Assignment 3, Option 1: Interview with Jesse Saunders

For Assignment 3, I contacted a few librarians in order to initiate a conversation with them on their library's use of a CMS.  I didn't hear back in a timely fashion, so I ended up going to my alma mater's (Southwestern University) library website and contacting the person in charge of "library systems and web services."  His name is Jesse Saunders, and he responded right away.  He was glad to help describe his experiences designing the web page and using a CMS.  I conducted my interview with him via e-mail.  Thank you so much, Mr. Saunder's, for your cooperation and valuable time you shared for my assignment.

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

1.  In what library environment do you work?

Jesse:   We are an academic library serving a residential liberal arts university of 1,300 students.

2.  How did you hear about the CMS your library chose, and why did you select it?

Jesse:   In 2007 our university migrated most web pages to the LiveWhale CMS, which is produced by White Whale Web Services. At that time, the library was one of only a few campus not to move into the CMS, but remain with static HTML web pages. While we briefly examined a couple of other CMS', the opportunity integration with the rest of the SU website, along with it's ease of use, made LiveWhale an easy choice.

3.    Did you require or undergo training to prepare for your web design work?

Jesse:   I received some training from our university webmaster, but in general LiveWhale was easy to figure out, and their support site is a great resource.

4.  Did you have a team working with you on the website, or did you mostly do it on your own?

Jesse:   I led a team of 4 that determined the general layout, navigation, and content for the site. When we made it to the wireframe stage, we hired a freelance web designer to do the visual design and coding for our site templates. We worked with him to make some tweaks to our design, while retaining our original vision for the site. When our templates were complete, I created all of the individual pages and loaded the initial content, which is now maintained by the individual departments. 

5.  Have you used other Content Management Systems, and if so, how did it compare to the LiveWhale CMS you are currently utilizing?

Jesse:   We use LibGuides to create library research guides for specific departments, classes and topics. LibGuides is great, because it allows librarians to create pages with no technical expertise, while LiveWhale requires more technical expertise to create pages and edit navigation, but allows for easy editing of content of existing pages.

6.  What goals and objectives did you have in mind when you went with your CMS?




Jesse: 

• Facilitate a redesign of the website. The site was very outdated and needed refreshing.
• Ease updating. The front page of the old site was a very temperamental "grid" of images that was very easy to get off-kilter during editing, and all content edits had to come through the systems librarian, as all pages were required manual HTML editing. The new site is much easier to manage, as only changes to the navigation require manual HTML editing, and after new pages are created, a rich-text editor can be used to manage the primary content areas. 
• Integration with the rest of the university's webpages -- LiveWhale allows for the easy sharing of news items and images across various departements and campus entities  which has made it easier to promote our news to interested parties. 

7.  Are there ways to improve your website or components you would like to add?

Jesse:   Jesse: Live Whale is about to launch a calendar function to integrate event scheduling into news & pages. 

8.  Who provides technical support for you and your website? 

Jesse:   Either our university webmaster or ITS support group, depending on the issue/question.

9.  Please include any additional information you would like to share about your experience with the website's CMS.

Jesse:   LiveWhale has been great. It's a relatively new CMS, and even though our designer hadn't worked in it before it was intuitive enough for him to design for, and when he had questions, their support was really helpful. In addition, it has made keeping pages up-to-date much easier, which has led to our content being kept much fresher than in the previous website. 

Here are the web addresses to LiveWhale and White Whale Web Services in case my links didn't work up in the question text: 

 http://livewhale.com/
http://www.whitewhale.net/

The address to the Southwestern University Library website is:  

http://www.southwestern.edu/library/