I wrote this when I was the Digital Library Applications Lead at the University of Notre Dame. It was archived from http://www3.nd.edu/~dbrubak1/ which no longer exists.

Next Steps for the Seaside Research Portal

by Dan Brubaker Horst in Archived , ,

Enhance Experience

★★ Interactive Map

Desired

  • Migrate from Google Maps to Leaflet
  • Provide a GeoJSON representation of search results
  • Support devices with touch-driven interfaces e.g. phones, tablets

Nice-to-have

  • Add other layers of information to the map
    • Relevant photos
    • Nolli map style infrastructure overlays
    • Overlays from town plans and aerial photos made using ArcGIS
  • Generate custom map tiles using TileMill
  • Build walking tours and other modes of interaction with the map

★★ Responsive Design

Desired

  • Flex layout to accommodate multiple viewports
    • Mobile portrait and landscape
    • Tablet portrait and landscape
    • Desktop widescreen
    • Full HD TV
  • Switch to “responsive images” for slideshow and other hero images
    • The size of the images should relate to the viewport size
    • Use background images set by media queries (or possibly JavaScript)
      • Have links to high-resolution images (possibly gated)

Nice-to-have

  • Build rack RESS module to provide modernizer-like switching in the page template
  • Support for high-resolution (“retina”) screens
    • Have double resolution images available using the '@2x' syntax
    • Investigate using a JavaScript switching library like Retina.js
  • Implement IIIF-compliant image server for “responsive images”

★ Interaction and Display

  • Improve presentation of single images
    • Lightbox image displays don’t work well when zoomed in on a mobile device
    • Show metadata from the parent structure alongside the image
    • Be able to advance from one image to the next by clicking on the side of the present image
  • Allow for date range search with a slider similar to ARTstor (histogram is optional)

★ Support Touch Devices

  • Navigation elements should be sufficiently large
  • Allow swiping gestures in relevant contexts
  • Allow pinch zooming on maps and images viewers
  • Generated thumbnails don’t look good. Switch to ImageMagick (or something else) for thumbnail generation.
  • Allow for browsing large collections of images with possible inspiration from:
  • Have a more intimate viewing experience when viewing an image with possible inspiration from:

☆ Search Engine Optimization

☆ Measuring User Engagement

  • Track user interaction with site elements
  • Follow user paths through the site, possibly with the aid of additional tools:

Facilitate Research

  • Implement Authentication/Authorization system that can mediate on-campus and off-campus accounts
    • Account management
    • Permissions management
  • Organizational Tools
    • Bookmark Items
    • Save searches
  • Data portability
    • Provide citation information for each item
    • Export records to Refworks or Endnote
    • Integrate with other library services e.g. eShelf (not yet developed)
    • Integrate with Zotero (and possibly other 3rd party tools)
  • Allow Requests for additional services

Facilitate Curation

  • Improve cataloging experience by doing one of the both of the following:
    • Enhance the current web interface
    • Build an intermediary datastore that could be accessed using FileMaker Pro
  • Batch operations
    • Uploading multiple images at once
    • Easy association building between groups of items
    • Tagging sets of pictures at once
  • Editing tools
    • Enhanced editor for HTML content
    • Allow for editing of content pages that live outside of Fedora
  • Data modeling
    • Capture relationships between architects and firms over time
    • Revisions for structures
    • Greater diversity of roles for contributors e.g. contractor, landscaper

Community Engagement

  • Bring in photos from other sites
  • Allow for user submissions to be added to our holdings
    • Photos
    • Stories
    • Videos
    • Comments (in appropriate contexts)
  • Encourage end-user metadata enrichment
    • Allow for tagging and moderated comments
    • Track edits and monitor for abuse
    • Recognize top contributors
    • Certify that authenticity of certain accounts
    • Allow for commentary from notable people e.g. Robert Davis
    • “moderators” from ND and other institutions