How to cope: create once, publish everywhere.(Nova Southeastern University Sherman Library)

• Published in: Computers in Libraries Vol. 34; no. 10; pp. 12 - 16
• Main Author: Schofield, Michael J
• Format: Magazine Article Trade Publication Article
• Language: English
• Published: Westport Information Today, Inc 01.12.2014
• Subjects: Academic Libraries; Audiences; Captions; Company business management; Customization; Design and construction; Graduate Students; Joint use; Libraries; Library Services; Management; Management Systems; Methods; Programming; Readers advisory work; Services; Technology application; University and college libraries; Usability; User services; Web site design; Web sites; Websites; United States
• ISSN: 1041-7915

We made plans last summer to build another library website. No, it wasn't a redesign. And we weren't building a new entity from the ground up to replace what we have. This was another website a second one to assure that the general public using our library could have a more customized experience. Nova Southeastern University's Alvin Sherman Library, Research, and Information Technology Center (Sherman Library) is a unique joint-use academic and public facility, which made for something of a disjointed homepage. We knew that a stand-alone, public-themed, public-toned, public-specific library website would better resonate with, well, the public.. At the same time, by relieving the pressure from having just one homepage, the library can better serve academic patrons. We needed to change how we approached content so that it was possible to share one item across all platforms, while avoiding the need to micromanage which piece of content appeared where. In 2009, Daniel Jacobson, who was director of application and development for NPR, wrote a series of posts on Programmable Web about the NPR API. The first post was, C.O.P.E.: CREATE ONCE, PUBLISH EVERYWHERE (aka COPE). Today, COPE is an important principle for addressing the challenges of a future-friendly web, but how it will be implemented into a library's content strategy is for us to figure out along the way. Consider these steps: 1). Migrate as much content as possible into one CMS. 2). Customize the content editor and content types to ensure quality and long-term ease of use for library staff. 3). Use a controlled vocabulary to categorize content so that the API can make relevant matches across all types. 4). Create or customize the API to make all parts of the content - excerpts, images, links, multimedia, transcripts, and captions, etc. available. Adapted from the source document.