What you are describing sounds quite a bit like a knowledge base. There a lot of commercial solutions for these types of things, but open source options are a bit more limited. 

There's CUFTS, which is no longer under development as far as I know: http://researcher.sfu.ca/cufts

There's also GOKb, which is under development and worth keeping an eye on: http://gokb.org/preview

I've not used either of these products, so unfortunately, I can't vouch for either one. But hopefully this gives you a starting point to work from.

Regards,
Karl Holten
Systems Integration Specialist
SWITCH Inc
414-382-6711

-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ken Irwin
Sent: Wednesday, May 27, 2015 8:02 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [CODE4LIB] getting started with Drupal for library website

Hi folks,

Thanks to all who responded a few weeks ago to my inquiry about updating the code on my library's website. Many folks suggested moving to a CMS, and I'm starting to look into that possibility, and particularly Drupal.

In doing so, I'm hoping not to re-invent the wheel, and I'm hoping that maybe someone has already designed a basic infrastructure to replace the backbone of our current website, namely.

Under our current arrangement we have an interlocking set of databases that performs some basic library functions:

There's a database table that lists all of the databases we subscribe to. That database feeds a user interface that:

*         lists databases

*         counts click-thrus

*         routes traffic to our proxy server when appropriate

*         can list databases by subject area (defined in a table of subject associations)
There's also a back-end UI to create subject/database associations, display click-thru stats, generate EZproxy config files based on the table of library databases.

Does anyone know of a freely-available set of modules/pages/etc that's already designed to do this sort of thing? In my imagination, lots of libraries would want to basically this same thing, customized to their own particularly needs and maybe we wouldn't each have to start from scratch.

Any advice?

Thanks
Ken