Do you have some recommendations about good "document listing" sites?
First of all - from a new user (like just days) - what a pleasure to be flying in the company of eagles. The sites you all are responsible for are truly amazing - you all are showcasing the most beautiful art, documents, histories ... your audience is so well served through your efforts. I am so pleased to have "entered the room" with you all - even though I'm sitting over there in the corner.
Last week I learned about Omeka, over the weekend I put up a very rudimentary site, and this week now, I am thinking about how I should improve it, and start to do things more efficiently.
The site is hosted at Omeka at soundwaters.omeka.net we are using the site as a freebie, but will soon subscribe to the Plus or Silver level.
Here is where I need some advice: among the hundred or so "Showcase" sites - I can not find one as "simple" as ours. Our task is to put up several hundred documents: correspondence, research papers, consultants' reports. No art objects, fancy manuscripts or stand-alone photographs.
If you have a moment - take a look at basic Omeka 101 - the soundwaters.omeka.net and "tell me where to go." Yes, tell me where to go to "see" other sites that may resemble this one: straight documents, arranged in a couple of categories, with attention to their date order.
For this prototype - it all works - I we have five big types of documents - they have been presented as "Exhibits" - and the actual documents within the Exhibits are on Pages within Sections.
Here is the rub:
- when more documents arrive at my desk, next week, I will need to 'merge them in' by their date ... and I fear that my set-up of Exhibit-Section-Page will become a cumbersome snarl to maintain .... I think that the page content can be shifted up and down - but can they go from page to page .... since, as we realize, if I get a document to file that is old ... it will "push down" the whole stack ... causing a change to ripple through he subsequent pages
and
- the text that has been entered into the Dublin Core fields in the metadata .... is not the same text that appears on the Items on the page .... I have had to copy-and-paste that text material onto the "Caption" of the item once it is positioned on the page.
and
- the user "sees" the text I have presented (rather than the 'true" material behind the scenes in the Dover data) - AND - only sees a rather small magenta line with the file-name in it - somewhat cryptic, I am afraid, and has to seek that out, to click on it, and is then presented with the detailed page of the document - which immediately shows the Dover Core data .. and the pdf viewer is down at the bottom ... and does not appear on the initial screen.
OK you can get accustomed to anything - but I can't hear the users cheering and throwing their hats in the air ... given the cosmetic problems I have churned up for myself.
So the two questions are: 1) is there a model that I can go look at - for the routine listing of documents, and 2) am I missing something big by having the Theme and the Plug-Ins that are in the basic set .... can I do something more with this site before buying-in to Plus or Silver?
So thanks in advance - let me know if I have posted this in the wrong board .... and again "tell me where to go" - I am in such awe of the wonderful sites that you all have prepared - I hope that you can help me move along the learning curve with a little more confidence that eventually we will come up with a "wonderful" looking document site, rather than an "ok" site!
Best - Frank for SoundWaters