ILS-655 Final Project Documentation

Production Notes

This site was created using the following tools:

  • Dreamweaver V8 (html pages)
  • Adobe Professional V7 (pdf scanning)
  • Adobe Photoshop (jpg scanning and web galleries)

For fast loading, the web page are designed in a floating 3-column format using XHTML and CSS. All sections are delimited with the hierarchical headings (h1, h2, ..) for maximum accessibilty. The left column contains links to pages for each of the major topics. The right column contains links to a bibliography and site map with links to the resources by type.

The search in the right column is not yet working, possibly because the site is currently in a subfolder of another domain. Eventually the site will have its own domain name.

Each web page has the following metadata embedded in the source code:

  • DC.Title content = "Serving the 445th - Mission Statement">
  • DC.Creator content="Catherine Bence"
  • DC.Type content="Text"
  • DC.Date content="07/30/2007"
  • DC.Format content="text/html"; 12 KBytes
  • DC.Language content="en"
  • DC.Subject content="World War, 1939-1945 -- Aerial operations, American"
  • DC.Description content="images, web links, and documents related to the 445th bomber group"

Because the items on the site are intended to be be shared with (and eventually copied to) other web sites, the metadata for the documents and images is limited to the fields embedded in the PDF files and JPG files - these include title, subject, creator, description, and copyright. File names are descriptive, with elements of the file names delimited with underscores. The item type and date of creation of the original document is included in the file name if possible. All file name are lower case to avoid confusion when uploading to case-sensitive operating systems.

Eventually I would like to rescan and OCR the more legible documents, and transcribe the hand written documents, posting the searchable texts with the images.

 

Digital Library Components

  1. Title - "SERVING THE 445th"
  2. Mission statement
  3. Collection policy
    • Original documents scanned with associated metadata - all scanned documents on the site are owned by me and or are in the public domain with full attribution
    • Links to established sites with full attribution of any materials references
    • Full citations of references to materials published elsewhere
    • Documents in PDF format with title, description, and keywords

    • Images in JPG format with associated file information
  4. Organization of collection
    • By topic - left menu on every page
    • By resource type (image, document, web link) within each topic and from site map in right menu of every page
    • Bibliography by topic - right menu on every page
  5. Resource descriptions
    • PDFs contain title, subject, author, keywords, description, Adobe format and simplified Dublin Core
    • JPGs in gallery contain, title, filename, creator, copyright, keywords, subject
    • Individual JPGs discriptively names - all lower case with words separated by underscores
    • Time and sfotware willing, the shorter documents will be OCRed and PDFs with embedded searchable text will added to the site, replacing the existing scans.
  6. Access and use
    • Hyperlinks in site map at right column of every page (images galleries excepted)
    • Hyperlinks by topic (left menu)
    • Google Custom Search of site (not working yet)
  7. Services features
    • All documents are available for download. The purpose of this site is to make this material available to anyone interested in the events covered here.
    • Contact by email
    • Method for visitors to leave comments on site - possible using Wordpress blog software ( TBD)
  8. Interface design
    • Site coded with HTML and CSS for easy maintenance and limited dependence on underlying technologies (exceptions: Google search link and image gallery)
    • Site built with Dreamweaver
      page template automates header, footer, left menu, and help items on right menu
      css template automates look and feel of pages
    • Image galleries constructed with Adobe Photoshop automated Web Album tool
  9. Enhancement, Evaluation &/or Maintenance plan
    • Scan and add additional materials to site
    • I have been in contact with several organization about sharing this information - iniitially they will be able to link to the site and copy portions to their own site. Eventually I will collect the entire site, burn it to CD, and make copies available to those organizations. The materials that the site is based on will also be donated to one or more of these organizations.

      No password or checkout prodecure is required to copy information from the site.
    • The domain name has been reserved for ???years and current host site is reserved for ??? years. A dated backup of all materials on the site will be created offline (to an external drive and burned to CD or DVD) whenever an update is made to the site. At least 3 generations of backup will be kept.
    • Because the site is HTML and CSS based, in an emergency it can be updated using a text editor and FTP.
    • Feedback mechanism - email, customer comments on site using blog software (TBD)

Bibliography

Site Map

 

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