While trying to remember the URL to create custom queries in CONTENTdm, I was astounded to realise that CDM doesn't block access to the Custom Queries pages. This means that anybody can, once they know the URL, go to anybody else's page and build a page that links to their collections!
They even show up on Google, as a search for "CONTENTdm custom queries" will make obvious. I only saw 9 in the search results, which makes me wonder why Google is grabbing those and not others. However, once I knew the URL, any digital collections' site was fair game!
I'm torn on how I feel about this. It seems neat that I can now make web pages that will search the collections of libraries that I'm not even slightly affiliated with. I could theoretically build a mega-search tool that searches all the different CONTENTdm installations everywhere (though it'd probably be too much work to be worthwhile)!
On the other hand, it just seems like bad practice to let anybody into the back-end who isn't associated with your university, your library, your archives, what have you. For now I'll give CDM the benefit of the doubt and assume this is a purposeful thing (so that you can let professors or researchers access it, maybe?) and not an oversight.
But I still don't want it showing up on a Google search! Even if I am one of a very few who actually search for that.
The solution: robots.txt
A ton of people have created a ton of much more useful tutorials on the subject than I ever could, so I'll just link to one of those: http://www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html
In any case, I'll be adding this to the archives robots.txt file:
User-agent *
Disallow: /cdm4/cqr/
Of course, that doesn't mean people won't be able to access it, but at least it won't start showing up in Google...
Labels: CONTENTdm