Digital Library Center Blog | UF

Rice University Press went all digital in 2006 and will be closing completely in September. As noted in this Chronicle article, this is particularly sad news because Rice’s experiment with going all digital held so much promise for greater sustainability.

The Chronicle article mentions an important point that I hadn’t realized: that Rice had a catalog of only approximately 20 titles. This makes sense given the labor required to edit and publish an academic text - whether digital and/or in print. However with so few volumes, the long tail effect doesn’t have much of a chance of being sustainable.

I hope that the announcement of its closing is premature, and that Rice UP is given more time. If not, the experiment hasn’t been given enough resources and time to succeed. Rice UP needs a larger catalog and a more diverse portfolio (academic books, books digitized at Rice, collaborative projects with the library, collaborative projects with the bookstore for university history books, etc)  before the actual test of sustainability can even begin, much less complete. I hope that we’ll see this experiment continue with the necessary resources for it to be a valid test.

From the SNAC website:

Leveraging the new standard Encoded Archival Context-Corporate Bodies, Persons, and Families (EAC-CPF), the SNAC Project will use digital technology to “unlock” descriptions of people from finding aids and link them together in exciting new ways. We will:

• Create efficient open-source tools that allow archivists to separate the process of describing people from that of records.
• Create a prototype integrated historical resource and access system that will link descriptions of people to one another and to descriptions of resources in archives, libraries and museums; online biographical and historical databases; and other diverse resources.

Mark Sullivan, the UFDC/DLC/dLOC programmer, recently shared this information. It’s exciting to see that SobekCM (our digital asset management system, digital library system, and digital production tool set) is such a streamlined solution with so much functionality. There are seven projects which make up the SobekCM solution. In those projects, there are:

113,643 lines of code ( not comments or empty lines )
23,452 lines of comments
420 files
60 folders
544 classes ( 55 abstract classes, 1 windows form, 5 ASPX pages )
14 interfaces

The main two projects are:

1) SobekCM_Bib_Package which has all the code to represent digital objects, read metadata, write metadata, etc.. This is used throughout all the DLC/UFDC/dLOC applications.

36,554 lines of code
5,796 lines of comments
121 files
19 folders
165 classes ( 3 abstract classes, 1 windows form )

2) SobekCM_Library which does all the rendering, navigation, authentication, etc for the SobekCM library. This relies heavily upon the above library for reading and displaying of digital resources and is utilized by both the builder and the customization manager.

68,803 lines of code
13,825 lines of comments
251 files
30 folders
328 classes ( 52 abstract classes )
11 interfaces

This does not include the 22 separate javascript files of which eight are written by me and include 3951 new lines of code and 702 lines of comments.

3) While the main SobekCM web project is not strictly a library, it is the third project in the SobekCM solution. It is the first project which a user interacts with when entering the library. This project is actually very small, containing only about 1300 .NET lines. It does house the five web forms used in the application, although these forms are quite small and are just basically skeletons into which the SobekCM_Library renders HTML or controls.

4) SobekCM_URL_Rewriter is a tiny library which is essentially just a HttpModule for rewriting and translating the URL to allow for cleaner URLs.

5) SobekCM_Tools is a small library ( about 4000 code lines ) which contains additional classes for logging, interacting with the tracking database, and interacting with the Florida Dark Archive (DAITSS). This is kept seperate from the general library since this is not strictly involved in rendering the HTML but is used by some modules and is used with the SobekCM_Library and SobekCM_Builder libraries for building collection text indexes and loading new items through the Builder.

6) FileUploadLibrary ( written by Darren Johnstone ) is about 3000 .NET code lines and 5500 lines of javascript used for uploading data via HTTP with a real-time upload progress bar. Quite useful and cool library which was adopted with very few changes and worked quite simply. Highly recommended… ( http://darrenjohnstone.net/ )

7) SobekCM_Builder. In addition to these libraries/projects used by the digital library, this library is employed (along with the SobekCM_Bib_Package, SobekCM_Library, and SobekCM_Tools) for the builder software which runs constantly in the background on another server, loading new items which are deposited into network folders or FTP folder. It also updates and builds all static pages, OAI feeds, RSS feeds, and builds the text indexes. Additionally, it reads and loads all of the FDA ingest reports from DAITSS.

