MNHNL Data Portal Documentation

This is the documentation for the Musée national d’histoire naturelle, Luxembourg’s data portal website. This provides information for managers of the website and the data that it contains in order to assist with the site maintenance and addition of new information.

Collections Browser

The Collections Browser of the data portal provides an online method for members of the public and scientists to browse the museum’s collections. To do this, a simple hierarchy of the taxa involved in the collections is available for the user to browse through.

Structure of the Collections Browser hierarchy

The Collections Browser uses a hierarchy that is derived from lists in the Thesaurus Editor to provide a means of browsing through the specimens in the collections. Rather than use a single list, each branch of taxonomy within the hierarchy has its own list which allows curators to be responsible for their own parts of the hierarchy. All the lists involved belong to the Weblists domain, in the General Term Lists section of the Thesaurus. At the very top of the hierarchy a list called Webstructure provides the first few levels of the browsing hierarchy, down to the point where the hierarchy splits into taxonomic divisions appropriate for allocation to different curators.

As well as the Webstructure list there are then additional taxon group specific lists in the Weblists domain, each of which has a top-level node that exactly matches a bottom level node in the Webstructure list. This allows the lists to be “joined” together to make a single hierarchy. These taxon group specific lists only need to go down as many levels as the curator feels appropriate until the point where the list of species below the bottom level is manageable for browsing. For example, if their are many genera and species within a family, it might be appropriate to define a hierarchy in the group specific list that goes right down to genus level, so the user attempting to find a species needs only to look through the species in a single genus. On the other hand if there are only a few taxa in a family it might be appropriate to only go down as far as family level so the user sees all species in the family on a single browsing page. Note that the website will automatically show all species below whatever the bottom level is in the list so there is no need to add the species to the hierarchy.

To illustrate this, consider the following hierarchy which the user might browse through

Collections > Zoology Collections > Vertebrates > Birds > Columbiformes > Columba palumbus

The Webstructure list might contain the following levels:

Collections > Zoology Collections > Vertebrates

Then, there should be a list called Vertebrates which is managed by the curator of vertebrates in the museum. This list contains the following term hierarchy:

Vertebrates > Birds > Columbiformes

The Columbiformes term must be linked to the rest of the thesaurus lists in order to determine which species it contains. It doesn’t matter if the other nodes in the hierarchy are not linked as synonyms with the equivalent terms in other lists. The term for Columba palumbus, along with all the other Columbiforme species which the museum hold specimens for, is then automatically included in the hierarchy because it can be determined as a child of Columbiformes via one of the other lists.

Note

The curator in this instance could opt to add a term for Columba beneath Columbiformes if they want the user to browse right down to genus level, in which case they must ensure that the Columba term is linked correctly to the rest of the Thesaurus.

Adding images to the Collections Browser hierarchy

Images can be added to any node that will appear in the online Collections Browser hierarchy by using the Thesaurus Editor to add a fact to the underlying concept as in the following example.

For best results a single image should be added to each and every node that appears in the online Collections Browser. If adding an image to any term that originates from the Webstructure list then add the image as a fact in that list. For images that appear for terms which originate in one of the taxon group specific lists (e.g. the Vertebrates list in the previous example) then you should add the fact to the taxon group specific list within the Weblists domain (e.g. the Vertebrates list). For the top level nodes of these lists, which are duplicated in the Webstructure list, please add the fact to the Webstructure list itself, e.g. the fact for the vertebrates image must go into the Webstructure list not the Vertebrates list. For images associated with any species level nodes, attach the fact to the species in whichever list in the Thesaurus contains the most up to date information for that taxon group.

Creating an image fact

When adding a fact for an image, set the following options:

• Title - “Image”
• Type - “webImage”
• Data (HTML) - the file name of the image file
• Language - not used, so set to “en - English”
• Date - “Unknown”
• Applies to - “All concepts that have the same meaning”

If any of this is not clear then the Collections node at the top of the Webstructure list itself provides an example.

Where to put the image file itself

The image file referred to by the fact must of course go into the correct place so that it can appear on the website. For the image to appear correctly on the live website, place it into E:\websites\drupal\sites\default\files\collections_browser on the SERV-DBTEST server, or the same location on SERV-DBTEST2 for the test version of the site.

Tip

There is no need to provide a thumbnail version of any of these images since the website automatically resizes them as it needs them. So, you just need to provide a single image which is at least as large as the largest version of the image the website will display. Therefore, for best results use images which are at least 300 pixels wide.

Adding text to nodes in the Collections Browser hierarchy

Each term in the hierarchy used to populate the online Collections Browser should at least have a description associated with it to display on the page. In addition it is possible to optionally add a footer text to appear beneath the page, typically used to add a bit of supplementary information such as an interesting fact about the taxon as in the following example.

Each piece of text is added by creating a fact against a node in the Thesaurus Editor. If adding text to any term that originates from the Webstructure list then add the text as a fact in that list. For texts that appear for terms which originate in one of the taxon group specific lists (e.g. the Vertebrates list in the previous example) then you should add the fact to the taxon group specific list within the Weblists domain (e.g. the Vertebrates list). For the top level nodes of these lists, which are duplicated in the Webstructure list, please add the fact to the Webstructure list itself, e.g. the fact for the vertebrates image must go into the Webstructure list not the Vertebrates list. For texts associated with any species level nodes, attach the fact to the species in whichever list in the Thesaurus contains the most up to date information for that taxon group.

To add a fact correctly which specifies text to appear in the online Collections Browser, add a fact with the following settings:

• Title - whatever you like
• Type - “pageHeaderData”
• Data (HTML) - the text to display as a fact
• Language - set to the language you are providing for this fact. You should provide 4 different facts for each piece of text, one for each language.
• Date - “Unknown”
• Applies to - “All concepts that have the same meaning”

You can add footer texts in the same way, except set the Type to pageFooterData.