Template talk:Ltmcollection
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[edit] Purpose
The purpose of this template is to access images on the London Transport Museum Photographic Collection website at http://www.ltmcollection.org. This site contains an extensive collection of images of London and its public transport (buses, trams, trolleybuses and tube trains) from the 19th century to the current day. It is therefore a useful resource for anyone preparing articles on any of these topics.
[edit] Usage
The template takes the format: {{ltmcollection|1|2}} which expands to: [http://www.ltmcollection.org/images/webmax/{{{1}}} {{{2}}}]
Currently the two parameters are:
- The final subpath and filename of image required. To obtain this:
- Find an image on the Museum website
- Right-click on the image and select properties from the context menu, then:
- If you are using Internet Explorer, copy the last two groups from the Address property that is displayed
- If you are using Firefox, copy the last two groups from the Location property that is displayed (you may need to resize the box to see it in full)
- Thus in the following URL, http://www.ltmcollection.org/images/webmax/iz/i00008iz.jpg, the bold section should be copied. Note this includes the filename extension
- The description of the image you want to be displayed.
[edit] Example
In the following example the last two groups of the URL are iz/i00008iz.jpg and the description to be displayed in the article is Tube train at Aldwych station, 1958.
Thus: {{ltmcollection|iz/i00008iz.jpg|Tube train at Aldwych station, 1958}}
Produces: Tube train at Aldwych station, 1958
[edit] History
Template revised by DavidCane 00:39, 4 September 2007 (UTC) to suit new URL format.
This page modified slightly by DavidCane 23:19, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
Template created by DavidCane, 14 July 2005. This page created DavidCane 00:49, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Further development
The search form provided by the London Transport Museum Photographic Collection generates a very long and cumbersome URL and I am currently investigating ways to use a template to link directly to this search form using keywords, possibly so that some of the additional context information provided on the web site for an image can be displayed through the template.
[edit] Justification
I'm not all together convinced that this template is justified. When adding images, one will still have to browse and, thus, find the exact image URL. Templates are not to maintain external links (similar ones have been deleted after going through WP:TFD). Would it not be better to create a project for this topic and include a link to the gallery and information on how to include the material.
If there is set up a project, pages relevant to that article could be placed in a category to have a centralised overview of them. --Swift 21:23, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
- The justification for this template is that a direct link to an image page on the London's Transport Museum Photographic Collection site creates a URL of more than 700 characters thus:
- This is impossibly complex to type and also unneccessarily long in terms of memory usage. The alternative short URL which can be obtained from the image properties of the enlarged version of the image has the much more compact format thus:
- This template combines this short form and an image tag in one easy package. I don't see that there is any reason not to use a template to maintain an external link to this information. It works in much the same way as more than 200 similar templates listed at Category:External link templates which do the same thing.
- This template qualifies under the first of the three reasons given in the introduction to Category:External link templates - the London's Transport Museum Photographic Collection site contains primary source material. The information on that site is a unique historical record which is copyright of Transport for London. It cannot be added to Wikipedia, and there is simply no public domain collection of this sort of material.
- With regards to having to browse the site for the information needed to complete the template, the instructions are included above on this page using much the same methodology given for the Imdb template at Template talk:Imdb name. - DavidCane 00:42, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
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- Thanks! This is a justification, indeed. --Swift 05:59, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Updated Photograph URLs
I have visited the LTM Photographic Collection website, and I have noticed that the site has been redesigned recently. As part of this modification, the URL format for the photographs has changed slightly. For example, the original URL for the Looking down station platform, 1921 photo (linked from the Covent Garden tube station article) is http://photos.ltmcollection.org/images/max/i9/i00009i9.jpg, but with the new format, the URL for this photo is http://www.ltmcollection.org/images/webmax/i9/i00009i9.jpg (the 'photos' subdomain is now simply 'www', and the 'max' subfolder has been renamed 'webmax'). The images still exist at the original URLs, however, so is it worth updating this template to reflect the new URL format? Andrew (My talk) 23:45, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
- I noticed this myself the other day and, although the old format still works, I was planning to revise the template to use the new format URL in case LTM stops supporting the old style - this is now done. --DavidCane 00:32, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
