SERC > SERC Content Management System > Digital Library Connections

# Digital Library Connections

There are a number of ways in which the material on SERC websites is integrated into our digital library collection (and by extension the DLESE and NSDL collections). We won't go into the details here other than to highlight issues relevant to the CMS itself.

In general we like to replace links to outside websites with links that point to the digital library catalog record as well. Hopefully this adds value directly for the users (as they get access to some nice extra info), but also allows all sorts of fancy cross-referencing that hopefully will lead folks to finding stuff they want/need more efficiently. The first step is to make sure each outside website you've referred to has been cataloged into one of our collections. The process varies from project to project but the end result is an entry in our local catalog for the particular resource. You can search the local catalog by following the "Search Resources" link below the editing box.

Also provided here are is a list of resources already referred to in this bit of content as well as a link to the interface for creating resource lists (more on this later).

The "Search Resources" link takes you to a simple search interface across 3 different collections: our locally cataloged web resources, local cataloged non-web resources (books, articles, etc...), and our local copy of resources originally cataloged at DLESE. Currently you can search across words in the resource title in any/all of these 3 collections.

The unique "Master Id" is the important bit of information you'll need to note when you've found the resource you'd like to refer to in your page. With this number in hand (let's say it's '27') you can insert a reference to the resource in your page with this tag [resource 27]. This tag will appear in the resulting web page as a link to the resource along with another link (labeled 'more info' in small text) which will point to the full catalog record. By default the link to the resource will use the title of the resource. However you can overide this by providing alternate link text like this: [resource 27 'new link text']

You can also have the short description for the particular resource displayed automatically by including the word description at the end of the tag like so: [resource 27 description]. If the particular resource has no short description the beginning of the regular (longer) description will be used.

### Creating Resource Lists

If you find yourself adding a whole list of resources to your page you may find it less cumbersome to work with the resource list tool. This allows you to specify a number of resources each with a brief description. You can then display the resulting annotated list within your page by inserting the appropriate tag. The Search/Create Resource lists link takes you to a page with a simple interface for creating a new list as well as links to all existing lists.

To create a new list just enter a name and description (these won't be visible to the public) and hit the 'Create' button. The new list will appear at the bottom of the screen and you can follow the corresponding edit link to add resources to the list. You'll also want to make note of the list Id. As with single resources it's this number, in combination with the correct tag that you'll use to insert your list into a web page. The tag is (as you may have guesed) [resource_list 22] where the '22' should be replaced by the id of the appropriate resource list.

Once you've jumped to editing a particular resource list you'll see a tool for adding new entries and a display of everything currently on the list.

Resource lists can refer to local web pages as well as cataloged resources. Either enter the cataloged resource master id, or (in the case of a local web page) the unique page id (found in the right column of that page's home module) in the top box. Select the resource type and put in the brief description you'd like to have appear in your list. If you omit the list's specific short description it will fall back on any short description associated with the particular catalog record, and use the full description if a short one has not been entered. Note that if the record lacks a generic short description and you fill one in while building a list that list description will be used as both the generic short description for the particular record, as well as for that as record as used in that particular list.

If you're building a resource list that actually refers to local web pages (most commonly when you're refering to pages in a local mini-collection) you'll need to use the button at the bottom of this page "Update to Live" to change references to dev pages into references to live pages at the point when you initially make your module live.

« Previous Page Next Page »