Adding and maintaining records

Most sections of the Letter Library are open for member submissions. For example: type foundries can add data about their type foundry, their type designs and their type specimens. But volunteers can add this data as well. Libraries and archives can add records about the type specimens they own. 

All that is required to add content is an account on the Letter Library. If you open a listing view for a specific content type as a registered member, you will see a blue button to add a new entry, e.g. “Add new core record”. 

The member who created a record, will become the “owner” of that record. Ownership is only meant in a technical sense. Only the owner of a record and administrators will be able to edit the content in the future. If you think, a record needs to be corrected, you can contact the owner or an administrator. There are several options to do this:

• write a personal message to the record owner
• comment publicly on the record (where possible)
• Use the “report” function. (only admins will see the report)

Claim a record

The ownership of records can also be changed when requested. For example: A volunteer created records about the typefaces of a certain foundry. The foundry later created an account on the Letter Library and now wants to update the records for their typefaces. In this case, admins can change the ownership of the records from the volunteer to the foundry account. 

Type specimens officially published as PDF can directly be uploaded to our website. Our system will present the PDF in an online viewer and also save the original PDF. During the upload, you can choose among three modes that best suit your type specimens:

• Force single pages (example)
• Force spreads (example)
• Create spreads, but allow single pages on small screens (example)

The procedure to upload PDFs is as follows:

1. Adding cross-link data: type foundry entry, type designer entries, typeface entries
2. Adding a publication record for each type specimen to the core database
3. Adding the PDF to the PDF database which links back to the core record created in step 2

Videos can be embedded from either YouTube or Vimeo. The procedure to upload videos is as follows:

1. Optional: Upload a backup copy of your video to the Video category in our Downloads section. After the video was uploaded, make a note of the file ID that is shown in the browser URL. For example: The ID in the URL https://letterlibrary.org/files/file/50-degular/ is 50. 
2. Adding cross-link data: type foundry entry, type designer entries, typeface entries
3. Adding a publication record for video to the core database
4. Adding a record in the Type Specimen & Marketing Videos database. Just paste the URL of the YouTube or Vimeo video and the video will be shown with an embedded player. 
   Make sure to also add a cover image representing the video and add the backup video ID as explained in step 1 if applicable. 

Scans and pictures of printed materials (books, leaflets, posters) can be added to our Gallery section. 

The procedure to upload scans is as follows:

1. Prepare the images as described under How to prepare Gallery images on our FAQ page. 
2. (Optional: Prepare a download archive as described under How to prepare hi-res downloads on our FAQ page and upload the archive to our Downloads section. Make note of the file ID that was created and is shown in the browser address bar after the upload.)
3. Adding cross-link data: type foundry entry, type designer entries, typeface entries
4. Adding a publication record for each type specimen to the core database
5. Adding the images to the Gallery
   1. Open the member Gallery and click Add Images
   2. Choose a category to create an album for each publication
   3. Choose Create New Album
   4. Add an album title and click Create Album
   5. Upload all images
   6. When the upload was processed, make note of the Album ID that is shown on the page.
6. Create a record in the Collector’s Objects database
   1. Link the core publication created under step 4
   2. Add the Album ID from step 5.6
   3. (If you created a download archive under step 2, add the download ID)
   4. Save the page to view the public record containing all uploaded images

Send in materials to be scanned/photographed

In addition to the steps mentioned before, you can also send in your physical type specimen materials. We archive your materials in collaboration with the printing museum Pavillon-Presse in Weimar, Germany. Your materials will be added to the museum’s type specimen library and can be digitized for the Letter Library platform. The museum’s address can be found here:

https://pavillon-presse.de/preise-anfahrt/