This event is co-sponsored/hosted with ACRL/NY Special Collections and Archives Discussion Group.
Many institutions now have blogs to promote their programming, talk about their collections, and generally engage their public. Some librarians and archivists have gone a step beyond the basic blog, and have leveraged the structure inherent in blogging Content Management Systems (CMS) to create searchable, browseable online presentations of their collections, dubbed "catablogs." In this class, we will use Emma, the catablog of archives and special collections at the Brooklyn Historical Society, as a case study to illustrate how an institution used the WordPress blogging CMS to create a simple and low-cost way to present their collections online. The workshop will cover basic tools such as themes and plug-ins, and the large body of knowledge shared by the WordPress community, that can be helpful in creating your own implementation. It will aslo discuss how WordPress can deal with both structured and unstructured data, making it a useful tool for a variety of organizations with a range of collections information.
Who should attend:
Librarians, archviists, curators, and anyone looking for options to make their collections more visible and accessible online.
By the end of this program, participants will:
- Have an understanding of the key functionality of the WordPress content management systems, and how it can be used to present collections online beyond basic blogging
- Have an introduction to WordPress plug-ins built specifically for the library and archives community
- Have an introduction to other WordPress tools and plug-ins they may wish to leverage in their own WordPress implementation
