Bacon…
Sorry, had to get that of the way. Those who know, know. Those who do not, oh well. I will address it later… subtly???
Awhile back we got hit with the perfect-downtime-storm. A RAID controller battery randomly failed, and I was down for quite a few hours. Then a day or two later … a brown-out occurred. Somehow, some way, this killed the brand new RAID controller on the DB server, and disemboweled the RAID controller on the web server.
The Image API was recently released for Drupal 5, and changed a lot of things. During my updates (and redesign), I thought it might be a good idea to provide a sort of "how to" for images in Digital Collections. First thing first, make sure you have CCK! Also of note, for each collection that I've setup with CCK, I created a new imagefield for each one, and provided it with a directory in the "
Ok, more Drupal stuff for Digital Collections site. I’ll yammer on about “must have” modules in this one. Hit the snooze button if you’d like. Oh, and this is in addition to the ones I mentioned in the previous post… Community Tags, Tagadelic, Service Links, Faceted Search, Views, Zen Theme, Quicktabs, and of course CCK.
First thing first, CCK add-ons: Audio Field - Defines audio field type for CCK content.
I have written about Drupal & the Digital Collections site (http://digitalcollections.mcmaster.ca) a few times now, but haven’t really explained how to make a digital collections site out of Drupal. So, without further ado…
What are the necessities of a digital collections site? Dublin Core standard metadata OAI-PMH Version 2 Searching Browsable Collection Sets Image display - ideally JPEG2000 What are some additional features that have become necessary? Tagging Social Bookmarking Faceted Searching Visually rich environment Profiles, internal site bookmarking Contact forms, Image requests, Questions Commenting Content Recommendation
We’ve added pictures from our Mass Digitization and Publishing Launch to the blog, including pictures of or brand new Kirtas scanner. The event was a huge success, drawing over 100 guests, and press coverage. The Hamilton Spectator Catherine Baird, our Marketing, Communications, and Outreach Librarian and myself about the project. The article can be viewed here:http://thespec.com/article/388938
Ok, the Digital Collections website is ready for beta testing. Registered users can comment, vote on comments, and tag records - and updated version of the “bookbag” will be added soon. Collections with content include; Peace and War in the 20th Century, Russell Library, and World War II Concentration Camp Correspondences. At this time, AICT, and Kirtas Book Collection are outlines for content to be added later.
For the technical nerds!
ummmmm, I don’t know how to make a post about the Institutional Repository funny or witty, so I’ll go a little corporate sounding. bleh. I have been updating the repository quite a bit since the beginning of this year. We were apart of the first batch of upgrades from Bepress last month. We added categories and series, for most of the departments on campus so faculty can begin submitting scholarly output.
So, we have this robot now, and it loves to ingest books just like Johnny 5. It isn’t quite as spectacular as Johnny 5, but it gets the job done so far. It is the center of a top secret project here at McMaster, code named “otto.” [need input, need more input] Ok, I’ll get a little serious…The machine is a Kirtas 2400RA and can scan up to 2400 pages in an hour.