THL Toolbox > Images & Immersive Technologies > MMS Online Photograph Collections End Users Guide
MMS Online Photograph Collections End Users Guide
Contributor(s): Steven Weinberger, Andres Montano
This application is part of a “universal navigation” system that provides integrated access to the Place Dictionary, Media Management System, Tibetan Dictionary, and Knowledge Maps. Please read the documentation on the universal navigation to better understand how it functions.
The THL Photographic collections are housed in the Media Management System (MMS), which catalogs and provides access to not only images but also to THL's bibliographic database.
The photographic collections are located at 
http://mms.thlib.org. Each photograph has a catalog record that is linked to three different sizes of the image itself. The catalog record contains metadata for the photograph; each record can contain information about the photograph such as a caption, a description, the date the photograph was taken, a location, the name of the photographer, the collection to which the photograph belongs, associated resources such as places and topics, the type of camera used, and so forth.
Viewing Photographs
Photograph display as thumbnails when you search or browse. You can view three different sizes of each photograph, as well as the metadata for the photograph:
- Click once on a thumbnail to open a popup box with a larger size photograph and the information about the photograph.
- Click again on the photograph to see a still larger size photograph without the metadata.
- To see the larger size of the photograph with its metadata in a separate page, right-click the thumbnail and select open in a new browser tab or window. On this page, clicking on the photograph will open a popup box with the largest size of the photograph (and without its metadata).
In the photograph catalog record, resources associated with the photograph such as locations, collections, and subjects are hyperlinked. Click a location to see its entry in the THL Place Dictionary; click a collection to see its entry in the photograph collections (which includes thumbnails of all the images in that collection).
Finding Photographs by Browsing
You can access photographs by browsing to see all the photographs included in a particular category. There are three ways to browse photograph: by collection, by geographical feature, or by subject. Click the Browse tab or go to the images homepage. Pull down the Browse by menu and select either collection, geographical features, or subjects.
When browsing, a plus sign (+) next to a category indicates that the category has sub-categories; click the plus sign to display the sub-categories. When a category's sub-categories are displayed, the plus sign becomes a minus sign (-). To close the category, click the minus sign. A diamond (◊) next to a category indicates that the category has no sub-categories; click the category to see thumbnails of its photographs. The number in parentheses following the name of the category indicates the number of photographs included in the category.
When you click a category with a diamond next to it, on the left-hand side of the page 8 thumbnails of photographs included in the category will appear. If the collection contains more than 8 photographs, a “More” link will appear at the bottom right beneath the thumbnails. Clicking “More” will display a page with 32 thumbnails. If the collection has more than 32 photographs, you can navigate through the pages of thumbnails by using the controls beneath the thumbnails: 1, 2, 3, 4, Next.
Click on a photograph to view a larger version as well as information about the photograph (see Viewing photographs above for more details on the different ways you can view photographs and metadata).
Collections: collections are organized in several ways: photographs taken by a particular photographer (such as Tsering Gyalpo), photographs of a geographic region (such as Central Tibet), photographs belonging to an organization (such as the Royal Government of Bhutan), and thematic collections (such as contemporary Tibetan art).
To browse the collections, pull down the Browse by menu and select “Collection.” Then navigate through the collections by clicking the plus sign to the left of the collection you want.
Geographical Features: pull down the Browse by menu and select “Geographical Features.” Then navigate through the geographical features by clicking the plus sign to the left of the category you want. Click the name of the category below the thumbnails to view the category in the larger Geographical Features knowledge map.
Subjects: pull down the Browse by menu and select “Subjects.” Then navigate through the subjects by clicking the plus sign to the left of the category you want. Click the name of the category below the thumbnails to view the category in the larger Subjects knowledge map.
Keywords: you can also browse the images by keyword. A list of keywords displays below the search box; click one to see the thumbnails of all photographs that keyword is associated with. The relative size of the keyword indicates the relative number of photographs that keyword is associated with: a larger keyword means there are more photographs that have the keyword.
Finding Images by Searching
You can also search for photographs according to several different criteria. Click the Search tab or go to the photographs homepage and enter text in the search box. There are two basic types of searches you can perform on photographs for text that occurs in one of the fields in the photograph catalog record: a full-text search and an advanced search. Both of these search the same fields in the photograph collection database.
Full-text Search: this searches for the exact word or term you enter in the search box. To perform this search, click the “full-text” button below the search box, enter the word or term you want to search for, and click the “Search” button. Note: because this currently searches only for the exact text entered in the search box, a search on Zhalu will not located images of Zhalu Monastery; you must search on Zhalu Monastery to located images with “Zhalu Monastery” in their catalog records. Please construct your searches with this in mind.
Advanced Search: the advanced search allows you to search for photographs using multiple criteria. To execute an advanced search, click the “Advanced” button beneath the search box. To learn how to do advanced searches, click the “search tips” link next to the “Advanced” button, which will take you to the advanced search instructions page.
Search by THL Image ID: if you know the ID number of the photograph, enter that in the box next to “Media Object ID” and click “Go.” The image ID is found in the Media Object ID field beneath the image; it is also the number at the end of the URL for the photograph. For example, in the URL http://mms.thlib.org/media_objects/1368, 1368 is the photograph ID number.