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Hope Library Guides

Website Creation: An exploration of content management platforms: Scalar

This guide seeks to compare some of the mainstream website content management platforms. Each platform is listed with a list of different features available, available plans, and any other notable information about the tool.

Introduction to Scalar

 

 

Scalar is a free content management platform for creating "digital publications" or digital books.  This is a great platform if you have a lot of information to share and want to have your users explore the information in a particular way.  This platform is not intended to create typical websites, but is intended for scholarly audiences as a way to create beautiful, creative publications of research for an academic audience.

Digital Liberal Arts Librarian

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Victoria Longfield
Contact:
227 - 2nd floor
Van Wylen Library
616-395-7013
Social: Twitter Page

Features

Scalar supports the following multimedia file types:

  • Maps: KML

  • Audio: MPEG-3, Ogg, WAV

  • Image: GIF, JPEG, PNG, DZI

  • Text: HTML, JavaScript, Java, TXT, XML, PDF

  • Video: FLV, M4V, MPEG-4, Ogg, WebM, QuickTime

Scalar has the ability to annotate textual and multimedia resource directly within the Scalar interface.  Through this tool, you can seamlessly mark-up any resource that you have with additional comments, images, and anything else that you may want to draw attention to.   

Image annotations are as easy as drawing out the area you wish to highlight. Resource: http://scalar.usc.edu/features/annotations/

Image Credit: http://scalar.usc.edu/features/annotations/

Scalar has a variety of built in visualization tools that allow the author and the reader to see the connections created within the publication itself.  By creating "paths" between content, tags, and annotations of that content, the visualization tools allow this information to be displayed in an interesting way providing for a new and different experience with the research materials.

Image Credit: http://scalar.usc.edu/features/built-in-visualizations/

Scalar is a great and easy to way to collaborate on publications.  Books are easily shared among editors and keeps track of when changes were made and who edited them.  This feature is free unlike many other websites and digital tools with collaborating capabilities.  

Example Projects