Giving Back: Darci Hanning, Oregon State Library

After almost 15 years of corporate IT/software engineering and development, including a five-year stint at NIKE, Darci Hanning felt the need to “'give back' to society in a more direct way—librarianship became that way.” And “give back” she has. The Plinkit project (oregon.plinkit.org), developed for the Oregon State Library, is based on the open source Plone Content Management System and provides 36 rural Oregon libraries free, content-rich, easy-to-update web sites that can be maintained locally. Each web site provides libraries with an events calendar, incoming and outgoing RSS feeds, catalog search, and links to databases (including remote authentication), plus pages staff can update themselves. All for free—“And free is a very good price,” as the Plinkit web site proclaims. It's also expanding to three more states through the Plinkit Collaborative (www.plinkit.org).

In return, Hanning gives back to the Plone community as an active member of the Plone Documentation Team and by making presentations, helping users on the #plone IRC channel, and serving as the Plone Foundation's board president. Her involvement in the open source software community as it relates to libraries and her dedication to disseminating information and expertise has vaulted Plinkit and Plone into national and international prominence.

Hanning loves it when librarians with no HTML skills tell her that working on their web site is going to be fun. That's when she “knows we're providing a much-needed service.”