Is Document Library right for me?
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Hello all
I know that the c5 devs want us to buy addons, which is perfectly reasonable, but I can't go spending my org's money without knowing what I spend it on is going to do the job I need it to. So I'd like to confirm this here before ponying up the cash (even though it is very little..)
I work for a (public) law reform body which has a back catalogue of publications. Some of these are PDF, others are currently 'archived' using Google Docs (to remove the bandwidth implications from our own server). Some have no file downloads at all (for example because they are pre-internet and the hardcopy documents haven't been scanned yet).
At present we maintain a big HTML table of the publications. Each publication entry (row) has the year, title, publication number and report number assigned to it.
You can see it here:
http://www.scotlawcom.gov.uk/html/dplist.php...
There are a couple more, but that's the gist of it. The table is a little broken at the moment, but that doesn't matter pending the migration to c5.
We also catalogue the publications into pages which represent the decade of their release, for example:
http://www.scotlawcom.gov.uk/html/dp_2000-2009.php...
Now, what I'm wondering is whether Document Library is capable of handling all this.
I'm envisaging the following features, and would be interested in hearing whether DL has the capabilities:
- tagging the files, and displaying them according to a tag on a given page. So, on a project which is on criminal law, I can put an instance of DL on its page, set to display all publications tagged 'criminal'
- showing the files based on date (not of upload, just what has been set as an attribute by the uploader). So, on the page which shows publications between 2000 and 2009, only those files with the attributes 2000/01/02/03...09 in their 'Year' field show up
- showing all the publications, sorted according to the Year field
- inserting links which lead to offsite resources
- inserting entries which lead to nothing (i.e. have no download and are just a text entry)
I know this is long (sorry!) but I have to be thorough. As you'll see from the existing 'system', it is pretty shit, so I'm hoping DL can automate a lot of this.
Any thoughts or advice would be much appreciated :)
I know that the c5 devs want us to buy addons, which is perfectly reasonable, but I can't go spending my org's money without knowing what I spend it on is going to do the job I need it to. So I'd like to confirm this here before ponying up the cash (even though it is very little..)
I work for a (public) law reform body which has a back catalogue of publications. Some of these are PDF, others are currently 'archived' using Google Docs (to remove the bandwidth implications from our own server). Some have no file downloads at all (for example because they are pre-internet and the hardcopy documents haven't been scanned yet).
At present we maintain a big HTML table of the publications. Each publication entry (row) has the year, title, publication number and report number assigned to it.
You can see it here:
http://www.scotlawcom.gov.uk/html/dplist.php...
There are a couple more, but that's the gist of it. The table is a little broken at the moment, but that doesn't matter pending the migration to c5.
We also catalogue the publications into pages which represent the decade of their release, for example:
http://www.scotlawcom.gov.uk/html/dp_2000-2009.php...
Now, what I'm wondering is whether Document Library is capable of handling all this.
I'm envisaging the following features, and would be interested in hearing whether DL has the capabilities:
- tagging the files, and displaying them according to a tag on a given page. So, on a project which is on criminal law, I can put an instance of DL on its page, set to display all publications tagged 'criminal'
- showing the files based on date (not of upload, just what has been set as an attribute by the uploader). So, on the page which shows publications between 2000 and 2009, only those files with the attributes 2000/01/02/03...09 in their 'Year' field show up
- showing all the publications, sorted according to the Year field
- inserting links which lead to offsite resources
- inserting entries which lead to nothing (i.e. have no download and are just a text entry)
I know this is long (sorry!) but I have to be thorough. As you'll see from the existing 'system', it is pretty shit, so I'm hoping DL can automate a lot of this.
Any thoughts or advice would be much appreciated :)
Any DL devs have ideas about this? Can I give more information? We will probably buy the mailing list and forum addons, and I'd really like to make a case to the higher-ups for managing publications in a more sophisticated way than we do now..
So it sounds like the document library does some of what you need, but not everything. So if you need all of these features you listed you'd probably have to hack into it quite a bit to add whatever features you need.
