What I Learned Today…

First up this morning was David Lee King sharing library website tips with us. I’m not working in this field so much anymore (web design) but I still wanted to see what cool tips David had for us all so here I am. David started by blaming Ned Potter, author of The Library Marketing Toolkit (http://thewikiman.org) for this presentation because Ned asked him for some tips for elements every website  [ Read More ]

This week I was on a panel at AALL (my first time at this conference) that discussed coding in libraries. There were four of us and four languages to discuss. I started with MySQL (and an introduction as the Koha Goddess who helped bring Koha to law libraries). I showed some of the MySQL tables in Koha and explained how they were created and how to query data out of  [ Read More ]

First up this morning (for me) Aaron Schmidt and Amanda Etches-Johnson. Disclaimer 1: That pesky catalog problem – we really don’t have any control over this in most of our systems Disclaimer 2: Like the catalog we don’t really have a lot of control over what all the other systems we subscribe to look like 0% of searchers start their research at library websites (according to perceptions survey). Aaron and  [ Read More ]

This year at SLA I’ll be teaching librarians how to use WordPress (an open source content management system). If you’re in the Philadelphia area and/or attending SLA this year, consider joining me for “Designing Library Websites with WordPress.” Date: Saturday, 11 June 2011 Time: 1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. Level: Introductory Instructor: Nicole Engard Description: Content management systems are making it easy for libraries to create their own websites with  [ Read More ]

It’s that time again – What I Learned Today… has just had a facelift. I have updated the theme here to take advantage of the new features available in WordPress 3.0. I hope you all like what you see (hopefully you’ll step away from your RSS feed reader to take a peak).

When people approach me about content management systems such as Drupal and Joomla I ask if they have considered WordPress – I almost always get a blank stare. This is because WordPress has a reputation of being for blogging – and just for blogging. I use WordPress for my book sites and for any other sites I’m asked to work on. I love using WordPress as a CMS, it’s so  [ Read More ]

If your library is using Drupal or Joomla you might want to help another librarian by answering these 5 questions about why you chose the system you chose. I was going to answer the survey, but it assumes that I’m talking about my experience in a library – and I never used either in a library, but have used both. My preference (if I can only pick between those two)  [ Read More ]

I taught a class earlier this week where I told the participants that we were going to use WordPress to create a website. One question I got way why WordPress over Blogger? My answer was personal preference – but now I have some really great reasons for why WordPress over Blogger. If you’re using a blogging package to create your entire website – then you can’t use Blogger because Blogger  [ Read More ]

I am a huge WordPress fan. I use it for all of my blogs (except SLA-IT – which I have no control over) and I use it for all of my friends who want to set up their own websites. So, when I saw this post for 11 Non-Traditional Uses of WordPress I had to share it with you all. Check it out and see if you can use WordPress  [ Read More ]

One of the talks I try never to miss at Information Today conferences is the Cool Tools for Webmasters talk by Frank Cervone and Darlene Fichter. This year I couldn’t attend due to other talks I had to give, but Darlene has posted her links online for us all to see! Frank and I were back with more free or inexpensive tools for webmasters and everyone who uses the web.  [ Read More ]