A blog is a natural fit for an Archives collection. The format of regular posts gives the archivist an opportunity to connect with interested parties (often, in our case, alums) and give them information about the contents of the collection or the history behind interesting items.
The Marion Military Institute Archives currently uses Blogger (via the Google suite) to showcase findings in the Archives. This online collection consists of .jpg images -- either from digital photographs or scans -- and accompanying text.
This tutorial outlines the process used to post this information to the Archives blog. Videos are easiest to view in full-screen mode. For a text check-list of the things covered in the videos, click here.
It is often easier to prepare a professional blog post before opening the blog software. As you will see in the videos below, the text for the archives blog is often written-up in Microsoft Word or created in an e-mail document. Using a word processing software allows the author to spell and grammar check the entry before it is posted.
It can also be helpful to place all of the files for a blog post in a single folder on the computer.
A word of caution: Sometimes, if a post is created in Microsoft Word and then cut-and-paste is used to transfer the entry to the post window, the code Word uses to format things like bold and italics makes the post render improperly on the computer screen. To save time, posts that require only simple formatting -- like bold or italics -- can be written using some basic HTML codes (below). This allows the author to cut-and-past directly in HTML mode, avoiding the mess that the Word formatting can create. This is the technique I've illustrated in the videos below.
Basic HTML
HTML is a mark-up language, though calling it a "language" makes it seem more complex than it really is. The important thing to remember is that all HTML tags come in pairs. Both pairs -- the opening tag at the beginning of the modified text and the closing tag at the end of the modified text -- are necessary. There are only two tags used in the Archives blog.
<b>Using these tags around text will bold it.</b>
<i>Using these tags aroudn text will italicize it.</i>
Not the difference between the opening and closing tags.
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