Designing and Developing Library Intranets

Book excerpt: For the past decade, e-mail has been the preferred method of internal communication in libraries. However, relying on email for organizational knowledge management seems a bit like storing birth certificates, car titles, and deeds in a pile of junk mail: the important documents are lost amongst other items of only minimal or fleeting importance. A successful intranet can provide a secure place for information exchange and storage; however, in order to be successful, a library intranet must be easy to use, have the functionality desired by its users, and be integrated into the daily workflows of all library staff. Accomplishing this can be challenging for web librarians. The book covers, among other topics, third-party hosting; the use of freely available blog and wiki software for internal staff communication; and developing library intranets in ColdFusion, Microsoft SharePoint, and the open source Drupal content management system (CMS). More importantly, the authors examine in detail the human factors, which, when not thoroughly addressed, are more often the cause for a failed intranet than the technology platform. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Web Librarianship.