CP of library reports that a number of the images in the Elkington archive do not appear. He's right about that. For a couple of dozen files, there is a mismatch between the names of the actual files (e.g. elkington_diary_p1) in the images folder on the server and the value for the name of the files in the database (e.g. elkington_album_p1). Choice is either I edit entries in db to match file names or BI edits filenames to match entries in DB.
Wrote to BI who said he'd rename the files to match the DB, which he did.
November 12, 2010
modified a couple of pages with new material to do with workshop coming up in new year.
LS of English asked about creating a site similar to that used for review of grad school applications to the department - though without the review form. Consists of an htaccess protected folder containing a pdf folder and an index.php file. The code in the file finds the name of each file in the pdf folder, generates a list of those with a link to each pdf. Also updated the list of netlink IDs allowed, and installed CyberDuck FTP client on Puri's computer and showed her how to use it to upload the PDF files into the pdf folder.
MT of English asked about installing Omeka on our server. She's a post-doc so formally requires a faculty member sponsor. In this case, Martin is also a formal member of the research team, and MT may have a position in the faculty within a year, so we agreed to install the software, wait on MT's status and once that's sorted out either she sponsors it or she finds a faculty sponsor.
I'm beginning to work out the structure for the tables in the database for the Victorian Poetry database.
The primary unit in this database appears to be a published-poem.
Each published-poem has a relationship to a poem and to a periodical. Each poem has a relationship to an author.
There are some questions that I need MT to answer before I can continue.
1) Will there be any instances of a poem having more than one author?
2) Do we distinguish between a poem with no author and poem whose author is anonymous?
3) Do we have one anonymous author associated with all unattributed to poems, or do some unattributed poems get associated with one "anonymous" and other unattributed poems get associated with another "anonymous" (for example, if you have a collection of poems you know to be written by one unknown person and wish to distinguish that author from another unknown person who wrote another poem)
4) We've noted that authorship can be declared or can be inferred by the scholar, are there any other ways authorship is attributed? (We'll need to include a "authorship_determined_by" field to contain that information.)
5) We need to tighten up conventions on what information we capture about each person's name (and possible title or other identifiers) and how each of those is to be represented in the spreadsheet. The most common presentation of author name is Surname, FirstName, but a number of entries don't conform, for example these from DarkBlue.xls:
Ca(d)(l)verley, C.S.
see title
R.G.
Professor Sylvester
the late John Lyall
Leary (D.C.L.), T.H.L.
And these from DublinU:
M
M?
'Filia'
The London Hermit
Rev. Dr. MacMoreland
And these from PoetryIndex_1.docx
Edward Oxenford
We discussed having an "author-as-found" field and an "author-normalized" field.
6) Do we separate author surnames from given names e.g. for purposes of searching?
7) We also need to tighten up conventions on what information we capture about each published poem's title and how each of those is to be represented in the spreadsheet. Some of the "titles" appear to be titles, others appear to be the first line of the poem. Do we want to distinguish between those?
8) These are instances of titles that appear to contain more than just the title. Do we need to do anything with these other than reproduce the characters as found?
Tragedy (trans. from the German by Franz Huffer)
The Story of Europa (Hor. Od. III. Xxvii. 25.)
'Amour qui Sourit Caché'
One untitled poem opens and two close the author’s essay “Sketches of Travel in Germany”
9) This example of a title in DarkBlue appears to refer to a collection of poems.
Garden Poems (I.—The Garden, II.—Visions, III.—The Bird ...)
This example from DublinU also appears to refer to a collection, but is treated differently:
I [Happiest of happy feelings ‘tis to feel]
II [If gold could give us peace]
We have no structure right now for handling collections of poems. Should we? That is, do we want to treat an entire collection as one poem (what about collections whose poems are written by different authors) or do you want to treat each poem in a collection as a separate poem and then add a "collections" table and some way of relating each of the poems to the collection?
10)
In the poetryindex_1 file, a typical entry begins like this:
[January 1886]
No. 1, 129
(7)
Whereas, in DarkBlue the issue/page field looks like this:
1 (March 1871): 35
What does each piece of information in both types of entry identify? We'll need to normalize that.
Helped Judy make a number of changes to the WS site. The largest was adding a new page for the student video and modifying the navigation code appropriately. The site is using old server side includes, by the way.
ChristineSP asked about including a student-produced video into the ws dept site. We had an instance of the video in the hums account, and I took a copy from a DVD she provided. Problem with hosting the video on the uvic server was that the file we had did not serve smoothly outside the university (big file). They were also interested in having the video available on YouTube, so I created a YouTube account for them, uploaded the file to that account and then embedded a media player on the page in the ws site pointed to that YouTube file. That seemed both simpler and better addressed all their needs than reformatting the video and serving it from the uvic server.
Leaving early...
HCMC received an anonymous donation which we're putting to pay for additional hours for SarahK on the dictionary project. Couple of exchanges with development officer and accounting/payroll people on how to do the bookkeeping for the donation and to pay the money out.
Met with SaraB of History and ErinC of finearts and Judy to discuss a small website to support the Early Modern Research Collective. They want something modelled on the Medieval Studies site, though only one level of navigation. They sent representative images and also suggested the use of images of plates or coins where medieval used shields. I told them that the resources HCMC could put in would be those we'd use to create the site using UVic templates. Judy wrote up the following notes. I've tasked her with creating a site based on the Medieval studies website, but simplified as appropriate.
Structure:
- visually similar to Medieval Studies website
- 1 layer (with "Global" logo on top right-side)
- no tables
- basically text and images
- repeating signature image (decide later, artist/budget required)
Tabs:
- coloured plates, round
- same size as MS shields
Banner:
UVic's EMRC on Banner
Navigation:
Left nav (balance with right side " Announcements")
Announcements:
on Current Events Page only
Pages: (ref further to your email received 10-07-10)
Home
Courses - list courses on one page only (Undergrad, Grad)
Current Events - leave on Home page only; need an Events page short
form; Events page separate page
Faculty - do 2 columns
Resources
Contact Us
Content:
- graphics; composition
- lists, text, paragraphs, headings
- don't need News Flash - change notice
- no audio or video requirements
Upcoming and Past Events on 1 Events page with most current at top
descending in date
Colour, Font:
- prefer light background (e.g. Faculty of Humanities website - white)
- prefer striking/simple, no blandness
Timeframe:
couple of weeks (mid November)
Summary:
- Color: TBA - they will choose according to selection of final images
- Images: Erin will send to Sara who will send to us; Sara will send
text to us
- Events Calendar: is the only urgent item
- Left nav: on each page with imbedded picture as repeated element on
each page
- Top banner: includes "Who We Are" symbol/text
- FONT: Arial; Helvetica