About Pages

Collection About pages should describe the context of the collection content, where the material comes from, and any background on the project. They can cite sources, explain content details (such as extent or missing items), and acknowledge contributors. For some collections, About pages can go further such as presenting item highlights or longer form interpretive content–including the possibility of multiple “about” pages.

Please keep these guidelines in mind for Digital Collection About pages:

  • The first paragraph should clearly describe the context of the collection itself (before presenting interpretive content)–often this is like repeating the collection description with a bit more detail.
  • Writing for the web is different from traditional documents. Use short paragraphs and plenty of headings. This facilitates reading and access on screen.
  • Always start with a h2 (##) level heading. The standard nav-menu include is designed to link to h2 level headings only.
  • Use meaningful text in hyperlinks (i.e. don’t use pattern of “click here”).

Collection About Pages are written in Markdown. Below are some common notes about About pages for our Digital Collections. For more basic information on how Markdown works and general formatting see Write Markdown Everywhere. For more details on creating pages in CollectionBuilder, check cb-docs Edit Site Pages.

Headings

About page content will be broken into sections using headings.

Always start the page with an h2. All main sections will also be h2.

## Page Title 

## Section title

### Subsection title

Do not skip heading levels! Heading should follow hierarchically like an outline.

The “nav-menu” include is designed to provide links to the h2 sections.

{% include feature/nav-menu.html sections="About CollectionBuilder;About the About Page" %}

In the “sections” value, paste the exact text of each heading you want in the nav, separated by semicolons.

Citations

You’ll need to cite the sources for your multimedia essay just as you would for any academic essay. Whenever possible, use Turabian Style to add your citations as footnotes.

To add a footnote in Markdown, directly after the sentence you’d like to cite, add a left square bracket ([), followed by a caret symbol (^), followed by a footnote number (i.e. 1, 2, 3, etc.), followed by a left square bracket (]). See below for an example:

Example text to be cited.[^1]

Yet more text to cite.[^2]

Then, at the very bottom of the page, you’ll create a section with the heading Sources, and add the bracketed footnote numbers (i.e. [^1], [^2], [^3], etc.), followed by a colon (:) and citation, like this:

[^1]: Katie Kitamura, *A Separation* (New York: Riverhead Books, 2017), 25.

[^2]: Sharon Sassler and Amanda Jayne Miller, *Cohabitation Nation: Gender, Class, and the Remaking of Relationships* (Oakland: University of California Press, 2017), 114.

On the front end, your footnote number will automatically link down to its corresponding citation, which will reside at the “foot” of your essay. To see this in action, look at the cited text below, and click on the blue 1 and 2 footnotes at the end of each line.

You can create hyperlinks in Markdown like this:

[GitHub Help](https://help.github.com/)

When linking to pages within the same collection, use Jekyll’s relative_url feature. Instead of writing out https://www.lib.uidaho.edu on an About page you should use the Liquid relative_url formula.

Don’t do this:

[family](https://www.lib.uidaho.edu/digital/priestlake/browse.html#families)

Do this:

[family](/digital-collections-docs/browse.html#families)

Here’s another example:

Don’t do this:

[stage](https://www.lib.uidaho.edu/digital/priestlake/items/priestlake244.html)

Do this:

[stage](/digital-collections-docs/items/priestlake244.html)

Perma.cc

Use Perma.cc, a web archiving service, to capture archive copies of web pages that we cite in About pages. This is done to prevent ink rot–broken and incorrect links.

If using Perma.cc for the first time, check Evan’s workshop for more information about getting started.

Once logged in, navigate to UIdaho SPEC > Collection Bibliographies folder. Select the collection folder you are working on or create a new folder. Then, add your link.

Add the archived Perma.cc link to your citations like this:

Becky Kramer, "Pre-Dam Photos May Be Glimpse of Future," The Spokesman-Review, March 30, 2009, https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2009/mar/30/pre-dam-photos-may-be-glimpse-of-future/. (Archived: https://perma.cc/LN7F-Q2CW)

Horizontal Line Breaks

Sometimes you may want to add greater distinction between sections of your essay. You can do this by adding a “horizontal line break,” which is a horizontal line that stretches across the width of the page.

Horizontal line breaks are easy to do in Markdown. Simply add at least three hyphens in a row to a new line (6 is preferred), and make sure the line with the hyphens is preceded and followed by blank lines, like this:


------

On the front end, a horizontal line break will look like this:

Block Quotes

Add a block quote to your About page using the block quote include:

{% include feature/blockquote.html text="Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers" speaker="Alfred Lord Tennyson" source="Locksley Hall" %}

Options:

  • “text” = quote text, can use Markdown (required, hint: use a capture statement to add more complex text!)
  • “speaker” = name of the person who said the quote (optional)
  • “source” = title of the quote’s source (optional)
  • “link” = link to source, will be added to speaker/source (note: will not be added unless you have a speaker or source value!)

See additional instructions and example at the top of the /_includes/feature/blockquote.html file.

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