Learning Scalar: How to build non-linear, born-digital content on York's Scalar platform

Understand How Scalar Thinks About Content

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 it's 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 also examples of "has" relationships:
  1. 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.
  2. Some styling options, which include things like background image, image thumbnail, or even an audio file that will play when the page is loaded.
  3. Properties, which include the URL for the object and whether or not it is visible (public)
  4. 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.
Additionally, you can specify relationships between objects. Most commonly, these are described as paths or tags. We'll address those in another section of this guide, because tags and paths are also objects with their own "is" and "has" relationships, 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 tag 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.

Why the use of "objects" is important

The critical difference between Scalar and other platforms is that a piece of content in Scalar can be more than one thing at the same time. For example, a piece of media can be a page, 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 and I can ALSO put them on a path that specifies an alphabetical order. In fact, I can also create a tag for "red" that includes apples and cherries, or create a path that indicates the order in which all three fruits appear in my local market's produce aisle.

Rather than storing all of this information directly, Scalar merely stores my media and pages as objects, and then lets me create relationships between those objects (these are the "is" and "has" connections). These relationships are also stored, and can be easily added, removed, or change. As a result, you can create very complex "big pictures" by focusing only how things are related to one another. This is the flexibility and power of Scalar.

As a result of managing object in terms relationships, I don't have to create a page to tell readers what order my book's chapters go in: I simply put the chapters on a path (a path is an object and has other objects within it), and Scalar builds a table of contents for me. Scalar lets your readers explore your content using these relationships, so they can see how you've connected objects together, and can explore 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.
 

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