Thursday, September 3, 2015

CONTENTdm Users Group, Goucher College, May 2015

Jill Craig, Western Maryland Regional Library.

CONTENTdm Users Group, Goucher College, May 2015

Jennifer K. Galas, University of Scranton

She described a campus with many potential data collectors but no simple way for them to add to a database. They could benefit from the diverse knowledge of the staff and inspire everyone to become a content creator.

Jennifer created a google spreadsheet available on the web for faculty and students to input. Then she utilized two javascripts - Tabletop.js and handlebars.js to create custom scripts.
The result is a collection which includes pages like Gannon Hall, University of Scranton 
She also used mapsheet.js which would be worth investigating to see if it is better than other mapping scripts.

I can see a non-centralized data entry system making it easier for data to be entered in our various libraries or counties. 

Working with Text and PDFs – Geri Ingram
Users expect full-text search-ability across the repository, but will also expect the data to be linked. Linked data will eventually provide the engine for new knowledge creation, for Washington County’s data on Antietam to, in Geri’s term, “become visible in the web-of-things” through worldcat and dpla.

Geri suggested using the metadata templates at page level; compound object level and for PDFs. On the Website Configtool: to suppress display of components of compound objects in search results, which would mean a search would find a word in a compound object and not pull up every single page. This is done by selecting pagetype = PDF 

Materials commonly assembled as compound objects would be Yearbooks, Papers, Postcards, Books.
Metadata can be at a page-level or object level.

I need to try the post card option of a compound object for the postcards we have that have information on the back of the image.  


The State Library of North Carolina Digital Repository has some useful ideas to for making a site more usable and user-friendly. It is a site I will look at again when my backlog is reduced.

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