Re: CMS
The one thing to keep in mind when choosing a CMS (or for that matter whether you actually need one) is whether you want to manage the content for your site or manage the content on your site The difference is subtle but important. The first thing you should decide is whether you even need a CMS. How many pages on your site need changing on a regular basis? If 95% of your pages are static (i.e. never change) then you do not need a CMS to control the content on the site - but you may need one to control the content of your site. A CMS is great when you have a large number of people all contributing to the content of the site, but if everything goes through your web department before it goes live - what are you using a CMS for? If you need to integrate (as you stated in your message) disparate systems and databases - a CMS may not be the best solution. In my opinion any vendor of a CMS that comes in a tells you that their system can solve all your content integration problems - doesn't know your problems. A CMS can be costly and so complicated that no one wants to use it. When it comes down to it, many times hiring someone with knowledge of the web will save you headaches and money. A person who knows how to program and can find their way around web technologies will be able to show you far easier ways to control and integrate content than a prepackaged CMS will ever do for you at this time. Andrew Macdonald New Media Officer / Agent des nouveaux médias Canada Aviation Museum / Musée de l'aviation du Canada Phone / Téléphone : (613) 998-5689 Fax / Télécopie : (613) 990-3655 Website: www.aviation.technomuses.ca Email: amacdon...@technomuses.ca Will Scott william_sc...@fitnyc.edu 05/26/2005 04:50 PM Please respond to mcn-l@mcn.edu To mcn-l@mcn.edu cc Subject CMS Does anyone on the list have expertise in this area of content management systems for the distribution of museum collections information, or has anyone contracted a CMS vendor for major, long-term museum Web- or intranet-access projects? I would be interested to know more about your experiences and about how you are using the CMS, especially for integration of various museum databases. If replying off-line, please send messages to willscottconsult...@yahoo.com. Many thanks in advance, Will Will Scott Museum Database Freelancer Assistant Registrar, The Museum at FIT willscottconsult...@yahoo.com (917)753-1274 --- You are currently subscribed to mcn_mcn-l as: amacdon...@technomuses.ca To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-mcn_mcn-l-113561...@listserver.americaneagle.com --- You are currently subscribed to mcn_mcn-l as: rlancefi...@mail.wesleyan.edu To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-mcn_mcn-l-12800...@listserver.americaneagle.com
Re: Standards for Digital Masters
You may also want to look at this site : http://www.scantips.com/ It details all the theory behind scanning, not only what can be done - but what a scanner cannot do. You may also want to look into software that gives you the flexibility to do what you need. We use a program called VueScan (http://www.hamrick.com/) which so far has done a stellar job, better than the software that comes with scanners. The one point that I can give - as outlined at scantips.com is that all scanning depends on the original. With prints (not negatives) scanning at anything higher than 300-600 dpi you get no more detail (simply because the detail is just not there). DPI higher than this is just scanning for size (i.e. to blow up the image). Once you really start getting into the theory and science behind scanning it gets complicated and you really need to know it all to get the best results. The times where you put the image on the scanner bed and hit scan should be over, it takes a lot of work to get a good digital representation of an analog work. Andrew Macdonald New Media Officer / Agent des nouveaux médias Canada Aviation Museum / Musée de l'aviation du Canada Phone / Téléphone : (613) 998-5689 Fax / Télécopie : (613) 990-3655 Website: www.aviation.technomuses.ca Email: amacdon...@technomuses.ca Amy Stidwill astidw...@hillwoodmuseum.org 10/13/2004 09:18 AM Please respond to mcn-l To:mcn-l@mcn.edu cc: Subject:Re: Standards for Digital Masters Thank you to all who responded to my query. Your questions and responses have in turn challenged my thinking about the original problem. While the functional master will need to be quite large to meet many potential uses, I wonder if we need an archival master of a surrogate of a surrogate of a object? A file created through direct digital capture of an object, however, will need to replicate and hopefully exceed the detail and quality of the first generation surrogate transparency. Thanks again, Amy Stidwill Visual Resources Manager Hillwood Museum Gardens 4155 Linnean Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20008 (202) 243-3910 phone (202) 966-7846 fax astidw...@hillwoodmuseum.org tr...@dig-mar.com 10/12/04 05:23PM Amy - If your master is to create derivatives, then I advise creating a master that meets your needs for 90% of your possible uses. I find that on the occasion that you need to make that unique use, it is better to rescan for that specific purpose, this might be a large wall mounted displays for exhibits. Since you have transparencies, I assume you have been using them for printed material - posters, postcards, catalogs, promotional material and possible some electronic presentations. The future of digital imaging will improve the image we can display electronically, but I don't think it will change the resolution of the printed image. You, however, may want to print a small detail at a larger scale. This being considered, I would scan at a resolution to be able to print a quarter of your image at your 90% commonly printed size and dpi. And as non PC as it is, I don't believe in archival digital images anyway. Just because we can capture huge images, should we? Digitize for Access, yes and mass distribution, but not for preservation, except as it reduces handling of the original. The right resolution for proper access depends on the material being scanned. -- Trudy Levy Consultant for Digital Imaging Projects Image Integration 415 750 1274 http://www.DIG-Mar.com Membership Chair, Visual Resources Association http://vraweb.org Images are information - Manage them On 10/12/04 1:53 PM, Amy Stidwill astidw...