Elias Tzoc blog!

As part of the “tips and tricks” session for the 2010 MidWest CONTENTdm User Groups Meeting, someone suggested that there should be an easy way for embedding images from CONTENTdm into blogs or websites.  Something like this will -definitely- facilitate the sharing of information and interaction between CONTENTdm users and the general public.

Anyway, a few lines of PHP and JavaScript code seem to give an alternative solution for this option, it’s not (completely) done yet, but this is how it should look like in a blog or website.

Alumni Library from the northeast ca. 1925

URL: http://digital.lib.muohio.edu/u?/snyder,2427

The code to be pasted includes 3 pieces of data: a) title of the image; b) an image of 350px linked directly from the CONTENTdm site; and c) of course a link back to the actual record using the persistent URL.  This method avoids saving a copy of an image before uploading it to a blog or website.  It provides a simple way to copy some HTML code and embed into an external site.

How it works?

• Find an image you like e.g. http://digital.lib.muohio.edu/u?/snyder,3437
• Click on the Share-It button
• Copy/Paste the HTML code and done!

…that’s it for now, …hopefully something like this will be useful for bloggers and the online community in general!

Yes, MAMP is my most recent installation on the Mac OS

As many would probably agree, from time to time, it’s useful to try or run a script without logging into a “formal” server.  Being able to write a PHP script which interacts with a MySQL database is also handy.  Anyway, the real reason to install MAMP is because I’ll need to run a couple of applications that require an Apache server.  It was also happy to see a quick tutorial about a local (test) installation of Drupal using MAMP.  In fact, in the long term we’re planning to use Drupal to provide a robust front-end interface to digital collections physically stored in DSpace.   Who knows, this may be just the starting point!

After all, the University Libraries is already using Drupal for its website!

BTW: here is the direct link to download MAMP