My Favorites Feature in CONTENTdm: Providing Students and Faculty with More Digital Library Power for Research and Study

The Ball State University Libraries’ Digital Media Repository (DMR) system includes more than 200,000 digital assets across 89 collections. These digital resources, each of which has a research and teaching focus, can be searched, read, played, and captured for class presentations, lectures and other research endeavors. The My Favorites module in the CONTENTdm system includes a variety of useful tools for repurposing these digital assets for academic use.

The My Favorites link can be found on the Global Menu bar in the DMR, http://libx.bsu.edu. At this site, users are presented with the My Favorites page, which includes controls in the left column and any objects marked for inclusion in My Favorites on the right. Of course, users must select digital assets as they search or browse the DMR with the “add to favorites” option to populate My Favorites. CONTENTdm allows up to 100 digital objects to be saved in My Favorites.

The BSU PowerPoint Generator is the last option in the My Favorites left column. This powerful tool was developed by library personnel for use with the CONTENTdm system. The BSU PowerPoint Generator creates presentation files with images and metadata that can be used on Windows and Mac OS X systems. The Library Insider highlighted this timesaving tool in an article in the October 2009 issue, page 11, a link to which is available on the University Libraries’ homepage.

The first four options in the My Favorites left column are viewing and sorting features for digital objects:

Slideshow viewer – Create a display of digital image files saved in My Favorites for viewing in a new window with slideshow controls. Available within every installation of CONTENTdm.

Compare feature – Select two objects in My Favorites for a side-by-side comparison in a new window. From the new window, choose another digital image to compare.

Remove item – Easily remove items from My Favorites by selecting the object number and clicking the remove button. An “are you sure” prompt is presented before the object is removed from My Favorites.

Move item – Sort or rearrange items in My Favorites using their object numbers.

The fifth option in the left column, “Save as a Web page,” provides the opportunity to create a new Web page with links to objects in My Favorites. Click the “Create” button to build a custom HTML-formatted Web page that can be loaded into Blackboard or linked on a Web site for use by students or colleagues. The objects on the saved page are clickable, leading the viewer back to the record for the object in the DMR. The filename under which the file is saved will be used to create a title presented at the top of the page.

For more information, contact Bradley D. Faust, Assistant Dean for Library Information Technology Services, BFaust@bsu.edu, 765-285-8032.

Ball State University Libraries' Use of CONTENTdm for Repositories

by Arthur W. Hafner, Dean of University Libraries

The Ball State University Libraries currently manage two digital repository systems, the Ball State University Digital Media Repository (DMR) and Cardinal Scholar, the Ball State Institutional Repository.

The difference between the two is that Cardinal Scholar allows for direct deposit of Ball State-created digital assets by faculty and students while the DMR is mediated by professional librarians and includes digital assets created by Ball State community and non-University content providers through collaborative projects.

Our Digital Media Repository, http://libx.bsu.edu, currently contains over 102,000 digital objects created by the University Libraries’ personnel, Ball State faculty and students, and community partners. It utilizes CONTENTdm to deliver digital images, Indiana Public Radio and local public television content, student-produced news video, oral history audio and transcriptions, World War II films, and 3D objects such as anatomical models and theater costumes. CONTENTdm has proven to be an excellent vehicle for the management of audio and video digital assets.

Cardinal Scholar, www.bsu.edu/cardinalscholar, is our institutional repository (IR) that supports the University’s research publishing distribution strategies by making faculty and student work globally accessible and electronically searchable. We use EPrints software for Cardinal Scholar.

When we were investigating IR solutions, we considered CONTENTdm as a potential platform because of our investment in the system. However, without major customization, there were key features that CONTENTdm did not handle well for our IR needs. For this reason, we chose EPrints. Features we like in EPrints include:

· Easy management of individual and group logons to self-deposit assets
· Grouping assets by academic unit
· Control of self-deposit process
· Built-in Web 2.0 features such as RSS

While it may have been possible to customize CONTENTdm to handle these and other features, we determined that the required time and personnel investment was not cost-effective because EPrints either included these features or would require less customization.

We are satisfied with both products for their respective solutions. Various Ball State academic units have consulted with the University Libraries to explore the use of EPrints for individual departmental applications in those cases where they wish to restrict access to selected digital assets.

How to Implement Google Analytics in a CONTENTdm System

I recently received a question regarding how to add Google Analytics code to CONTENTdm system web pages in response to a Library Insider article I wrote in February 2007, “Discovering More Information about Your CONTENTdm Users by Using W3C Format or Google Analytics” (v. 5, no. 2, page 2). In response to that question, and for the benefit of others who may be interested to know, I will elaborate here.

The fundamental question is, “Where do I plug in the Google Analytic code?” If you are familiar with CONTENTdm, you know that there are many PHP pages in the system so determining where to insert the Google code can be a challenge.
The following CONTENTdm pages are ones that I selected for Analytics code to be inserted:
• item_viewer.php
• document.php
• meta_viewer.php
• viewer.php
• page_text.php(optional)
• side_side.php(optional)
• any entry pages you desire(Optional)

If you are interested to know why I chose these pages, keep on reading. The item_viewer.php is required for viewing non-compound objects. There are also other PHP pages called when item_viewer.php is displayed, although we do not need to worry about them because they are all rendered into a single page, item_viewer.php.

The next three pages, document.php, meta_viewer.php, and page_text.php, are required to view compound objects in CONTENTdm. One might ask, “Isn’t document.php enough?” The answer is “No.”

Inserting the Analytics code in only the document.php page will result in untracked hits when someone is viewing the item description, side description, side and text, side by side, next page, and previous page assets associated with a compound object. Document.php consists of three frames. Two of the frames are static and will not be tracked when users are navigating using the functions I mentioned above. If you want to track which compound objects and their corresponding metadata are used, meta_viewer.php and viewer.php also need to be registered with Google Analytics.

Page_text.php is used to display the page and text of a compound object. Side_side.php is used to display two compound objects side by side. If you would like Google Analytics to tell you how often these two functionalities are used, you should insert the Analytics code in these two pages. These two are optional because ultimately, these two pages will use viewer.php and meta_viewer.php to display contents. Now that you know where to insert your Analytics code, the hardest part is done. Let us move on to actually inserting the code.

On its Google Analytics how-to page is an explanation of how to insert the code in a dynamic PHP page by writing a PHP script that produces Javascript code. You do not need to follow this step. You can just follow the instruction for static pages, which is to insert the Google code right before the closing body tag. Once you have completed these steps, Google will begin providing you with incredible information about usage of your CONTENTdm system.

For more information, contact P. Budi Wibowo, Ball State University Libraries’ Head of Digital Libraries and Web Services, BWibowo@bsu.edu, (765) 285-8032