Presentation script for Bahá'í Library Online at 25
These are the spoken words of the video at bahai-library.com/winters_bahai_library_25#8. The sound on the video is mildly distorted in places, due to the distortion caused by the sound of far-off machinery in the background, but my spoken words closely match the following.
Thank you Graham. This video series could not have come at a better time, both for my own work, and for our mutual collaboration ... bringing these diverse projects together with a future goal of combining our datasets.
The background behind me is different from previous calls, when I was at my place in Niagara Falls. Now I'm at my dad's house in Oregon. You might even see deer and wild turkeys behind me.
I prepared a long presentation but I'm only going to talk about part of it — it's all online and I'll show you where. Instead, I anticipate this session being largely question answer, and discussion.
Please use the chat function for any questions that come to mind as I'm talking, and tomorrow I'll reply to anything asked in the chat.
Also I talk fast, so please interrupt or pause me anytime. I'm using two laptops here, so forgive me if I don't make camera eye contact.
Now I'll turn on my screen share.
[bahai-library.com/winters_bahai_library_25]
Here's my full presentation, which you can read later. Today I'm going to cover sections 1, 4, and 7. Let me summarize this document.
First I'm going to demonstrate the quickest ways of finding content on the site. Sections 2 and 3 you can read later -- where I explain the background of the project, how and why I started it, and some necessary conditions that led to its success. Note that at the bottom of this section here I estimate how many documents the Library has. Section 3 is an updated version of my vision statement. Next, today I'll talk about the unique place this website has in the online Baha'i ecosystem.
Sections 5 and 6 you can read later. Section 5 explains how the site works, how we create it, and the steps that go into running an online library. Casual users might notice we post just one document per day on average, and they might think, that seems pretty easy. But in truth, posting new documents is, at most, 1/4 of what we do. Next, I show some of our to-do list; I guess this list comprises 15 to 20 thousand hours of work. If I did it all myself, spending three hours a day, and adding nothing more to the list then I should finish by the end of my life; my retirement time is already planned! Finally, today I'm going to talk about current and future changes, and this is where I anticipate some fruitful discussions at the end of the session.
Now let's get started. First, I'll show quick usage tips. These might not be news to anyone on today's Zoom call but could be helpful to new users who find this video later.
The Library has about 14,000 documents, so easy navigation is important. The site is designed with two principles:
* the design is minimalist — I'm inspired by Google's homepage, look how elegant it is [google.com]. My rule is: not one extra letter, and no extra design elements. The larger the site became over the years, the more I tried to simplify the interface.
* most documents are no more than 2 clicks deep [show]
1) Now, the first way I've catalogued content is by an arbitrary designation I call a "Collection." That's what these links are [show]. The Collections sort documents either by media type -- such as videos vs maps -- or by provenance, such as documents written by an NSA vs written by the Baha'i World Centre -- or by subject, like introductory materials vs. study guides. This categorization is arbitrary but convenient.
Here along the top of the page you see our search features.
The next thing users should try is the [Site Map]. This is basically identical to the content on the front page, but presented differently, and includes all the interface functions, like these search boxes.
2) One can also browse the library by checking [bahai-library.com/new] or Featured Pieces. You can view any number of days by adding a number after the URL; for example [bahai-library.com/new/50] shows additions from the last 50 days.
3) One of the best ways to find content is using Tags, which function as a subject index. You can search the tags at [bahai-library.com/tags], or you can type your keyword directly into the URL like [bahai-library.com/tags/test. This will match all parts of a keyword, so searching "test" also shows results for "greatest". Location shortcuts are the same, e.g. [bahai-library.com/locations/montreal].
A subject index can be more helpful than a search engine, for two reasons. One, it lists which items are about a topic versus merely mentioning a topic. Two, it solves the problem of alternate spellings and diacritics. For example, our tag [Ishqabad] covers eight variations: Ashgabat, Ashkabad, Ashkhabad, Ashqabad, Ishkabad, Ishqabad, `Ishqábád, and Ашхабадского. The Library is only about 20% tagged so far -- and let me recognize here the work of Arjen Bolhuis, who has spent hundreds of hours adding the tags that we do have. Tagging is slow work that requires a careful reading of the text.
The complete list of all tags is at [bahai-library.com/tags/allalpha] and [bahai-library.com/locations/allalpha]. As this subject index grows, it will become more helpful.
4) For me, the fastest way to find things is by typing keywords directly into my browser's address bar to search for author, title, date, or tag. Let's say you're looking for today's presentation. The title search is at [bahai-library.com/title], so if I'm searching for the keyword "future" I type [bahai-library.com/title/future]. To find it by author or year I type these in my address bar: [bahai-library.com/author/winters] or [bahai-library.com/date/2022].
Glenn Cameron's chronology can also be searched with this shortcut: [bahai-library.com/chronology/1848] shows the entire year 1848, or [bahai-library.com/chronology/1848-03] shows only March, or [bahai-library.com/chronology/1848-03-30] shows just one day.
I'll turn off screen share for a moment. Any questions so far?
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OK, now that we've covered the basics of how to use it, I'll talk about why I think this website is both unique and valuable. I'm turning on screen share.
[bahai-library.com/winters_bahai_library_25#4]
It's not just quantity, but quality. I note [here] that we have about 14,000 documents online but another 17,000 waiting to post. I could have posted all that material years ago, as is, were it not for a focus on quality. I won't publish anything that hasn't been edited and formatted, and with enough metadata.
The [Vision Statement] section explains that I never intended the Library to be primarily for Baha'is, or even a "Baha'i" site. I just wanted to archive historical and academic material. So the site is neutral both in tone and in content. It's not really iintended to "promote" the Faith or deepen the believers, but also it should have nothing that's offensive to Bahá'í sensibilities.
