There will be two “Drupal in Libraries” sessions at the European Library Automation Group‘s annual conference, held in Ghent, Belgium Between May 28 and 31, 2013. The official description reads:

The first session is about introductions: we would like to see 3-4 15 minutes presentations (focusing on available library-centric Drupal modules), and some 5 minutes “lighting talks” (focusing implementations – show cases of library related Drupal sites). The second meeting is about discussing the possibilities of future cooperation between developers and implementors. What are those task our modules can work together? What are the “terra incognitas” which are not covered by modules?

I read about it at groups.drupal.org, where there are a few more explanatory sentences.

Alachua County Library District has a posting for a digital services manager for a content-rich Drupal website.

The eBranch Manager supervises two digital services librarians. Team is responsible for website user experience and content, ILS user experience, patron support for eBooks and other digital services, staff training and programs.

This position is responsible for the administration and efficient daily operation of the Alachua County Library District’s eBranch. Responsibilities include managing all patron interfacing online services including the online catalog, digital content, social media, and electronic resources and providing staff and patron training for eBranch services. Experience using and administering library digital services, Drupal content management system, Polaris integrated library system, image editing and screencasting software and the understanding of technical trends relevant to public libraries is desirable.

Full job description

During the code4lib conference in February 11-14 in Chicago there will be a drupal4lib conference too. Let me break down that sentence for you.

code4lib

isn’t entirely about code or libraries. It is a volunteer-driven collective of hackers, designers, architects, curators, catalogers, artists and instigators from around the world, who largely work for and with libraries, archives and museums on technology “stuff.”

Their 2013 annual conference will be in chicago February 11 to 14. (Registration fee is $160.) As part of this conference there will be a Drupal4lib Sub-con Barcamp, described on the wiki page as:

This will be a full day of self-selected barcamp style sessions. Anyone who wants to present can write down the topic on an index card and, after the keynote, we will vote to choose what we want to see. Attendees can also pick a topic and attempt to talk someone else into presenting on it.

If we run out of topics, we will pay homage to the project by testing patches for Drupal 8. It is easy, and we will show you how to do this invaluable task.

This event is open to the library community. There is a nominal fee ($10) for non-Code4LibCon attendees.

Local Drupal uber-ninja Larry Garfield will stop by to answer questions and give us some guidance.

OPAC is a newish module for Drupal 7, that

enables libraries to integrate their catalog into Drupal allowing importing records, make advanced searches with faceted results, circulation task etc … This module is intended to work with any ILS by using connectors. Everyone can make its own by creating a php file.

Read the full description at drupal.org/project/opac

It was developed by BibLibre, a French company doing Open Source for libraries. Their blog entry gives more background information.

Stanford has recently launched a new main library website, based on
Drupal 7.  Stuart Snydman wrote a nice blog post describing the technical approach taken for
some of the more important features on the new Library website, including

• the use of cloud hosting of Drupal
• simpleSAMLphp Shibboleth implementation
• integration of the SearchWorks API into search results and for link-management elsewhere in Drupal
• a panels-based approach to library guides using widgets (fieldable panel panes and in-place-editing)
• library hours, which includes a RESTful API that is soon to be documented.

iFactory worked on Northwestern University Library’s website and then posted a slideshow about the process and the results. The 78 slides were part of Lisa Sawin‘s presentation to the Rice University Library Drupal Group on June 5, 2012. The fourth slide summarizes what one can learn from it:

• Configuring some aspects of the Drupal admin to enable a wide variety of users to create content
• Customizing display of complex content types, including using javascript blinds to show/hide information
• Setting up a variety of views for different ways to list, filter and sort content
• Tagging to enable highlighting content which otherwise does not get enough attention
• Using the Field Permission module to deliver fine-grained customization of content delivery

At the May 23 meeting of the Chicagoland Drupal Library Group Leo Klein gave a presentation on “Drupal: Past, Present & Future“. The 9 slides on Google Docs start with comparison of basic set up and something you can really use between Drupal and the competition (aka WordPress). Then it goes on to cover the good and bad of the early days, description of Drupal 7, core related issues in Drupal 8 including core initiatives and their timetable. It ends with a set of 6 good Drupal 8 related links.

ALA TechSource posted a slideshow titled Drupal Basics. It was put together by Sean Fitzpatrick of LisHost, which provides web services to libraries. The 26 slides covers the basics, including what Drupal is, why choose it, the difference between Drupal 6 and 7, terminology (core, contrib, theme, content types, views), advantages and disadvantages, installation, compliance, security, scalability and additional resources.