Dave Robertson & Sugar Falls: A Residential School Story
1 2020-05-12T14:20:26-04:00 Kris Joseph 0d077f99b0f9769f974aa4a1085d24dd68a8f67d 86 1 A conversation with Dave Robertson (Cree) about his graphic novel Sugar Falls: a Residential School Story looking at the inspiring and tragic life of Betty Ross. www.attheedgeofcanada.blogspot.com plain 2020-05-12T14:20:26-04:00 art children books Dave Robertson aboriginal first nation graphic novel Residential Schools Dave Robertson & Sugar Falls: A Residential School Story audio Internet Archive Kris Joseph 0d077f99b0f9769f974aa4a1085d24dd68a8f67dThis page is referenced by:
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Understand How Scalar Thinks About Content
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One of Scalar's most powerful features is its flexibility. This flexibility comes from the way the platform is designed, and how it manages content. In Scalar, everything is an object, and every object has properties: for example, the page you are reading now is an object that has an assigned background image, a simple layout, and some descriptive metadata.
When you are adding content to Scalar, you'll be adding or creating one of two things:1. Media
These are single media objects that are either imported from existing locations on the web (for example, YouTube, the Internet Archive, or the York University Digital Library), or uploaded directly into Scalar. When media is imported from another repository, it is not copied; it is only linked. This makes it possible for Scalar authors to work with existing media in other locations without violating terms of copyright.
The item at the right is an example of a Scalar media object. This audio interview with Dave Robertson about his graphic novel, Sugar Falls, is actually located in the Internet Archive (hover over the media player to expand options, and then see the "Source File" link under the object), but is referenced here within Scalar with complete metadata and citation information.
2. Pages
A page is the default method of displaying content in Scalar. The content you are looking at now is a single Scalar page, containing the text you are reading as well as references to media objects (such as images, or the audio interview above). Pages may include text, embedded media (video, audio, or images), or they may use built-in "Scalar widgets" that display maps, timelines, visualizations, or galleries.
One interesting characteristic of Scalar is that almost everything can be viewed as a page. For example, we embedded the Sugar Falls interview above, but we can also link to it as as an independent object (click that link to open the object in a new window), in which case Scalar presents it as a simple page containing nothing but the audio interview and its associated metadata.
You can think of these relationships using the English word "is" or "has:" a media object in Scalar is also a page; a page in Scalar has media in it.
Properties of Media and Pages
Each of these things has a number of settings that you can apply. These are examples of "has" relationships, which can be phrased in English as "this media or page has...":- A layout, which describes how the object will look. Using the previous terminology, we would say that a piece of media or a page has a layout. By default, the layout is "basic," meaning the object is displayed on its own. Pages have more than a dozen possible layouts, creating many possibilities for visually interesting or even interactive content. Media are more limited: they can be displayed as "basic" content, or in a format that displays all of the media's metadata in a table.
- Some styling options, which include things like background image, image thumbnail, or even an audio file that will play when the page is loaded.
- Properties, which include the URL for the object and whether or not it is visible (public)
- Metadata, which are a set of fields and values used to describe the content. For example, you may add information about an object's author, its creation date, a location, a licence, or many other descriptive pieces of information. There are many different standards and schema for metadata, and you can learn more in our free guide dedicated to metadata.
Why the use of "objects" is important
Media and pages are stored as objects in Scalar. Just like the properties described in the previous section, which are "has" relationships, you can also can specify "is" relationships between objects -- as in, this Scalar page is something. Most commonly, these are described as paths or tags. We'll address those in another section of this guide, but the gist is this: a tag is used to relate objects by topic or theme, in no specific order; a path is similar, but defines the order in which things are related. For example, I might upload media of fruit and then tag the images for bananas, cherries and apples as "fruit"... or I might put them on a path as apples, bananas, and then cherries to make sure they appear in alphabetical order every time. Since everything in Scalar can be viewed as a page, I would then say that my "fruit" page is a tag, and my "alphabetical order" page is a path.
In Scalar, an object can be more than one thing at the same time. For example, a piece of media "is" visible as a page, but it can also be a tag ("...is a tag"), a path, or any combination of those things.
Taking the fruit example from above, I can tag apples, bananas, and cherries as fruit ("an apple is a fruit"), and I can also put them on a path that specifies an alphabetical order ("apples, bananas, and cherries have a specific order"). I can also create another tag, called "red," which includes apples and cherries; or I can create a path that indicates the order in which all three fruits appear in my local market's produce aisle. I can then view my tag for "red" as a page (since a tag "is" a page), and Scalar will automatically list all of the objects that I have tagged as red.
Rather than managing all these connections and relationships manually, Scalar stores media and pages as objects, and then lets authors specify relationships between those objects. These relationships are the "is" and "has" connections. Information about an object is stored separately from the object itself, so it can be easily edited. You can create very complex "big pictures" and visualizations by focusing on how things are related to one another.
This is the flexibility and power of Scalar. Scalar lets your readers explore your content using these relationships. You can guide them by creating paths, but they can also freely explore how you've connected objects together, and can navigate through those connections in their own way.
When you are starting a Scalar project, this flexibility can be overwhelming. As a result, our advice is to focus first on your content: the media or knowledge objects that you want to share. Once everything is "in the system," you can experiment with the relationships to see the interesting ways that Scalar can exhibit your material.
- A layout, which describes how the object will look. Using the previous terminology, we would say that a piece of media or a page has a layout. By default, the layout is "basic," meaning the object is displayed on its own. Pages have more than a dozen possible layouts, creating many possibilities for visually interesting or even interactive content. Media are more limited: they can be displayed as "basic" content, or in a format that displays all of the media's metadata in a table.