1
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2
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- NYPL Digital Gallery
- Project Background
- Content vs. Context
- Building the Public Interface
- Challenges and lessons
- Defining categories (apples or oranges) ?
- New I.A. directions
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3
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- New York Public Library images have historically been given
exhibition-level treatment online
- Single, distinct collections
- Curatorial oversight for images & descriptions
- Size = 150 to 8,000 images
- Web site(s) = stand-alone applications
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4
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- Ingest data from disparate Library collections
- Oracle database & in-house Digital Assets Mgt. System
- Metadata for 500,000+ images
- Image data & storage
- Input by Metadata, Imaging staff
- Legacy-data loaded from other sources
- Multiple terabytes of archival TIFF, JPG and GIF files
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5
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- Back-end interface
- Oracle, Cold Fusion application server
- Public interface
- Sun (UNIX) presentation server
- Lucene (open source) search engine, XML data files
- CFMX custom tags, java, CFML for display
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6
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7
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- Content can be accessed via:
- Descriptive Metadata
- Collection naming
- Categorization
- Randomly
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8
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9
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10
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11
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12
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- “Photographic views of New York City, 1870's-1970's ”
- Over 50,000 images
- Flat structure, few levels
- Each directory holds thousands
of images
- Each record contains image(s)
- Artifact has verso
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13
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- “The A.G. Spalding Baseball Card Collection
- Less than 1,000 images
- Flat structure, no levels
- Subjects might be leveraged
for hierarchy?
- players, positions
- players, by teams
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14
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15
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16
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17
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18
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20
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21
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22
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23
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25
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- In the previous example, a date or title is difficult to locate in the
NYPL Research Libraries’ catalog
- Title is not available in online NYPL Catalog
- 18th Century date for Playing Cards: Mechanics is mentioned in the Guide
to the Research Collections of the New York Public Library (published
1975)
- How do we link to this type of non-cataloged information from Digital
Gallery metadata, especially if it is not in a standard reference
format?
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26
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27
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- Where we’ve been
- Several earlier iterations in previous development
- Challenges:
- data issues, software development framework(s)
- Version 4.x : Dumbing up or
down?
- simple = not necessarily elegant ?
- simpler = user-friendly ?
- more access paths = user confusion?
- better access paths = user confidence?
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28
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29
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30
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- Did not scale
- Necessitated endless revision of both content and labels
- Cognitive dissonance created by interface:
- when user clicked into a detail view or searched: the categories and titles in our data
were often different than our curated title lists
- Content not managed by data
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31
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32
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- In winter 2003-04, RazorFish, Inc., consulted by DLP
- Needs:
- Improve look-and-feel of overall navigation and site functions within
the scope of existing back-end development (i.e. without re-writing our
software)
- Outcomes:
- New: ‘topics/collections’ paradigm
- New: ‘find related images’ widget
- Improved visual language for user calls-to-action
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33
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- “Explore Topics”
- Contain topical featured selections
- Selections are hand-curated vs. cataloged
- Topics represent several broad categories
(“big buckets”)
- Can feature topical searches or subjects
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34
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35
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- Topics (or “big buckets”)
- Do not hold everything
- Virtually constructed container
- Are not exclusive: data can cross topics
- Only curated selections: “featured resources”
- Selected representation of online holdings
- Collections
- Do hold everything: a place for everything, and everything in ....
- Represent real-world objects
- User can scope search by collection
- Are exclusive (?)
- Comprehensive for online holdings
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36
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37
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38
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39
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40
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41
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- When selecting images for user’s portfolio ...
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42
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- Portfolio selection is now highlighted.
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43
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- If problems exist in data, try to fix them in data
- It is difficult, if not impossible, to curate your way out of data
anomalies
- Rationalize look-and-feel of site
- Create visual language for
interface
- Simplicity is hard to do well
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44
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45
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46
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