CUNY

Hunter College (CUNY) had decided on Plone as their CMS but Danielle Becker, working in the library, wouldn't have any of it:

A few months into the redesign project, Hunter College launched an initiative converting all of the college and department webpages to the CMS Plone. However, the library’s systems department didn’t have the same experience with Python, the programming language Plone uses, as it does with PHP. We also felt that Drupal’s features were more suited to the needs of our website. After obtaining the college's approval, we were able to move forward with our redesign and re-create the site from Dreamweaver to Drupal. [Becker, D.. "Adventures in Drupal: Designing a Library Website Using a CMS." Online, September 1, 2010, 19-21.]

Blogger is shutting down its FTP service. That's a shame. It's what allowed me to put together one of the early blogs on a library web site -- at the end of 2002.

"Red Scare (1918-1921)" was a project I did for extra credit while finishing up my MLS at Queens College (CUNY). It must have been around 1997.

The online exhibit consisted of political cartoons with some photos from the period 1918-1921. There were over a hundred images illustrating the hysteria of the time -- most scanned from hard-bound copies of the Literary Digest, then conveniently housed in the stacks of NYU Bobst Library. The exhibit is hosted by Newman Library, Baruch College (CUNY) where I went after NYU.

Anyway, every once and a while, I get a request for permission to use one or two of the images. There was a lot of interest in them around the time of 9/11 but even afterwards, the requests still come in.

I usually explain that the copyright has long run out on the images and that they're free for the downloading. The latest request was from one of the College Prep Testing Services. They want to use one or two of the images for their section on U.S. History.

I guess, I'll have to upgrade the project at some point. Ten years is a long time for content like this on the Web.