6793 lines of code
858 lines of comments
26 files
3 folders
37 classes

The UF Digital Collections (UFDC) now allows users who log in to:

• Send an item to a friend via email
• Save an item to your bookshelf and add user comments to the item (comments are not displayed to others on the item, but will show within your bookshelf)
• Save a search, or browse to your favorite searches
• Share an item (via Facebook, Twitter, DIGG, StumbleUpon, Yahoo, Yahoo Buzz, Google Bookmarks, Browser favorites)
• Manage your bookshelves and saved searches through the myUFDC home page

Details for Print, Send, Save/Add, and Share:

From the UF Digital Collections, users can Print, Send, Save/Add, and Share collections, items, and searches.

Print

Clicking the Print button simply prints collection and search pages. For items, users can choose to print:

• Citation only
• Thumbnails
• Current page (prints page as displayed for zoomed views)
• All pages
• A range of pages

Share

The Share button allows users to share the collection, item, and search using Facebook, Twitter, DIGG, StumbleUpon, Yahoo, Yahoo Buzz, Google Bookmarks, and Browser favorites.

Send

The Send button allows users to send an email with the current collection, item, or search.  The Send button is only active when users are logged in (users can log in using Gatorlink or myUFDC for those without Gatorlink accounts).

Save/Add

The Save/Add button also requires users to log in. This button is either Save or Add depending on context.

On search pages, the Save button allows users to save their searches. Users can access all of their saved searches from the main myUFDC page.

On collection and item pages, the Add button allows users to Add collections to their personal homepages and can add items to bookshelves.

myUFDC Home

myUFDC Home is the first page after users log in, and it links to the user’s bookshelves, saved searches, and collections.

Bookshelves

Users can add new bookshelves, manage existing bookshelves, and make bookshelves public.

Public Bookshelf

The example below is online here.

Saved Searches

My Collections

As usage of the self-submittal and online metadata editing systems for the UF Digital Collections have continued to increase, new supports were needed to support the additional users. To provide those supports, the former UFDC_CM application has been integrated into UFDC/SobekCM and additional functionality has been added.

These improvements are releasing next week, but most users won’t notice any changes. For internal users these are immensely helpful, and worthy of announcing and celebrating.

With this upgrade, UFDC will now include administrator options so that:

• Admin users can adjust permissions on existing UFDC users (help page)
• Admin users can add new aggregation aliases for forwarding purposes
• Admin users can add new item aggregations (collections, subcollections, institutions) and edit basic information on existing aggregations.  (help page)
• Admin users can add new HTML interfaces and edit existing interfaces (help page)
• Admin users can add new projects and edit the complete metadata for project METS files online (help page)
• Admin users can add/edit wordmarks and delete wordmarks not linked to any digital resources (help page)

Thanks once again to Mark Sullivan for designing and programming these enhancements, and for writing the supporting help pages as well!

From: UF Libraries’ News, Events, and Updates

A $2.38 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to Indiana University (IU) will be used to develop software created specifically for the management of print and electronic collections for academic and research libraries around the world. The University of Florida is the lead partner for the Florida Consortium (Florida International University, Florida State University, New College of Florida, Rollins College, University of Central Florida, University of Miami, University of South Florida and the Florida Center for Library Automation), which is a founding member of a national coalition of libraries which will shape and implement the software.

IU will lead the Kuali OLE (Open Library Environment) project, a partnership of research libraries dedicated to managing increasingly digital resources and collections. Together, these libraries will develop “community source” software that will be made available to libraries worldwide. Kuali OLE (pronounced Oh-LAY) partners include Indiana University; Florida Consortium; Lehigh University; Triangle Research Libraries Network, represented by Duke University and North Carolina State University; University of Chicago; University of Maryland; University of Michigan; and the University of Pennsylvania.

