Wordpress, Digital Collections, and Web Services

1
Wordpress, Digital Collections, and Web Services

• Kevin Reiss
• CUNY Graduate Center

2
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

3
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

4
Project Staff

• Minimal FT staff availability
• Website Design Programming Systems Librarian
• Metadata Quality Control Catalogue Librarian
• Professional Photographer
• Take present day images over summer
• Graduate Student Assistants
• Scanning
• Architectural Research (Summer)
• Building dates
• Razing dates
• Building purpose, original owner, etc.

5
Technology

• Grant Provides access to a hosted ContentDM
  server
• URL http//cdm128401.cdmhost.com/cdm4/browse.php?
  CISOROOT2Fcgc
• 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

6
Web 2.0 gt 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?CISOR
  OOT2Fcgc
• Currently
• http//library.gc.cuny.edu/wordpress Wordpress
  2.5.1 on IIS 6
• Eventually
• http//murrayhill.gc.cuny.edu/ on Apache

7
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
• Using it plugs you into
• Blogosphere
• Search Engines (RSS, Tagging)
• Browse by Tag / Category
• Comments
• Wordpress Themes and Plug-ins easily create
  feature rich websites

8
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 ltlinkgt
  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

9
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

10
(No Transcript)
11
Wordpress wrx Import/Export Format
12
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
• ltwpcategorygt
• ltwpcategory_nicenamegtbas-refliefs-sculpturelt/wp
  category_nicenamegt
• ltwpcategory_parent /gt
• ltwpcat_namegt
• lt!CDATA Bas-reliefs (Sculpture)gt
• lt/wpcat_namegt
• lt/wpcategorygt

13
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
• A lot of issues left to work out here
• Catalogers will go full speed ahead with subject
  headings, coordinate with them from the start
• Wordpress wont accept categories/tags with (),
  --, ., or a , by default

14
LCSH Headings arent 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
• Right now use custom fields
• Built-in Wordpress keygtvalue mechanism
• Store data here until we decide how to use it
• Wordpress wants to wind up at
• http//library.gc.cuny.edu/wordpress/murray-hill-n
  eighborhood
• Will display all tagged items

15
Wordpress Custom Fields

• Keygtvalue pairs assigned to a post
• Repeatable, will preserve LCSH style spacing,
  punctuation
• Easily Accessible and manipulated within the
  Wordpress theme mechanism
• Only code required lt?php the_meta() ?gt
• This highlights the simplicity of Wordpress loop
  architecture
• Every page display resolves around lt?php
  the_post()?gt
• 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

16
(No Transcript)
17
What about the Images?

• Stored in a Media Library
• Each image receives a permalink
• See http//library.gc.cuny.edu/wordpress/?attachme
  nt_id317
• 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

18
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
• Consider trying alternative pieces of software
• 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