As you can tell from the many posts I have on this blog, I do like to add some pictures. Most are taken from Google I think of a theme that reflects the topic and try to source something that is pretty and vibrant.
As part of my personality I love bright colours, yellow being my favoured, I love the warmth of summer and laughing with friends, as much as I love my own company (as I am an only child) I savour the moments I spend with people. Which I love about this blog, your thoughts and reflections of topics are there for everyone to see, and they ultimately reflect the person you are too. It is sort of like a professional diary, where your academic achievements are given a platform to showcase your abilities.
As part of our Digital Libraries module our assignment is to create an Digital Library, so as creativity is creeping into my Masters I decided I was going to embrace this new topic and really try to do some thing special.
My decision was to collect all the cards I had been given from my partner and to catalogue and showcase them in a special way, to illustrated the journey we have been on since we met. What a lovely story! All the cards were left to hide in the filing cabinet so why not give them a lovely space to forever be remembered.
Our software to use is Omeka.net, at first glance it seemed very straight forward and I decided to do my background research in order to catalogue each card, which at first seemed a bit tedious, however once I got into a flow it proved very successful.
However my decision to scan all the items and not test the suitability of how a scanned image would be in Omeka, I scanned all of the items in. As you do this you will fill in your metadata, so the image only appears briefly (unless you go and analyse it).
As I entered in all the items and my metadata for each one, I then viewed the site. DISASTER!! It was horrible, all the cards were not aligned properly, on top of this the vividness of the card was lost once scanned in, some where lovely glittering pink bright cards, now they looked like pieces of old paper, sitting on a lost table in a forgotten room.
I was so upset, and as I tried to add in my header and logo, nothing would work no matter what I did, Omeka would not align a certain picture they way I wanted it to. 😦
Back to the drawing board, I decided to test how a picture would look and uploaded the file, amazing the card was so vivid and the detail was so clear. Then a “brainwave” I decided I would incorporate my book collect, as I like bright things, I am drawn to bright books, usually the story is also good! So I added a book to the colour of the card to enhance both items.
If I got anything from this assessment is to do a pre test run of what you want something to look like, and then see how good the piece of software is and if this is going to allow you to do what you want. There is nothing worse then having these high expectations and finding the software you has does not match these expectations.
My Digital Library is named “My Memorable Cards” and it is still not perfect, but I am happy with what I have done. In future I will make sure to be specific in the detail I want and to look at the site and see how I can achieve this.
Next Time!
Déise Librarian 