Collection Catalogues

Along with monographs, edited volumes, and serial publications, Quire is also designed with the publication of museum collection catalogues in mind and has a specific page type for them (See all page types in the Page Types & Structure section of this guide.) Collection catalogues typically feature a page for each object, images of the object, information about it, and an essay or entry text. To publish a catalogue with Quire, you’ll capture object data, create the object pages, and then, optionally, display a list of the objects included in your publication.

Capture Object Data

Much like figures.yml or references.yml, all catalogue object metadata should be captured in a single objects.yml file in the data directory of your project and then identified as needed in the different Markdown pages of your publication. Here is a brief sample of an objects.yml file:

object_display_order:
  - artist
  - year
  - dimensions
  - medium
  - location
object_list:
  - id: 2
    title: Impression, *Sunrise*
    artist: Claude Monet
    year: 1872
    medium: Oil on canvas
    dimensions: 48 cm × 63 cm (18.9 in × 24.8 in)
    location: Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris
    link:
    figure:
      - id: "cat2"
  - id: 3
    title: Reading (portrait of Edma Morisot)
    artist: Berthe Morisot
    year: 1873
    medium: Oil on fabric
    dimensions: 74.2 x 100.3 x 12 cm (29 3/16 x 39 1/2 x 4 11/16 in.)
    location: Cleveland Museum of Art
    link: http://www.clevelandart.org/art/1950.89
    download: true
    figure:
      - id: "cat3"
      - id: "cat3a"
      - id: "cat3b"

There are two sections in the objects.yml file: object_list and object_display_order:

• The object_list is a list of the objects and their individual metadata attributes. With the exception of a few reserved terms, as noted in the table below, any attributes can be included here. These attributes and the associated values will ultimately display on the entry pages for each object.

• You control the specifics of which attributes to display and in what order by listing them under object_display_order. Following the sample above, the attributes included on the pages would be: artist, year, dimensions, medium, and location.

Any images of the object are also included here, under the figure attribute. This is a list of one or more images. It is recommended that this list contains only id values corresponding with ids in your project’s figures.yml file. However, if you prefer, you can instead include a src attribute with the filename as it appears in your project’s image directory.

Here are the only defined object attributes, you can include any others you like:

Create Object Pages

Like all other pages in your publication, object pages are generated from the Markdown files in your content directory. To create an object entry page, give the page a type: entry in the page YAML block, and list one or more objects by id corresponding to those in your objects.yml file.

type: entry
object:
  - id: 1

The page will feature any images associated with the object, followed by a table of object information and finally an essay/entry text included in the page Markdown file.

If you add multiple figures of the object, the figures are displayed in a rotating carousel and are arranged in the order they are listed in the object information in objects.yml. If any of the object figures have a caption and/or credit, they will be included as a pop-up window. And if the figure’s download attribute is set to true, a download icon will be included as well.

Generate Object Lists/Grids

In a collection catalogue, there will typically be a visual table of contents for just the catalogue entries. To create a page with a list or visual grid of all the object entries, the entries themselves need to be grouped in their own section. In Quire, this means putting them in a subdirectory within the main content directory. (Read more about it in the Pages Types & Structure section of this guide).

In this example, inside the content directory, we have a folder called catalogue and inside that, three numbered entries and an overview page:

📁 catalogue
  📄 overview.md
  📄 1.md
  📄 2.md
  📄 3.md

The overview.md file is going to be our visual table of contents. To populate it, simply give it the attribute type a value of "contents" and the attribute class a value of "brief", "list", "abstract", or "grid" to determine the style. (The "grid" option will include an image from each entry page.) This "contents" page type will automatically generate from each of the Markdown files in the folder.

title: Catalogue
type: contents
class: grid
slug: .