Working with Drupal

We've spent the last two weeks installing and configuring a basic Drupal site. This week was focused particularly to installing a dizzying array of modules to essentially make the site more workable as a collection for an archive of digital objects. In addition to the requested modules such as faceted search, .... I installed a module called Lightbox2. Initially it didn't do anything but I continued reading through the how to pages and found the settings info on the page Using Lightbox2 with TinyMCE or FCKEditor which made everything come together. Now the truly cool thing about Lightbox2 is that when you click on your thumbnail the module places images above your current page, not within. You can then click to see more detail, go to the next image if they are grouped or close it. The floating image also displays descriptive information.

I have not tried them yet but the module works with video and slideshows. All things considered this was a very easy module to setup. Based on our prior instructions I also went in and granted permissions to authenticated users to use the module and I also knew the commands and places to go to make the whole thing come together.


Below is how one of the images in my collection looks after installing and enabling



Personally I think it's pretty slick.

So is Drupal suitable to display my collection. Yes and no. Yes, because I was able to within minutes find a new module, install and setup to improve the look and feel of my image presentations. There are a whole suite of modules to work with to improve navigation and the overall presentation of my content.

However, I can also say "no" because Drupal is not a turn-key out of the box solution. It takes work and lots of experience to grasp how all he components work together and finding just the right tools to make a usable collection worthwhile.

Furthermore I have just scratched the surface of working with Drupal. I only have had a glance at how it works and also am not really cognitive of the problems that may arise. I feel that Drupal in itself probably isn't the solution. It can help with the presentation certainly but the management and ingestion of material will probably require something else entirely. I think building web development skills with a service like Drupal is very important,useful, and workable but gaining knowledge on metadata tools, and other data management software is required. If anything to know the strengths and weaknesses of system you are working with.