Library Web Site Content
Management Options
Using PHP
Mark Dahl
Lewis & Clark College
Portland, Oregon
Problem of content
management
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Building and maintaining a web site
requires the collaboration of multiple
specialists
Designers, writers, editors,
programmers, etc.
Even in a small environment (college
library with 25 employees) collaboration
required
Content management systems
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Software packages designed for the
construction and maintenance of large
web sites
Expensive
In use in some higher ed environments
and libraries
Characteristics of content
management systems
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Separation of content from presentation
Defined document schemas
Access and workflow controls
Our solution
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Not a full blown content management system
A mixture of commercial and homegrown tools
Achieves some of the features of full blow
system
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Separation of content from presentation
Defined document schemas (metadata)
Limited workflow controls
We sought a system that:
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Allowed multiple staff members to edit pages
on the site with little knowledge of HTML or
web editing tools
Separated the content of the site from the
presentation as much as possible
Structured data to promote consistency and
ease of migration to future platforms
Allowed data used redundantly to be updated
in one central location
Two-pronged strategy
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All pages on site
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Only our research resources pages
• Distributed updating
• Separation of content from presentation
• Structured data
• Redundant data in one place
Informational pages
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Structured data and redundancy of data
not as important as these pages (hours,
library mission statement, etc. did not
adhere to specific schema.)
Part 1: the template system
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Built to support the “interior pages” of our
website that all feature a sidebar and
banner (including pages edited by our
resources editor to be discussed shortly)
These pages are also available in textonly format (that is, with the sidebar and
banner removed)
Template page in graphical mode:
Template page in text-mode:
Dreamweaver environment
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Template system
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Template system inadequate
• Certain regions fixed, unchangeable
• Certain regions editable
• Doesn’t display CSS coding correctly
• Won’t let you flip between different versions of
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template (text and graphical)
Hard to change templates globally across
multiple Dreamweaver sites
Solution: Templates + include
files and PHP
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Use server-side includes for the code to
display
• Graphical sidebar/banner
• Text-only banner
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PHP browser-sniffer code checks for
compatibility with CSS2 compatible
browser
Central links file
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The main set of links on the interior
sidebar and on homepage are controlled
with a central file
PHP code automatically inserts the links
from this file
The code creates flyouts as needed
Central links file
Fine-tuning Content Mgmt.
Sometimes, Dreamweaver can be
an awkward tool for staff:
•It’s easy to check out files and
forget to check them in
•You must be conscious of remote
and local files
•There are many options for editing
and formatting
Macromedia to the rescue with:
Contribute
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Allows users to simply browse to a page and
click edit to edit page
Checkin/checkout of files handled
transparently
Respects Dreamweaver templates,
synchronizes to latest version of templates
Can restrict access to certain files
Can restrict types of edits (dynamic pages,
fonts, etc.)
Keys to flexibility of our site’s
look:
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Template system keeps content within
certain parts of the pages
Server side includes allow
banner/sidebar to be changed centrally
An attached stylesheet allows font and
site colors to be changed globally
This fall, we changed the fonts used
across the whole site
Part 2: The resources editor
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Like most academic libraries, we
maintain web pages that direct users to
databases, electronic reference works,
and “web sites”
These web pages are organized by
subject
We built a database driven system to
maintain these pages
The resources editor
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It meets objectives 3-4 that I mentioned earlier:
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Structured data as much as possible to promote
consistency and ease of migration to future platforms
Allow redundant data used across the site to be
updated in a central location
We designed a database driven system for
organizing research resources (including
databases, web sites, and links to library
catalog records of print resources)
Goals for the resources editor:
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Consistent metadata for each resource
Same data presented in multiple places
kept in one place
Flexibility in displaying resources (A-Z
list, by pathfinder)
Can be used to edit resources by the
relatively untrained
The precedent
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There are many examples of libraries
building database driven systems to
organize resources on their web sites
Open source projects available for this:
• Scout portal toolkit
• MyLibrary
• ResearchGuide
Building our own
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Existing code base from work at Central
Oregon Community College
Linux OS
Apache Web Server
PHP scripting
PostgreSQL relational database
Why build our own?
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Special requirements for organization
into pathfinders
Complete display flexibility
(fussy librarians)
Laziness
More on this later
Resources database
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Each resource represents a research
database, web site, or reference to printed
library material
Kept in a ‘resources’ SQL table
Fields in table loosely based on Dublin Core
metadata standard: publisher, title, description,
coverage, etc.
Resource editor: staff interface to allow adding
and editing of new resources
Building pathfinders
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Each pathfinder would have a unique name
corresponding to an L&C discipline: History,
Psychology, Sociology & Anthropology, etc.
Resources would be organized into librariandefined categories (history databases, history
metasites, etc.)
Resources would be put in a certain order
within those categories
Resources & Pathfinders
Resources:
Pathfinders:
News
-Academic Search Premier
-Anthropological Literature
-Historical Abstracts
-Internet Movie Database
-Lexis-Nexis
Film
Anthropology
History
Pathfinder SQL table
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Contains references to resources
Each row contains:
• ID of resource
• Name of pathfinder in which resource is found
• Name of category in pathfinder
• Position within category
Link to resources table to create
pathfinders
This shows the basic structure of a pathfinder:
category
resource
Staff interface to pathfinder
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Allows staff to search for resources or
pick from drop-down menu
Pick appropriate spot in pathfinder, then
add resource
Staff can also add and move categories
Displaying the data
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Done by creating a PHP class within an
HTML document
Displaying the data
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Our librarians can create the PHP class
in their web page in order to display
resources
Or they can simply send a parameter to
an existing page custom built to display
pathfinders:
http://library.lclark.edu/reference/resourcedisplay.php?subject=History
Display options
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Display pathfinder normally (brief
description of databases, extended
description of websites)
Display 1 category of a pathfinder within
a normal web page
Display data about single resource
List all databases A-Z
List all full text databases
Special features
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Easy ability to link to print resources in
catalog
Staff member updating data has
name/time updated recorded
Book reviews field for info about how to
find book reviews on a particular item
Future enhancements
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Patrons can build their own pathfinders
Patrons can comment on resources
Electronic resources management
features
Search
Reflections on doing it on our
own.
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Kind of like reinventing the wheel
But we do have special features of our system
others (MyLibrary, ResearchGuide, Scout
Portal Toolkit) don’t:
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Resource records can be used across multiple
pathfinders (ResearchGuide doesn’t support)
We support categories and unique order within
categories
Many display options (brief, combined, alphabetical,
full-text only)
Special fields (book review, database/website)
Technical details
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SQL databases (resources, subjects
(pathfinders), links)
Query class (for querying database and
returning result sets) PHP, built for
PostgreSQL db
Displayclass extends queryclass, can be
called with various parameters to display
resources as desired
Technical details
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Staff interface (PHP)
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Written using Nusphere PHPEd (allows
FAST PHP debugging and testing)
• Separate from other
• Uses queryclass for lookups
• Not object oriented
• Writes to database without using special class
References:
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This presentation:
http://www.lclark.edu/~dahl/presentations/
Web site discussed: http://library.lclark.edu/
Macromedia: http://www.macromedia.com
Nusphere PHPEd: http://www.nusphere.com
Oss4lib Open Source Systems for Libraries
(links to ResearchGuide, MyLibrary, Scout
Portal Toolkit): http://oss4lib.sourceforge.net