Guides, Guides, and More Guides

I like to write. I hope you can see that from my blog (if I didn't like writing, I would not have kept it going this long). And I like to write all kinds of things, including fiction stories--none of which have been published yet. Not that I've been trying to get them published, but I digress. It is in this spirit of enjoying writing that I seem to be so taken with writing guides for the Marin County Free Library staff--and I can only assume that my site supervisor is taking my strength and put it to this use on purpose.

Again this week I've been working on guides for the staff, two in particular. The Drupal guide I'm working on is a document that predates my time with MCFL, but it is desperate need of updating and the addition of a LOT of missing information. I'm fairly certain that the guide contains everything that was needed at the time it was made, but the library's website has grown and evolved since it was first debuted with the new look, which resulted in a lot of areas being created after this guide must have been put together. So my job is to update what's already in the guide, and add in the information that may be missing based on what options/settings/features/etc. are now available. Not an easy job. The guide is quite extensive; right now, it's a Word document that's over 75 pages in length, and there are still a lot of components missing from it that I have yet to add in. Before even adding in the new information, I had to comb through what was there to make sure instructions were current and links were still correct. I actually had to go back and change a lot of the URL pathways for links because they had changed. Drupal 6 (which is what the MCFL site runs on) has made way for Drupal 7 since the site first went live, and soon Drupal 8 will be released; as a result, Drupal 6 information has moved from its original location and I had to track it down again. Right now, all the information in the document is current; I'm now slowly adding in all the missing information, which takes awhile because I have to include how-to instructions for each process that needs to be added. This is a project that is spanning weeks.

My second project is creating another guide for MCFL staff that guides them through adding content to a specific area of the library's public site (my two previous guides had dealt solely with content procedures for the staff intranet). However, this guide is a little more complex that the first two because there are several types of content that can be added to this area, and each type follows a different process. One process is already partially outlined in another guide, so I merely needed to reference that guide then add the rest of the information. My biggest worry about this guide is that it will be too long. The Drupal guide, monster that it is, is only intended for the staff that works with administering the public site (aka the Webmasters Team); this second guide is intended for all library staff. I know people don't want to read a novel when a few pages would do. I'm alleviating part of my worry by including bookmarks in this guide; staff will be able to go directly to the area that they want for the content type they are trying to add and skip over the rest of the guide that they don't need.

This work will definitely carry over to next week, and possibly later than that. Back to writing!