client lagna
website www.lagna.org.uk
sector charity
LAGNA
The Lesbian and Gay Newsmedia Archive (LAGNA) is a collection of over 200,000 newsprint articles and other items that chronicle society’s relationship with homosexuality through the eye of the press. It spans fourteen decades, giving historical insights that are both valuable and fascinating.
LAGNA is a charitable organisation and relies on volunteers to assist its staff in cataloguing the ever-growing collection. Over many years, the details of thousands of pieces have been meticulously recorded. Both SAV and LAGNA saw the opportunity to electronically store and manage these records and, at the same time, to make them accessible to the public.
We produced more than just a website. Behind the publically accessible site is a database containing the archive’s entire catalogue. Thanks to the database, this information is now available online for the first time, giving anyone anywhere the opportunity to find out more, use LAGNA’s resources or get involved.
Over time, the catalogue will continue to grow, and SAV technology will continue to support it. To find out more about that technology, and about the site itself, read on…
More about the LAGNA website
In designing the site, we had the opportunity to produce a logo and brand for LAGNA. It had to feature the organisation’s full name, reflect its purpose and be usable everywhere. The resulting design is clear, attractive and works as well on paper as it does online.
Beyond the logo, we wanted the site's look and feel to reflect newsprint and, in particular, to convey some of the sensationalism present in the archive's articles. Of course, the web is not print, and we had to ensure that this objective did not compromise usability.
The solution was to use some of the headlines from LAGNA's collection on the front page. Only one is displayed for maximum impact, and it changes at random each time someone visits the site or the page is refreshed. Clicking on the headline leads to an 'image' gallery that displays all of the headlines used.
To give the impression of newsprint we used shades of grey with red highlighting. The site is designed as a multi-column layout with the main content in the most prominent position, just as it would be in print. The result is not only striking, but also clear and usable.
As with all of our sites, usability goes hand in hand with the latest web standards. Meticulous coding makes the site compatible with the widest possible range of browsers and devices and also accessible to all, whatever their abilities. This approach also helps search engines index the site.
More about the technology
To date, LAGNA has stored its catalogue in Microsoft Word documents and on paper. As the archive grew, it became more difficult to find items by anything other than date, which is limiting. Press cuttings, for example, can grouped by date, newspaper, subject and even LAGNA's own classification code.
We built a database that would contain all of this information and present it usefully online. As a result, it’s very simple to look through the catalogue and find all items relating to a specific interest. The database driving the site was created specifically for LAGNA.
Of course, presenting the information is only half of the challenge; LAGNA also needed to be able to update it. The database we produced can be accessed directly through a web interface. The interface allows staff and volunteers to edit the catalogue ‘wiki-style’ from any computer with an internet connection. Security is taken care of and the system even validates data to guard against mistakes. Despite all this, it’s as easy to use as webmail.
LAGNA are also able to update the website itself. We provided a content management system that allows site text and images to be changed without any specialist knowledge. The system is extremely intuitive: the text editor provides Microsoft Word-style formatting; and the image uploading function takes care of all necessary styling and resizing automatically.
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