ABSTRACT
The days of top-down communication and controlled internal messages at a library organization are—Or should be—behind us. Modern libraries must be fluid and flexible organizations with equally nimble internal communication infrastructures in place to keep up with the fast-paced environments that have been created in these organizations. As is the case at many institutions, McMaster University Library (about 100 employees) put a great deal of effort into public-facing resources and content, while the library intranet languished as an afterthought. Static Web pages were haphazardly created and linked to from the site’s index page.As the site grew, the lack of global navigation, search functionality, and clarity about content ownership led to a large, confusing collection of pages that was increasingly difficult to maintain. In 2009, a project was undertaken to redesign the staff intranet and implement Drupal, an open-source content management system, to power the new site. This case study outlines the issues faced with the former intranet, requirements gathering, staff feedback, and usability tests performed to inform the redesign, site architecture, and Drupal modules implemented, features and benefits of the redesigned intranet, the use of the new intranet to corral existing Web 2.0/social media channels, governance, evaluation, and lessons learned from the project. Future phases of the project will focus on integrating other internal communication tools used by staff in their day-to-day work, including internal file-sharing drives, staff e-mail and instant messaging platforms, meeting scheduling software, and external document sharing tools such as Google Docs.
