Computers in Libraries 2013 - Day 3 - SharePoint & WordPress

This second session of the last day was a good one and covered some topics I've wanted covered.

I will be the first to admit that the internal use website that we have for staff leaves a lot to be desired, but I have not either had time to find or time to implement something to adequately take its place.  This session had two presentations suggesting alternatives, and has pushed me a little more in the direction of using SharePoint, which we can probably get in a hosted form at relatively low cost to boot.

Patrick Nunez Rauber from Broward College gave the first presentation of the two which was about SharePoint.  Rather than providing a case study or the story about what happened at his library, he provided a nice overview of features from the standpoint of a user to make a case for using SharePoint, which is kind of what I was looking for in this session anyway.

Patrick began his presentation with this quote:

“The 19th century culture was defined by the novel.
The 20th century culture was defined by the cinema.
The culture of the 21st century will be defined by the interface.”

He proceeded by saying that SharePoint solves an interface problem, or more specifically the problem of organization and clarity.  SharePoint is a collaborative web-based solution for any spreadsheet, any Word document, any web site, essentially – anything MS Office. It makes heavy use of metadata in files to make it easier to find things.  It makes it easier for people in different departments or locations to collaborate on files and projects,.

The nature of using SharePoint in an organization means that important files wind up being organized and put into a system where they are accessible to others.  It makes migrating data from one person to another, in the case of their leaving an organization for example, a much smoother process.  By establishing documents like agendas in SharePoint you avoid making many duplicates that get emailed around and if changes are made in a document like an agenda it is unnecessary to send the file a second time to the intended recipients.

Patrick suggested the use of materials by Dux Sy, particularly his SharePoint for Project Management, as helpful resources in using the software.  In the case of public libraries, Patrick felt that the tracking of virtual reference and the creation of knowledge-bases (such as a wiki) are ideal applications of SharePoint.  Annual review and outreach documents also work very well on SharePoint.

Michelle Mizejewski of the University of California, San Francisco, provided an overview of a project they did to remake their staff network into something that was more heavily used and to try and address weaknesses in their existing network.  Since they already had WordPress running on site they make a system that used WordPress, saving time and resources.  They customized the WordPress environment using a theme called P2 that turns WordPress into a kind of Twitter-like forum, except without the 140 character limitation.

Although elements of the system have worked well, it has been hard to overcome elements in the work culture and get all employees to actively participate using the system.