Wordpress, Digital Collections, and Web Services
Kevin Reiss CUNY Graduate Center
Murray Hill Neighborhood Project
Funded by grant from NYC METRO Library Council Neighborhood Adjacent to the Graduate Center Project Boundaries North: 42nd Street South: 34th Street East: 1st Ave. West: 5th Ave. Murray Hill is actually smaller New York City Landmark Designation – Murray Hill Historic District
Project Scope
Approximately 300 reproductions of photos, news clippings, prints, maps, and other assorted images Project goals
Digitize the reproductions Create an interactive neighborhood history (maps, timelines) website with some social networking possibilities Feature the same location from three different time periods (roughly 30s, 70s, Present Day) Create rich metadata for each address in the collection
Grant has funds for a summer research position for a grad student
Make a site that will support in person tours of the neighborhood in conjunction with neighborhood association
Access and outreach are the main goals for the project
Project Staff
Minimal FT staff availability
Website Design + Programming – Systems Librarian Metadata + Quality Control – Catalogue Librarian Take present day images over summer Scanning Architectural Research (Summer)
Professional Photographer
Graduate Student Assistants
Building dates Razing dates Building purpose, original owner, etc.
Technology
Grant Provides access to a hosted ContentDM server URL: http://cdm128401.cdmhost.com/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=%2 Fcgc Longstanding out-of-box digital image management tool Basic OAI Support Adequate for metadata authorship and image storage Poor search and browse functionality Hosted solution leaves limited room for customization No social networking tools (tagging, comments, user contributed media) Need a platform that provides more interactivity and flexibility
Web 2.0 > Web 1.0
Graft Web 2.0 Tools over 1.0 approach Popular Approach – see VuFind and Scriblio next generation catalog projects Library of Congress on Flickr We want to turn:
http://cdm128401.cdmhost.com/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=%2Fcgc
Currently
http://library.gc.cuny.edu/wordpress Wordpress 2.5.1 on IIS 6
Eventually
http://murrayhill.gc.cuny.edu/ on Apache
Use Wordpress
Webs most popular publishing platform – very robust
Started as a blogging tool – simple deployment – 5 minute install
Open source PHP/MySQL application Very flexible architecture
Easy and simple to customize Can build a subscriber/author base if you desire Simple Post/Page structure (Posts go out as RSS) Numerous plug-ins can help create maps, timelines, other mashups Easy for users to grab chunks of content or even add content Blogosphere Search Engines (RSS, Tagging) Browse by Tag / Category Comments Wordpress Themes and Plug-ins – easily create feature rich websites
Using it plugs you into
Wordpress and Libraries
Some useful existing work Scriblio – Wordpress as library catalog MARC based – requires apache mod_rewrite Unapi Server – supports autodiscovery via Wordpress plug-in Will work with tools like Zotero using html tag Could be made to work with OAI Check for Validation Blog Structure will facilitate linking to other resources such as the NYPL Digital Gallery Permalinks can help with preservation issues – need apache mod_rewrite to do proper permalinks/clean urls Good spam-blocking capabilities
Project Plan – began in April
Cataloger has created approximately 50 records Authored using ContentDM Metadata Template Created Uses LCSH and The Art & Architecture Thesaurus, also recorded geographic metadata – latitude, longitude – future use in map displays Approximately 2/3rds of the images scanned Populate Wordpress site with this data in batch export by ContentDM generic XML export Consider whether to: Finish metadata/record creation in ContentDM and do more batch imports Finish in Wordpress using Custom Fields or LCSH aware wordpress plug-in
Wordpress wrx Import/Export Format
Problems
Wordpress importing not entirely smooth; question whether this could be automated effectively using something like OAI Turning:
Murray Hill Historic District -- Buildings, structures, etc. Into murray-hill-Historic-District-Buildings-structures-etc Or this Bas-reliefs (Sculpture) bas-refliefs-sculpture Or this bas-refliefs-sculpture
Wordpress and Subject Headings
Problematic Export not exactly smooth wrx not an exact match Many XML syntax issues
Particularly with CDATA sections Spacing does matter with wrx and the current version of Wordpress Catalogers will go full speed ahead with subject headings, coordinate with them from the start Wordpress won’t accept categories/tags with (), --, ., or a , by default
A lot of issues left to work out here
LCSH Headings aren’t tags
Need to work out a systematic normalize strategy Wordpress has tags and categories
Tags – more informal, open up to user contributions Categories – can have hierarchy, more akin to subject terms
Built-in Wordpress key=>value mechanism Store data here until we decide how to use it http://library.gc.cuny.edu/wordpress/murray-hill-neighborhood Will display all tagged items
Right now use custom fields
Wordpress wants to wind up at:
Wordpress Custom Fields
Key=>value pairs assigned to a post Repeatable, will preserve LCSH style spacing, punctuation Easily Accessible and manipulated within the Wordpress theme mechanism Only code required This highlights the simplicity of Wordpress loop architecture
Every page display resolves around Every the_post() has functions like the_tags(), the_categories(), the_comments() associated with it. You control how these behave in display “theme” and not have to touch the actual application
What about the Images?
Stored in a Media Library Each image receives a permalink
See http://library.gc.cuny.edu/wordpress/?attachment_id=317
Each image in the library can have a title, caption, and description assigned to it Can be inserted into any post/page in a Wordpress site Use Wordpress plug-ins to develop
Image slideshows by block/region Embedded image viewer for full-size images within posts/pages
Next Steps
Move to apache as soon as possible to create clean urls Create an subject appropriate theme for the site Realize working prototypes for following
Maps – use the Google maps plug-in Timeline – work with the MIT simile timeline plug-in Scriblio – can easily handle LCSH style controlled vocabularies Consider Omeka an emerging tool for social history websites, wants to be the Wordpress for digital collections
Consider trying alternative pieces of software