The Scalar draft site, “Joshua Johnson, Painter,” served as an example of a hypothetical student wishing to use Scalar to publish and further explore a class paper by utilizing image, timeline, and mapping features on a website. The site used an actual student paper as an example, an historiography that focused on the first recognized African-American artist in the United States, Joshua Johnson, who worked in Baltimore in the early 1800s. Since the text focused on mostly biographical information about Johnson, some of the goals of a website included integrating images and sources with the text, mapping where Johnson’s paintings are currently, and creating a timeline showing when the paintings were completed.
Scalar Features Used
Because of the early dates of the paintings, many were already available on Wikimedia Commons allowing easy addition of the images to the website. Bulk importing using the Transfer tool was tested using descriptions of 17 paintings which included links to Wikimedia Commons, spatial, and date data. Embedding images and an exhibition catalogue hosted on Issuu alongside text was tested with the media link editorial tool. Testing of the map and timeline features was also done, as was creating a splash title page.
To bulk import, one can use a CSV file (can save Excel spreadsheet as a CSV) and upload via the Import/Export tab found on the user’s Dashboard. There is a template CSV in the Scalar documentation that includes the Dublin Core (dc) terms: title, spatial, date, description, and links to images via the fields art:thumbnail and art:url. These are great for starting with and provide the information needed to later create maps (spatial) and timelines (dates). Other terms that would be helpful to include are source, creator, identifier, rights, and type. In addition to Dublin Core, Scalar supports the ontologies Semantically-Interlinked Online Communities (SIOC), and ArtSTOR.
Timeline
The timeline was easy to create once the media was bulk imported. It can be added to any page in the book using a widget in the Editorial Tools.
Media metadata needs to include date information, more on metadata formats
Choose Timeline layout for the page or add to a page via the widget button in the Editorial Tools
Add content to timeline via Relationships by adding media to a path or tagging media
Embedding media in pages using the Editorial Tools
When editing a page using the WYSIWYG editor one can use the Editorial Tools to embed media.
The Widget Editorial Tool is used to insert a timeline, visualization, map, carousel, card, or summary. There is not a way to insert two images side by side using the Editorial Tools, instead one would use the source code. The below image highlights the Editorial Tool used to place media into a page and show what the media looks like in editing mode. There is no “preview” feature so testing the size of the media requires saving and then editing more if needed.
Create a cover for your book using the Book Splash layout
Create and upload background image
Navigate to the “home” page
Edit using the Book Splash layout
Add background image via Styling -> Key image
Designate page as path to create path button
Author is your “full name” under “account settings”
For a more detailed walk through, visit Make Your Splash Page by Hannah Alpert-Abrams.
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0)
