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Quick link to Scalar 2 user guide.
Box
Chicago Collections uses Box for file storage and co-working. After your exhibit has been approved, use this link to quickly get to your Box account.
At this stage, you will have identified the institutions that will contribute content to your exhibit, and you'll already have media files and metadata from EXPLORE via the Digital Exhibits Committee.
You can collect media and metadata not in EXPLORE in one of two ways. This is where your Box account (or your favorite file-sharing application) may come in handy.
Request content via email. Note that if an archivist sends a large file or batch of files via email, they may need to be zipped. You can then put the files and metadata into Box; or
Archivists deposit content directly into Box. It can be helpful to create a folder for each institution contributing content and request that they deposit their media files and metadata there. Note that you'll need to give permissions to a specific person as there are no generic logins.
Now you have all of your media files and metadata, ideally stored in one location (Box, Google Drive, etc.), and will need to upload it to Scalar. Remember that exhibit building is an iterative process, and you may end up using one or both upload methods a number of times.
An easy way to upload content to Scalar if you only have a small number of media files or for one-off uploads. Please read the Scalar documentation on Importing Your Own Media and Importing Other Online Media for step-by-step instructions.
This method requires a metadata spreadsheet. We've created a sample metadata template in Excel that you can download and customize according to the needs of your project. Keep in mind that the template only contains mandatory fields (title, identifier, description, rights, source, and URL.) Alternately, you can create a spreadsheet from scratch or copy the .csv file provided in the Scalar guidelines.
Thorough guidelines on this import method can be found in the section Bulk importing spreadsheets using the Transfer tool in the Scalar User's Guide. This method is most useful with images that are already in EXPLORE as the link you specify will be the link used in Scalar.