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
Access was great, my first time going, first time at a hackfest, first time presenting at a conference. I had to laugh to myself at some points. Presenters were throwing out their Access “street cred” - being at the ‘96 Access…I was in high school.
Hackfest Worked on problem 7:
7 . Socialize Evergreen! John Blyberg just released SOPAC 2.0 (http://www.thesocialopac.net/ and http://www.blyberg.net/2008/08/16/sopac-20-what-to-expect/) built on a Drupal, MySQL, and Sphinx platform, with interfaces defined for sharing tags, reviews, and ratings of materials (Insurge).
Here is the library press release:
The William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections at McMaster University Library is launching the latest in a series of digital initiatives aimed at bringing its unique collections to a wider, online audience. The new site, Peace and War in the 20th Century, has been developed with the assistance of almost $100,000 in funding from the Department of Canadian Heritage, through the Canadian Memory Fund.
Ok, kids. Finally, done. The Peace & War in the 20th Century is finally done - http://pw20c.mcmaster.ca. The site is now official. The site consists of nearly 3000 records, and is divided between two over archiving themes, Waging Peace and Waging War. The over arching themes are broken down into sub categories, and case studies, covering an expansive wealth of information. Images digitized for the collection include posters, letters, 3-D objects (grenades, metals, etc.
I have failed to write/blog about this for quite some time because of shear busyness (<– is that even a word?). But, since mid October of last year I decided to use Drupal as a content management system for McMaster University Library’s digital collections. I elected to go the brave/trail blazing/cheap route, instead of using an out of the box solution like CONTENTdm. Nothing against CONTENTdm, but I believe that libraries, especially academic libraries need to be at the forefront of using and incorporating open source software solutions to meet their needs.