Maktaba Collection Workbench

Items in the Maktaba collection are originally provided from Northwestern University and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. These resources are provided as IIIF Manifests, an open standard for delivering digitized cultural heritage materials and the information describing them.

The Maktaba Collection is managed through a custom designed workbench found at https://admin-maktaba.dc.library.northwestern.edu.

Editor Access

• Usernames will be provided to editors requiring access
• Users login via https://admin-maktaba.dc.library.northwestern.edu
• Publish collection permissions require being added to the Admin group

Curating the Collection

Workflows

Add Manifest

All users may add selected items to the Maktaba Collection using the Add Manifest workflow. Adding a Manifest requires a URL for a valid IIIF Manifest, and selection of the providing institution (Northwestern or UIUC).

1. Click Add Manifest
2. Enter the URL of the IIIF Manifest
3. Select the Providing Institution
4. Click Add

How to find a IIIF Manifest URL?

Example: Select Maktaba works provided by Northwestern University can be viewed from the Digital Collections website at https://dc.library.northwestern.edu/search?q=maktaba. When viewing any of these items, click the Download and Share button, find the IIIF Manifest section, and click Copy Manifest Link.

Annotating Manifests

All users may annotate Manifests that have been added to the collection. To annotate the item, click the View button from the respective row of the work on the collection table. Once navigated to the screen for the specific manuscript, each “page” is represented by a corresponding row with a Add translation and Add transcription button.

1. Click Add translation or Add translation
2. Enter translation content as Markdown
3. Click Save

Tips:

• Formatting content with Markdown allows for strong, emphasis, footnotes, and more (see Markdown Guides)
• Utilize the viewer above the table to verify textual annotations
• Users may add and edit content as required for each item
• When entering content use double hard returns for paragraph spacing

Adding Notes

Notes as may also need to be added for each page item to track progress or concerns. Notes are used for internal purposes and are not published as part of the Maktaba collection.

Updating Public Status

All users may update the Public status of items added to the collection. To modify the status, click the View button from the respective row of the work on the collection table. Toggle the Public? switch button to update the status. Public items cannot be deleted.

Publishing the Collection

Users adding to the Admin group may publish the collection. Only items with the Public? status are published to the Maktaba Collection.

1. Click the Options dropdown
2. Click Publish Collection

Markdown Guides

The Maktaba Collection Workbench supports the following elements for Markdown formatting:

Basic Syntax

• Heading
• Bold (Strong)
• Italic (Emphasis)
• Blockquote
• Ordered List
• Unordered List
• Code
• Horizontal Rule
• Link

Extended Syntax

• Footnote
• Table

Converting Documents with Pandoc

To ease in conversion of Microsoft Word documents to Markdown, a Colab Notebook and Video Example (Download) have been authored.

Colab notebook steps

1. Sign into Google;
2. Upload a local Word document;
3. In second codeblock, match filename with expected document, ex: translation.docx

Before

!pandoc translation.docx -o markdown_content.md

After

!pandoc final-translation-rushd-al-ghafil.docx -o markdown_content.md

4. Run each code block in sequence.
5. Copy the converted Markdown

Additional Refinements

After conversion of a Word document to Markdown, there may be a need to make additional refinements. This might include removing unnecessary line breaks, organizing footnote content, removing Word artifacts (ex: [ ]{dir="rtl"}), or formatting of a hemastitch.

Refined Example

This text is *The Guide for the Heedless* by the learned Imam Sīdī ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Ḥājj Ibrāhīm

- All praise belongs to God, who led us
  - to the truth and away from falsehood, and denied us

- What the best of the honored ones forbade us
  - may our Lord bring him peace and pray upon him.

- \[Falsehood\] incurs disapproval and prohibition,[^1]
  - within it all the sciences of evil are discerned.

- It includes conferring on someone a benefit or an affliction,
  - which, according to law, is not deserved,

- Or peering into the realm of the unseen
  - or deploying a name for a worldly decree.

[^1]: Prohibition (*manʿ*) and disapproval (*kurḥ*) are technical legal
    terms. Prohibited acts are forbidden, while acts that merit
    disapproval are discouraged.

Developer Usage

Production Build

npm run build

• outputs to dist/

Local Devlopment

npm run dev

• Local: http://localhost:5173/

Configuration

• Replace the dummy values in .env.example with your own configuration values and rename the file to .env.local (for development) or .env (for production deployment).

License