@hillwoodmuseum.org wrote: Peter, Yes to your second description of an image that can be used to make derivatives for a variety of purposes. Thanks, Amy Amy Stidwill Visual Resources Manager Hillwood Museum Gardens 4155 Linnean Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20008 (202) 243-3910 phone (202) 966-7846 fax astidw...@hillwoodmuseum.org p...@digitaltransitions.com 10/12/04 04:12PM Hi Amy When you say master, are considering this an Archive type image (a file that can replace the original film if destroyed), or an image that can be multi-purposed for offset press, web, analysis, research etc.? On Oct 12, 2004, at 3:31 PM, Amy Stidwill wrote: I am in the process of reviewing and updating our standards for master digital files as we switch to a new collections management system. We have not entered the realm of direct digital capture and are scanning primarily from 4 x 5 transparencies. If this sounds like your museum, please let me know what resolution and/or pixel length you are scanning at and why you chose those numbers. All replies are greatly appreciated. Many thanks, Amy Stidwill Visual Resources Manager Hillwood Museum Gardens 4155 Linnean Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20008 (202) 243-3910 phone (202) 966-7846 fax astidw...@hillwoodmuseum.org
Web standards and museum sites Summary
As the discussion for web sites based on standards seems to be falling into the usual web based battle about why should we use standards I thought it might be useful to sum up the reason why using standards based web design is a good idea as well as point out where these standards fail. Just so my bias is clear I fall firmly into the camp of using standards based web design but I know it's limits. Pros 1) Search engine optimization By using web standards the text to code ratio of your web pages falls to the point where you have more textual information on the page than hundreds of font tags. This make the web spiders and crawlers index much more of your site and gives you a much higher profile in all the search engines. 2) Document Reuse As mentioned web pages written in a standard based format can be reused and converted into many different formats-whether that be Word Documents, PDF's, or printable pages, one page can be used for all formats. 3) Accessibility This is perhaps the most important aspect of web standards it allows for your web document to be seen and accessed on any system /software. Those who are blind can use a screen reader which is almost impossible using table based layout. Those with older computer systems (e.g. most of those outside of North America and Europe) can see the content of your site with older browsers or a text only browser without the need for a text-only site. No one likes being left out even if you are not using IE, can you really afford to alienate those using something else? Most people would not like it if someone designed a great site and then posted a message that say Sorry this site designed for Mozilla - no IE allowed. However it seems that it is okay to post a message that says This site designed for IE - you can't use a browser of you choice. 4) Maintenance and Money By designing a site using web standards (i.e. CSS, XHTML, WAI, etc.) you are creating a site that is much easier to maintain. No longer do you have to hunt through thousands of line of javascript and nested table to add content or fix errors. All the layout is held in an organized CSS file and the content in the XHTML file. This was the original idea when HTML was first released, however the browsers back in 1996 could not handle CSS very well so people started using browser hacks and This Site best Viewed With... messages. This ease of maintenance and well coded pages leads directly to savings on your bottom line. You can now concentrate on creating content instead of laying it out. These smaller file sizes also lead to savings in bandwidth. With a file size of 10k for the XHTML file (CSS files are cached-download it once for a site and use it over and over) your bandwidth usage will drop and save money. 5) Stability (taken directly from http://www.webstandards.org/learn/faq/#p3 they say it better than I could) Most web standards are generally designed with forward- and backward-compatibility in mind - so that data using old versions of the standards will continue to work in new browsers, and data using new versions of the standards will gracefully degrade to produce an acceptable result in older browsers. Because a web site may go through several teams of designers during its lifetime, it is important that those people are able to comprehend the code and to edit it easily. Web standards offer a set of rules that every Web developer can follow, understand, and become familiar with: When one developer designs a site to the standards, another will be able to pick up where the former left off. Cons 1) Pixel Perfect The usage of standard based layouts is still in it's infancy but it is growing fast. You cannot get pixel perfect layouts and the same look across all platforms. However, you don't need pixel perfect layouts, if you want one post PDF's. The web is about the user not the manufacturer. They decide how they want to view a page and you as a good web citizen should accommodate that. Don't force them to use a certain technology if they don't want to. Yes your page will not look the same from browser to browser, but this is not the print world. We must get away from the need and thoughts that the web is print. It is not - it is flexible and variable, standards take this into account. 