Abstract
CB-Essay is an open-source publishing framework that extends CollectionBuilder with tools for writing long-form, multimodal scholarship directly on top of a digital collection. Built on Jekyll and a static-site architecture in keeping with minimal computing principles, it lets authors compose essays and digital exhibits in Markdown while pulling items from a collection's own metadata into the text—inline galleries, margin notes, mini-maps, and more. Scroll-based section transitions support narrative pacing across longer pieces, and the same source produces both a web edition and a print-ready PDF, so a single project can serve as website, essay, and book. Developed by the Center for Digital Inquiry and Learning (CDIL) at the University of Idaho Library, CB-Essay is aimed at digital humanities and static-web/minimal computing practitioners who want to keep writing, data, and interpretation in one Git-native, dependency-light repository rather than spread across separate platforms.