“Students and faculty served by academic libraries increasingly seek 24-7 access to digital content to support their studies and research,” said Judith Russell, Dean of Libraries at the University of Florida. “Developing new and improved management tools and access to these electronic resources is essential to delivery of high quality library services. We are delighted to join our colleagues here in Florida and around the country in developing open access software to support our shared mission.”

“Large academic research libraries such as these manage and provide access to millions of items, using software to track interrelated transactions that range from ordering and paying for items to loaning materials to library patrons. As the nature of library collections expands to include more digital materials — including leased electronic journals and digitized photograph collections — libraries are increasingly interested in developing management software for these resources,” said Interim Ruth Lilly Dean of IU University Libraries Carolyn Walters.

“Libraries now create, lease and share digital materials, but the systems in place for cataloging and tracking these items are based on print collections,” said Walters. “With this project, we benefit from working together with a community of academic libraries that want to change the way that information is managed in the scholarly environment.”

“Research libraries are in dire need of systems that can support the management of research collections for the next-generation scholar,” said Robert H. McDonald, executive director for the project and IU’s associate dean for library technologies. “This approach demonstrates the best of open-source software development, directed partnership resource needs and a market of commercial support providers to truly align with the needs of research libraries within the higher education environment.”

More than 200 libraries, educational institutions, professional organizations and businesses laid the groundwork for the Kuali OLE project by participating in the original OLE project, a design phase that was supported by an earlier grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and led by Duke University. Kuali OLE project researchers will now work to create a next-generation library system that breaks away from print-based workflows and reflects the changing nature of library materials and new approaches to scholarly work.

OLE became an official project of the Kuali Foundation in November. (Kuali is a community of universities, colleges, businesses and other organizations that have partnered to build and sustain community-source software for higher education.) This affiliation gives Kuali OLE tremendous expertise in developing and sustaining community-based software.

“The Mellon Foundation has a distinguished history of supporting transformative projects for education and cultural preservation,” said Brad Wheeler, Kuali Foundation board chair and vice president for Information Technology at IU. “We are grateful for their support of this open, extensible and deeply collaborative work among the OLE investing libraries. The libraries’ choice to anchor the project in the Kuali Foundation will ensure its quality, openness and sustainability for years to come.”

“The Kuali OLE collaboration comes at the perfect time,” said Deborah Jakubs, Rita DiGiallonardo Holloway University Librarian & Vice Provost for Library Affairs at Duke University. “If libraries are to provide excellent support for scholarship and teaching well into the future, we must develop a new model that reflects the true needs of our organizations and facilitates our work in a constantly changing environment. This partnership capitalizes on the experience, the commitment, and the energy of a key group of institutions to build that model for the future of research library operations. We are grateful to The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for recognizing the promise of the OLE project, and to Kuali for offering us this opportunity to align our goals with theirs.”

Jakubs and Wheeler were recently elected co-chairs of the Kuali OLE Board of Directors at its initial board meeting in Washington, D.C., on December 16, 2009.

An accomplished team of librarians select, manage and grow the University of Florida’s research collections, which include more than 4.5 million books, 1 million documents, 550,000 maps and images, and 20,000 computer data sets. The materials support every academic discipline on campus. The libraries have built a number of nationally significant research collections.

Judith C. Russell
Dean of University Libraries
University of Florida
jcrussell@ufl.edu
352-273-2505

Open Source METS Metadata Editor: Download

About the Open Source METS Metadata Editor

One of the newest of the continual upgrades to the UF Digital Collections is online metadata editing. To make that fully operational our programmer, Mark Sullivan, revised the current standalone METS Metadata Editor application to ensure it remained in parallel. In doing so, Mark noticed that he could quickly adapt our METS Metadata Editor to serve the needs of all of the State University Libraries in Florida. Mark made those updates and the METS Metadata Editor is now available for download here.