"- tagging the files, and displaying them according to a tag on a given page. So, on a project which is on criminal law, I can put an instance of DL on its page, set to display all publications tagged 'criminal'"
you can set a group of results to only show results that have a specific tag, but if you do this it'll be fixed, and the user won't be able to switch to a different tag. it allows for keyword based searching, which will search tags. the image/file search package allows for tag based searching, but may not have other features that you're looking for, and it has a grid style layout instead of a table.
"- showing the files based on date (not of upload, just what has been set as an attribute by the uploader). So, on the page which shows publications between 2000 and 2009, only those files with the attributes 2000/01/02/03...09 in their 'Year' field show up"
you can turn this on as a search option, but you can't hardcode the result set to only show results from those dates.
"- showing all the publications, sorted according to the Year field"
you can search by date, and you can make the date columns so users can sort by that attribute.
"- inserting links which lead to offsite resources"
the document library currently doesn't do this, the image-file search block does.
- inserting entries which lead to nothing (i.e. have no download and are just a text entry)
You'd probably have to hack the view to do something like this. Like have it look for some boolean attribute attached to the file, and if it has that attribute then don't link it.
hope that helps.
"- tagging the files, and displaying them according to a tag on a given page. So, on a project which is on criminal law, I can put an instance of DL on its page, set to display all publications tagged 'criminal'"
you can set a group of results to only show results that have a specific tag, but if you do this it'll be fixed, and the user won't be able to switch to a different tag. it allows for keyword based searching, which will search tags. the image/file search package allows for tag based searching, but may not have other features that you're looking for, and it has a grid style layout instead of a table.
"- showing the files based on date (not of upload, just what has been set as an attribute by the uploader). So, on the page which shows publications between 2000 and 2009, only those files with the attributes 2000/01/02/03...09 in their 'Year' field show up"
you can turn this on as a search option, but you can't hardcode the result set to only show results from those dates.
"- showing all the publications, sorted according to the Year field"
you can search by date, and you can make the date columns so users can sort by that attribute.
"- inserting links which lead to offsite resources"
the document library currently doesn't do this, the image-file search block does.
- inserting entries which lead to nothing (i.e. have no download and are just a text entry)
You'd probably have to hack the view to do something like this. Like have it look for some boolean attribute attached to the file, and if it has that attribute then don't link it.
hope that helps.
Tony
Thanks for the update. I'm looking again at whether the Document Library is what I'm after (the site it's for is moving along slowly...)
On the topic of 'dead' links, i.e. links which don't actually go anyway, do you think that would be easy to do? How easy would it be to implement links to offsite resources?
Also, does the library have pagination? This would get around the need to show documents by decade - could just have one page, then show say 10 items per paginated page of the library, and the user can click through to see earlier/later files.
Franz gave me a link to a demo of the document library a while ago, but I can't find it anywhere, do you know if there is one?
Thanks for the update. I'm looking again at whether the Document Library is what I'm after (the site it's for is moving along slowly...)
On the topic of 'dead' links, i.e. links which don't actually go anyway, do you think that would be easy to do? How easy would it be to implement links to offsite resources?
Also, does the library have pagination? This would get around the need to show documents by decade - could just have one page, then show say 10 items per paginated page of the library, and the user can click through to see earlier/later files.
Franz gave me a link to a demo of the document library a while ago, but I can't find it anywhere, do you know if there is one?
we need to setup resetting demos for all of these..
The only big one on your list i see is the off site links. its just not setup to do that and doing so would take some time to pull off.
The only big one on your list i see is the off site links. its just not setup to do that and doing so would take some time to pull off.
I've had some discussions with the librarian here and it looks like we won't actually need any offsite linking because I can convert those few files into PDFs, somehow.
Only thing I need is dead links (i.e. not going anyway - just in there to represent the file (publication)) and pagination.
Only thing I need is dead links (i.e. not going anyway - just in there to represent the file (publication)) and pagination.
