The Ashes of Waco

more screenshots & news on the site

I just realized I promised more screenshots by the end of the month. Here it is Aug. 31...and the world continues to wait! Well, wait no longer, gentle readers.

Here is the final homepage. We took out the Guestbook page, because users can use this blog to leave comments or e-mail me directly. This way we don't have to keep up a database and worry about monitoring the comments. Eventually we'll have a comments feature implemented within CONTENTdm too, so users can leave them directly connected to an item.

As you may have noticed, we changed the subtitle to "A Digitized Archive" rather than "An Online Exhibit," as we feel that is a better descriptor. Here is About the Project. The links will lead you to the appropriate places on the same page, and "back to top" links will bring you back here.

Author Interview is very similar in look and function. I divided up the interview into subjects and we turned those into links that visitors can use to jump straight there.

Resources is the last page in the portal site. Most of the links are for sites related to the subject, and those are basically the same as I provided in this blog.

When a visitor clicks on Digital Collection, they will go directly to CONTENTdm in a new window. Different users can modify how they want their screen to look, but right now this or something similar is what you'll see when you get there:

We (Aniket and I) are going to be tweaking it over the coming weeks. We're going to try to make it not so black--similar in look to the About the Project or Author Interview page on the portal site--with a lighter background in the middle so everything isn't white-on-black. Also, we're working on getting all the files to embed properly (i.e., the audio/video files to stream). I think we're close, but now Aniket is working pro bono so I hope it doesn't take too much more work.

We're waiting on the University website guys to get us connected to the proper server to we can make the portal site live, and in turn lead people to the CONTENTdm site. They are tied down right now with a project for the University president, but we should be able to get the site up in the next week or two. In the meantime, I keep plugging away on uploading records and entering metadata.

Sorry about the screenshots getting cut off, but if I make them images smaller they're impossible to read.

More soon.

latest on the website

Below is a screen shot of the home page of the upcoming website. The website is close to being in its final stage. The center image will rotate to different images, fading in and out between them. As you can see by the main navigation links, we changed things up a bit since the last post here in mid-July.

About the Project contains brief descriptions of the author (e.g. a bio), the book, the archival papers, the grant that made the project possible, the digital collection, and the Southwestern Writers Collection.  

Author Interview is an edited transcript of my interview with Reavis last December. I divided the transcript into sections by subjects, that the reader can jump directly to. 

Digital Collection and Blog will go directly to their respective places, in a separate window.

Resources is a list of links to provide a person with more resources regarding the grant, the project and the subject.

Guestbook is a place for anyone to leave a comment on what they think about the site and the digital collection, as well as the incident itself, of course.

Aniket has turned most of his attention now to customizing the look of our CONTENTdm pages, and I continue to work on the metadata and digital records. I'll post more screenshots before the end of the month.