A second unique aspect is the site's flexibility in hosting content. While a Wordress or Wiki suite can be customized to host anything, as for example David Haslip has done with his bahaipedia, the fact that our backend software was custom-written just for this purpose, and is on a dedicated server, means we have basically no restrictions on content. For example, when the large bahailib.com website went offline the Library could absorb and repackage its content [bahailib_archive]. Or when Steven Kolins needed to assemble a variety of media in one place for his [History of the Bahá'í Faith in North Carolina] seminar, we could provide a single location with a static URL.
Next, here is a list of six features that lend the Library its quality. You can read this section later, I won't go through it now, but in sum: the design is consistent across all pages, the navigation is simple or even simplistic, and content is well tagged with metadata and crossreferences.
The Library also helps facilitate collaboration and discussion. We run six email listservers for private academic use, we have a workgroup on Facebook, and we had one of the first "bulletin board" forums in 1997, [bahai-library.com/wwwboard/archive.html] (for the young folks, forums are how people asked questions online before social media).
We have also helped present Bahá'í material in new media. In the early years it was distributed on CD-ROM in Africa for those without internet access. At various times I've shared archives on BitTorrent, and I kept a version of the Library alive on Freenet for a few years.
Others also are using the Library to host their own projects, I'll highlight a few. Besides Glenn's [Chronology], Adel Shafipour and his colleagues are working on [Iranian National Bahá'í Archives] and recently completed the [Zuhur Al-Haqq] manuscripts, and we have a couple ongoing audio projects, recordings of the [Sacred Writings in French] and audio versions of [Letters from the Universal House of Justice]. And we still have [these six old sites].
Finally, we come to the section that most motivates me to curate this Library. I've been asked, by a number of people over the years, to post their unpublished life's work or archive the work of a parent. The first such collection was in 1999 when Barbara Sims and her family worked with me to post all of her books before she passed: [bahai-library.com/east-asia]. The most recent was last year when Ernie Jones and a group of volunteers worked to scan, format, and proofread his late mother's collection of historical material: [bahai-library.com/emma_maxwell_jones_collection].
Some scholars have asked me to preserve their unpublished writings when they were in their late years, e.g. around 2013 [bahai-library.com/author/Ahang Rabbani] and [bahai-library.com/author/Kamran Ekbal] sent me their remaining unpublished works shortly before their passing. Or as Marlene Macke emailed in 2020 when sending her life's collection of [bahai-library.com/Dramatic Readings], she said (and gave permission to quote): "Looking for a home online that can be accessed by other Bahá'ís, it seems this website is the best venue for such a collection. I find myself anxious to find such a site because I've been diagnosed with a terminal illness and wish to have my dramatic readings endure beyond my passing."
Before starting the last section I'm discussing today, I'll turn off my screen share for comments or questions.
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[screen share on] This last section of the presentation is the shortest part, but is the section I'm most interested in today.
[bahai-library.com/winters_bahai_library_25#7]
The Library is in desperate need of a complete reprogramming. It needs a new backend structure, and a new frontend for both desktop and mobile interfaces. We can't take advantage of true crowdsourcing, like inviting the public to add Tags, until the code is open-sourced; open-sourcing the code will facilitate both security and evolution.
I tried to fund and crowdsource the Library a couple times before, first in 1999, and then a couple years later with the Web 2.0 system. We had a donations page, a sponsored projects system, and detailed instructions and style sheets to guide a cohort of "managing editors." But we didn't get either donations or active volunteers, so in 2005 I disbanded that system.
It's time to try again, and this time we're making it work.
Last year we started initial discussions on Version 5 [bahai-library.com/version_5] and some programming began later that year, but that effort seems to have evaporated. Now we need a fresh start with a new team. It will be a complex process involving many people and we have no time estimate, but I hope to have a whole new site within two years. [end screen share]
I personally don't have the skill or the time to do this. Creating Version 2, the dynamic databased upgrade in 2003, was time-consuming but technically simple, and I was able to learn enough after taking a 6-month course in Internet Technologies. The setup was simple too, a single server with a standard LAMP implementation (Linux Apache MySQL PHP).
But things are different now. The languages have become vastly more complex: I learned PHP 3 and they're now up to 7, and to be honest my aging brain doesn't even have the capacity to learn PHP 7 now, even if I had a couple years to master it. As well, we probably need to move from a dedicated server to distributed cloud hosting, like David has for his sites. Plus we'll need database abstraction, if we're going to be integrating multiple data sets, and we'll need an API. Most pressing, we need a mobile version because the site is impossible to use on a cell phone. This will require many more skills than the basic tech I learned years ago. It will require a team of experts, if not two.
None of this will be possible with free labor, no matter how earnest the volunteers.
Next, we plan to register a non-profit with a dedicated bank account, so that donations can be collected and then paid out to individuals and teams we hire for specific jobs, from programming to design to adding metadata. I set up a bank account in the States, and we've just received a third donation this year, so funds are starting to come in.
I also needed an informal council of advisors and a smaller board of directors to take collective ownership. With a project as large and complicated as Version 5 I don't know what I don't know, so I needed experts in programming, library science, database architecture, mobile interfaces, citation export, non-profit law, and I don't even know what else.
This will also ensure that the Library not be under any one person's ownership or editorial control, and that donations not be spent without oversight. People who wish to support the project can know that funds could not be used for personal gain, and that no individual agenda is being promoted.
We now have a council of eleven people who have agreed to take an advisory role, and we have a subset of three people which forms the board. These 11 advisors have a vote on the board members, ownership, and mandate. The 3-member board will oversee the day-to-day running of the site and expenditure of donations.
I will continue as managing editor only so long as elected.
That's where we're at, and I look forward to your suggestions.
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