to update the website; 2) robust functionality within the CMS including modules and widgets; 3) a simple process to add blocks to the site as compared to using just straight HTML; and an 4) easy to manage site navigation (previously, GCLS was never able to construct a satisfactory hierarchical menu structure with their old website). Judging from Mr. Bingham’s comments, Drupal can be a very powerful application that offers tremendous possibilities to a well-trained staff. 

The major drawback of the move to Drupal was the substantial learning curve. Such a transition should not be undertaken without proper training and deliberate planning. Drupal is not simply an “out of the box” solution. The system requires staff to have some IT skills and be flexible enough to build upon those competencies to include the Drupal framework. As it stands today, GCLS has 3 staff members who can edit and maintain their website. With the old system, only a single staff member could make edits.

Ultimately, Mr. Bingham would recommend other librarians investigate the use of Drupal for their institutions. However, this endorsement came with a disclaimer: “you need to have people with IT skills.” As mentioned above, Drupal is not a simple out-of-the-box website solution. It necessitates a library significantly commit to the proper training of staff. Without such a commitment, a switch to Drupal might be unsuccessful. Despite this caveat, libraries can still make Drupal happen. And if the current GCLS website is any indication, Mr. Bingham' recommendation is sound.