Just
got back from a three-day conference at the University of North Texas in Denton
(near Ft. Worth for non-Texans.) The conference title was “Digital Frontiers”
and it dealt with the most up-to-date digital projects at mostly university
archives and libraries. (http://disco.unt.edu/df13). I think this is the second year that
they have hosted this conference.
About 100 people were in attendance. Most were from Texas, but there were presentations from
universities and entities in other states. The Portal to Texas History and the Digital Scholarship
Cooperative at UNT as well as the UNT University Libraries sponsored the
conference.
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| Goodies from the conference |
One
of the most interesting presentations was by the Collin County (Texas)
Historical Commission. They have
developed an interactive map of historic sites in Collin County. They used national register standards
to identify sites, mapped, photographed, and wrote up a description of the site
and its place in history. It was
quite impressive. (http://gismaps.collincountytx.gov/historical.html). You simply click on a circle and get a
pop-up with links to directions to the site and to the description of the site
and its historical significance.
Most of these sites are disappearing or have disappeared as the county
grows so this is important historical preservation tool. Hopefully other counties will consider
this as an option to preserve their history as well. It’s a great model.
In
the same session which was by the way entitled “Communities and Societies:
Preserving Local History for Future Access,” the presenter was/is the web designer from the Dallas
Genealogical Society and he talked about web design tricks to help web crawlers
find your site. One site he mentions is schema.org/, which provides a
controlled vocabulary that can be added to your metadata. These words are machine-readable
enabling crawlers to find you.
Build it and they will come does work, but a little help from a
standardized vocabulary is most helpful. I think I’ll check it out.
More
on helpful websites next time.
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