Newsletter: August - October 2008

Well, we finally finished and got the August - October Newsletter mailed out to the HAR e-mail subscription list. Four times a year doesn't sound like a lot for a newsletter but when you have to put it together each time and keep track of all the new additions and changes then it can seem like a lot of work. Possibly the Blog will make the announcement of HAR changes and additions easier and maybe down the road the quarterly newsletter will become redundant. We'll have to wait and see.

What's in the newsletter? The most important new feature, as you already know, is the Blog. There are also several new collections added to the site and a number of new and changed Outline Pages, also called Topic Outlines. The section Iconography: Deities & Subjects became too big and the contents list was split into two pages to fit on an average monitor without too much scrolling. There should be a number of new additions to this section in the near future. There is a stack of hand drawn outline pages waiting to be typed up and posted on the site. If any of you have wondered what program we use to make the outline pages then look to the Mindjet website and a program called Mind Manager. There are a number of similar advanced image mapping programs out there but until proven otherwise Mind Manager is the best for our purposes.

There is a lot of trial and error with this site because we are trying to do two things. First, the site is a database of images from collections around the world. Secondly, it is a knowledge base where we try and provide as much information as possible (in reality as time allows) as well as placing the objects and subjects into a larger context. The Topic Outline Pages are the principal means that we use to try and do this contextualization.