2) Hacks Because there are many different browsers, there are many different way to interpret CSS rules. IE does it one way (sometimes very wrong) and the others another. This lead to hacks in CSS that take into account the problems with the various browsers. This is something to be avoided is possible but in practice it really cannot be done. The best method therefore is to minimize what hacks are used and try to stick to the standards as much as possible. Until all browsers interpret CSS rules some hacks will have to be used. 3) Lack of Knowledge and Tools There are lots of people
Re: Web standards and museum sites
Hello All, We are currently in the midst of redesigning our sites in XHTML/CSS and so far no tables. We are doing this for two reasons. First, we felt that as a national institution we need to be able to get our information and collection out to the world no matter where they are or what system they are using. Secondly, we know that at some point the Canadian Government will be coming out with guidelines and rules for accessibility in government and crown corporation websites and we felt that getting in ahead of time was the best move. We should be launching sometime near the end of February, so stay tuned. For those thinking of doing the switch to a standards based layout, not only can you comply with 508 (U.S. Government regulations) but will have a faster site and one that is much easier and cheaper to maintain. Make sure you find a design company that is up to date with the latest information about standards based design, even a site written in XHTML/CSS can be a bad one if the designers don't know how to implement such technology. Standard based design is more than just writing a site using a style sheet and coding in XHTML. It is about creating a site that is coded efficiently, accessible, created so that the site can be viewed using any technology (whether that be Windows, Mac, Palm Pilots, etc.) and that the code is semantically correct (i.e. a paragraph is a paragraph, a table is for tabular data, a list is used to list things and so on). If you want other books to read about this (aside from 'Designing With Web Standards) try Building Accessible Websites by Joe Clark, Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug, and Web Design on a Shoestring by Carrie Bickner. There are also lots of websites out there that you may want to visit. From this small list you can find many, many more. http://www.webstandards.org/ http://www.zeldman.com/ http://www.mezzoblue.com/ http://www.simplebits.com/ http://tantek.com/log/ http://www.stopdesign.com/ http://www.webdesignpractices.com/index.html These should get anyone started on the road to a standards based website. Andrew Macdonald New Media Officer / Agent des nouveaux médias Canada Aviation Museum / Musée de l'aviation du Canada Phone / Téléphone : (613) 998-5689 Fax / Télécopie : (613) 990-3655 Website: www.aviation.technomuses.ca Email: amacdon...@technomuses.ca Erik Christman e...@nixonlibrary.org 07/01/2004 12:47 PM Please respond to mcn-l To: mcn-l@mcn.edu cc: Subject:Re: Web standards and museum sites For all interested, Source code will contain the following at the very top of the page showing what version of XHTML or HTML: !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC -//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd;Also in the source code this will be below the title tag showing that the page is using a style sheet, and if need be how to get it.style type=text/css media=screen@import /c/ala.css;/style link rel=stylesheet type=text/css media=print href=/c/print.css /_ Erik W. Christman Exhibition Designer The Richard Nixon Library Birthplace 18001 Yorba Linda Blvd. Yorba Linda, Calif. 92886 (714) 993-5075 ext.243 fax (714) 528-0544 email: e...@nixonlibrary.org website:http://www.nixonlibrary.org - Original Message - From: quigley squi...@panix.com To: mcn-l@mcn.edu Sent: Tuesday, January 06, 2004 7:18 PM Subject: Re: Web standards and museum sites Erik, Being ignorant, how would I recognize an 'XHTML/CSS' website? Suzanne Quigley Head Registrar, Collections Exhibitions Whitney Museum of American Art 945 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10021 v: 212 570 7795 f: 212 570 7784 E: suzanne_quig...@whitney.org RARIN http://www.panix.com/~squigle/rarin/01rcsite.html OnConract http://www.panix.com/~squigle/OnContract/menu.html On Jan 6, 2004, at 8:59 PM, Erik Christman wrote: Dana XHTML is the next logical step to XML,, read Mr. Zeldman's book twice,, hit his site once a week. CSS is also a good way of separating your content from your design,, so redesigns are not so painful. Haven't seen any good examples of XHTML/CSS museum sites to speak of... __ Erik W. Christman Exhibition Designer The Richard Nixon Library Birthplace 18001 Yorba Linda Blvd. Yorba Linda, Calif. 92886 (714) 993-5075 ext.243 fax (714) 528-0544 email: e...@nixonlibrary.org website:http://www.nixonlibrary.org --- You are currently subscribed to mcn_mcn-l as: e...@nixonlibrary.org To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-mcn_mcn-l-113561...@listserver.americaneagle.com --- You are currently subscribed to mcn_mcn-l as: amacdon...@technomuses.ca To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-mcn_mcn-l-113561...@listserver.americaneagle.com --- You are currently subscribed to mcn_mcn-l as: rlancefi...@mail.wesleyan.edu To unsubscribe send a blank email to
