The Mandala Project is a connected "ecology" of web tools that are used for storing, organizing, and publishing collections of scholarly media. The ecology consists of digital tools, or "media specific sites", for creating content, as well as portals for viewing content and services for connecting content together. Collections can include videos, audio files, photos, texts, visualizations such as charts or network graphs, and much more.
Mandala allows scholars to create this sophisticated content without needing special grants or much programming assistance. Scholars of all skill-levels can easily create rich collections, for using Mandala is simple. First, add content using a media specific site, such as Mediabase, SHIVA, or Shared Shelf, all of which can be accessed with Netbadge. Next, catalog and connect content together with Knowledge Map terms, which can be thought of as a "semantic glue." Finally, explore your collections in portals that show all of your content, as well as the content of others, and focus your exploration by searching for the Knowledge Map terms that interest you.
Overall, the Mandala framework aims to allow scholars to create sophisticated content without needing special grants or much programming assistance. It comprises a suite of websites, each of which has a special focus. In essence, it is a Content Management System (CMS) that allows scholars of all skill levels, including beginners just introduced to it, to publish their work online. The Mandala project allows scholars to create complex digital collections, create visualizations, describe intricate networks of human culture, publish essays, and build websites.
Sites created using the tools offered in the Mandala Framework can either be content-intensive, communication-intensive, or a mixture of the two. A content-intensive site can have large collections of interrelated media resources (texts, photographs, audio-video, etc.) and structured data (bibliographies, place descriptions, dictionary entries, biographical studies, etc.) organized around a specific thematic subject – a cultural region, time period, person, and so forth. On the other hand, a communication-intensive site would have shorter essays, such as blogs, meaning that content is rapidly changing. Either type of site may also have visualizations, such as maps, charts, timelines, network graphs, slideshows, and more. A blended site that has both complex collections of media resources and structured data, as well as a constantly updated array of essays, is also possible to create.
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Needs a sidebar with more specific use examples