[Web4lib] seeking software for putting photographs on the web

[Hankinson, Andrew]

I've tried Greenstone, and while I don't doubt its power, I found its templating system arcane and frustrating and I actually had to edit the C code to get it to properly validate.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by you can "standardize the width or the height, but not both."  What are you using to create the thumbnails?  Since resizing is based on ratios, you should only be able to resize one dimension and the ratio will stay the same for the other dimension.  So if I resize a 640x480 picture to 50% width (320) it will automatically calculate the height (240).  Specifying a width and height independent of the ratio will distort the picture, which is generally considered a bad practice.

I'm assuming from your want to index and search it that you're looking at deploying a fairly stable, long-term solution for a digital collection?

I'm particularly partial to Dspace, but you could also have a look at Eprints.  Both of these are great for doing large digital collections, and have active support communities on the web.  By using these packages, you get stuff like OAI-PMH compatibility, full-text indexing of documents and proper storage "models" (MODS, METS) as part of the package. (As opposed to using something like, say, Gallery which will display your pictures but its long-term usefulness is limited.  Using one of these systems will also automate the creation of thumbnails, which might save you some time.

They're not trivial to set up, however, and would require someone with a knowledge of server software to deploy it.  This might be a bit of overkill, but if it's a long-term solution you're seeking it's well worth the effort.

For describing and indexing, I would definitely go with Dublin Core as the base, and then extend it as needed with either a local metadata schema or another standard.

Cheers,
Andrew

-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org [mailto:web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Coleman, Ronald
Sent: August 10, 2006 10:27 AM
To: John Fitzgibbon; web4lib at webjunction.org
Subject: RE: [Web4lib] seeking software for putting photographs on the web

Hi, John,

You may want to look at the open-source Greenstone Digital Library software package: http://www.greenstone.org/cgi-bin/library.  Several libraries have used it to create and manage digital photo collections like yours.  See here for examples: http://www.greenstone.org/cgi-bin/library?e=p-en-home-utfZz-8&a=p&p=examples.



Ron Coleman
Systems Librarian
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, SW
Washington, DC  20024



-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org [mailto:web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of John Fitzgibbon
Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2006 10:10 AM
To: web4lib at webjunction.org
Subject: [Web4lib] seeking software for putting photographs on the web

Hi,

We have a collection of old photographs that we wish to display on the Web.

One difficulty, we are encountering is that when creating thumbnails, we can standardize the width of the images or the height of the images but not both.

We would also like to index the collection and make it searchable.

Is there software that will assist us with this? What meta language is best for indexing photographs?

Regards
John

John Fitzgibbon

p: 00 353 91 562471
f: 00 353 91 565039
w: http://www.galwaylibrary.ie 

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