The METS Metadata Editor is an Open Source .NET application and features:

• METS Object and METS Reader
  • Good object-oriented example, plug and play for .NET users
  • METS mappings
  • MARC ? METS/MODS ? MARC
  • METS/MODS ? Greenstone file
  • METS/MODS ? Dublin Core (could easily include Dublin core ? METS/MODS)

The METS Metadata Editor is available as an Open Source download for the Windows application from here.

In the near future, the code for the METS Metadata Editor Web application will also be available for download. The code for the  METS Metadata Editor Web application is already powering online metadata editing for the UF Digital Collections, but it’s still new and we’re gathering and incorporating user feedback to further optimize the interface right now. Once released, the METS Editor Web Application will allow users to enter and edit METS files. It probably will not include a logon system, but will instead save into a folder by IP or session number. Then, users will be able to create an item, view it, edit it, download METS, MARC, etc. A bulk importer from MARC and spreadsheets will also be available as a bundled part of the standalone and web application. The Digital Library Center already uses the importer as part of our production toolkit.

As we release more Open Source tools, please note that we’re revising our documentation but it may have different names for some of the same tools until we finish editing. The different names are all for our production toolkit, which is sometimes referred to as the DLC Toolkit, the UFDC Toolkit, the Digital Library of the Caribbean or dLOC Toolkit, and the SobekCM Toolkit. The SobekCM Toolkit has many names because the coding is brilliantly architected and modular, with the same code powering multiple tools and customized tool sets, multiple production scenarios, and multiple versions of the same applications customized for the different user groups.  Translating among the names our users know for their tools and the system components causes confusion, so we’re now referring to the collections by their names and the system-parts by the name SobekCM. The CM is for collection and content management, and Sobek is the name of an Egyptian crocodile god (because even crocodiles are Gators in Gainesville).

To help aid with any possible confusion on terminology, we have definition pages for general terms and for specific metadata fields. We’re still working on the pages for the metadata fields, because they provide a lot more than just a definition.

Each of the definitional metadata pages includes:

• Definition(s)
• Form Element
• Best Practices
• Examples
• UFDC / MODS Encoding
• Metadata Mapping
• Links to reference materials

Examples in process:

• Main Title
• Other Title
• Type
• Physical Description
• Complex Note
• Complex Abstract
• Complex Creator
• Complex Publisher
• Complex Manufacturer
• Genre
• Holding Location
• Language
• Publication Date
• Subject Scheme
• Complex Temporal
• Coordinate Points
• Spatial
• Target Audience
• Source

Old technologies can be fascinating and informative for best practices for new technologies. However, they can also be broken systems that burden users and developers who are trying to use them and work around them. PURL servers are one of the broken ones in need of replacement.

Like MARC, PURL servers are a dated concept that lead to failures. Yet, now PURLs are PURLz and are gaining new adopters, even though the US Government Printing Office had a PURL server outage that lasted over a week (Aug. 28 and still in process of correction Sept. 4). The design of PURL servers makes mirroring difficult. Thus, using PURLs to have persistent uniform resource locators can result in link failures even when resources are available, as is the case with the GPO documents right now.

With limited budgets and limited people resources, replacing a technology that isn’t clearly and provably broken can be difficult, even for the technologists who see the broken technology as looming disasters waiting to happen. While GPO’s painful downtime (and downtime is always painful) is awful, that pain could be harnessed to form a wonderfully clear argument that articulates the problems with PURL servers and advocates for their replacement. Hopefully GPO will be able to use this to replace their PURL server, as they’ve considered. Then, hopefully they can help others in migrating to technology that is more resilient and then won’t subject us all to unnecessary and painful downtime.

In practice, development doesn’t stop. Recognise this and deal with it.

“The coolest thing…” The biggest risk is that premature proscription prevents the coolest thing.

Is this a problem? Only if the system is considered as a whole. Decompose system into independent components that are tractable.

- Neil Jefferies, “Persistent IT Architectures: Building Digital Archives That Last” from the Digital Repositories Workshop: Tools and Infrastructure,23 April 2009.

Normally, I blog about historical artifacts and their connections to the past and present. Today though, history is palpably alive, forged by the citizens of the United States. Today is a day for looking ahead.