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Navigating & Bookmarking VoS

The original version of VoS consisted of large, static Web pages on which links were organized within a fixed hierarchy of categories and subcategories. The new VoS is built upon a database that holds information in individual, modular records and constructs the apparent relation of information items "on-the-fly" as the user requests it. This means that there is immense flexibility and control over how information is categorized on the site. The implications for navigating and bookmarking include the following:

• By default, we have set up the links on the VoS Home Page to serve up the site in large chunks similar to the pages on the original VoS—for example, Literary Theory or English Romantic Literature. But in fact any information item on the site that holds sub-items within it (what we call a "category," indicated in boldface) can be isolated on its own page with all its subordinate items. Just click on any category and it becomes its own page that can be bookmarked or linked to. So, for example, if you are building a Web site for a course on Gothic literature, you can now link to The Gothic as its own page (whereas on the old VoS you would have had to bookmark or link to a specific position on the larger Romantic literature page.
• Some boldfaced categories (meaning anything that has sub-levels of content) are the titles of individual sites or home pages on the Web from which VoS has also linked to suhpages. On the old VoS, clicking on the title of the site would bring the user directly to that site. But in the new VoS, clickiing on the title of the site (in its role as category title) simply isolates that category and its subordinate links on its own page. To go directly to the home page of such a site, click on the link titled "Home Page" (example).
• Do not be intimidated by the complex nature of the URLs for particular sections of the new VoS. For example, the category titled "Politics of the Net" within the Cyberculture page has the URL: http://english.ucsb.edu/vos/browse.asp?id=2710#id2082. You can bookmark or link to this URL. The category will be there the next time you return, though its particular content may have changed depending on what has been added or deleted from our database.

Searching VoS

VoS Search is case insensitive and finds matches or partial matches for exact strings. (Boolean searching is not yet implemented.) Word thus matches word, words, swords, and Wordsworth. Search is limited to ~100 entries (200 references) per result set.

Accounts on VoS

Users can sign up for a free account on VoS by clicking on My Account at the top of any page. Accounts allow users to contribute links to VoS and to keep a personal "My Account" page showing the all the links they have added to the site. In the future, accounts will also allow users additional editorial privileges, including the ability to revise and maintain links they have contributed.

Contributing to VoS

Once users sign up for a free account on VoS, they will be able to use Web forms to suggest links for particular areas of the site. To add a link, navigate in VoS to the particular page, or category on a page, that is relevant and click on "Suggest a Link" for that page. Follow the instructions on the form that appears. Suggested links appear right away on VoS under Unvetted Submissions. They later on the regular pages after being reviewed by VoS editors. (The VoS editorial staff retains the right to edit suggestions as well as to delete inappropriate suggestions.) Currently, users can only suggest one location in VoS for a link. Use the "notes" field in the form to suggest to the VoS editors that a link be cross-referenced in other areas of the site. (Please do not submit the same link twice in different locations, since this creates duplicate records in our database.)

Editing VoS (for those with accounts)

In a later implementation phase of the new VoS, users who have signed up for accounts will have additional editorial privileges allowing them to maintain/revise links that they have contributed. There will also be group accounts that enable classes, organizations, conferences, etc. to build subsets of VoS resources that will appear both on the regular VoS pages and on a special page set aside for the group (e.g., the "English 130," "History 186," or "Conference 2001" VoS Resources Page). VoS will thus be an open platform serving the needs of both general and specific communities of users. (Contributions will be subject to editorial review by Alan Liu and VoS editorial assistants to maintain overall quality, consistency, and sense of context.)

Technical Info about the Site

The new VoS holds its data—categories, links, descriptions, and other information—in a SQL Server 2000 database that developers add to and revise through Web forms. Macromedia's UltraDev4 program is used to create the "middleware" programming (in this case, ASP2.0 and VBScript) that connects the database to the Web. When a user calls on the new VoS, the database in the background generates a page of data "on the fly" based on the latest records and the user's exact request. (Credits for technical development of the site)