More Subject Guide Mayhem

Lately I've had the vision of using a tabbed menu for PPLD's Subject Guides, much like this example:

http://www.lib.sfu.ca/help/subject-guides/chemistry/home

I spent some time trying to figure out the best way to do this, including using Quick Tabs module, and trying to use a "template" menu (via variables) that I could plug into corresponding Views, but in the end, the best solution was the simplest:

I made a menu for each Subject Guide and populated it with the corresponding resources. Then I attached each menu to its corresponding resource by assigning them as blocks.

Now I need to figure out how to theme the menus so they display as tabs...

Drupal Library BoF

My coworker Cheryl and I attended the Drupal Libraries Birds of a Feather (BoF) in Denver on May 14. There were a lot of people from a large cross-section of libraries there, including:

1. Arapahoe Library District


2. Boulder Public Library


3. Denver Public Library


4. Douglas County Libraries


5. Rangeview Library District


6. National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR)

The gathering was headed up by Greg Knaddison from Growing Venture Solutions and hosted at Denver Open Media.

The group discussed Version Control, Organic Groups, Multi-site configuration, Theming with Zen, and other topics. It was great to see so many libraries drinking the Drupal Kool-Aid (gives a nasty hangover, btw). It was also reassuring to see that several of the libraries had a similar timeline to ours.

Things mentioned at the BoF that I plan to investigate:

• Feed API in place of Aggregator for Feeds. However, if Aggregator does the trick and is core, then I'll probably just stick with that.


• Read Version Control section of Leveraging Drupal. Determine best practice, which is not set in stone: Subversion alone, CVS and Subversion, or other. Backup and Migrate module can work for database updates


• Block Cache Alter module caches blocks on role by role basis


• Install Profile API module might be a possible staging solution. Greg Knaddison uses this solution


• Zen Theme - Palantir's Zen cheat sheet

I like the idea of having Library BoFs happen on a regular basis. I hope that pans out!

New Timeline

It's been awhile since I've written, mainly because I've been working on non-redesign projects. The big news is I updated the redesign timeline and have pushed the launch of the redesigned ppld.org back to Summer/Fall 2010. There are a couple of reasons for this, not the least of which is the sheer enormity of the project.