How to use the Narratives module

The Narratives module is perhaps most powerful as the public face of your collection: as the content management tool for a website that presents a collection to the world. But this is by no means its only function. Others include:

  • Labels for exhibits.
  • Textual descriptions for brochures and programs.
  • Miscellaneous internal (non-public) information management, e.g. a record of conversations held or correspondence sent and received.
  • Providing researchers (specialist and private or public) with purpose-made (tailored) material.

The Narratives module brings together related and diverse information about a particular object, collection of objects or subject, linking a collection in significant ways. As with EMu's Catalog, which is surrounded by a suite of modules, the Narratives module draws data from a range of satellite modules. Depending on the nature of a collection (Natural History vs Cultural History, for instance) a narrative record can draw data from the Parties, Bibliography, Events, Collection Events, Taxonomy and Sites modules:

Narratives

The Narratives module records stories about the collections from item level to collection groupings and a multitude of other collections related angles. It helps structure these stories for different types of publication, including delivery to the web. It stores historically significant, general or even ephemeral information gathered about the collections. In short, the Narratives module is designed to hold any interpretative information about a collection, as well as references to all of the resources (EMu and non-EMu) used to author it.

However, the versatility and flexibility of the Narratives module are not limited to its uses. As we'll see, even when it comes to presenting a collection online, there are several ways to achieve this end, each with its advantages.