Digital Library Center Blog | UF

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

Digital Humanities 2011 conference: June 19-22, 2011, with excursions on June 23rd, to be hosted by Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, USA.

The ADHO Programme Committee will be issuing the Call for Papers, Short Papers, Posters, and Panels in late August 2010 with an anticipated deadline in November 2010.

This year’s program committee members are:
ACH: Bethany Nowviskie, Dot Porter, and Katherine Walter
ALLC: Arianna Ciula, John Nerbonne, and Jan Rybicki
SDI-SEMI: Dominic Foret, Cara Leitch, and Daniel O’Donnell

Local organizers are Glen Worthey and Matt Jockers.

In working on metadata concerns, we recently had cause to pull a full list of all creators in the UF Digital Collections. This is infrastructure-style work (meaning not-glorious and not-exciting to most folks, but critically important). While behind-the-scenes metadata work is only exciting to some of us, the products of that work are exciting for everyone. Long-term deliverables take more time, but in the short term we can see visualizations and other fun things like wordles.

For instance, of the thousands and thousands (and thousands) of authors/creators, Florida and University are clearly dominant, as illustrated in the wordles below.

The  University of Florida Digital Collections (UFDC) now have over 5 million pages!

The more than 5 million pages - maps, aerials, audio, video, books, historic documents, museum objects, herbarium specimens, photographs, newspapers, oral histories, and more - are all openly and freely online for the world!

Check out the collections: www.uflib.ufl.edu/ufdc

The University of Florida Digital Collections (UFDC) are always improving. Most of our current improvements at the moment are from moving servers to newer, more stable equipment (and making updates required from the server move). Despite the time that the server move requires, listed below are some of our recent and particularly great new enhancements to share!

Facets

The University of Florida Digital Collections (UFDC) now has facets to help refine searches and browses by language, subject terms, and more. See this page for an example http://ufdcweb1.uflib.ufl.edu/ufdc/?a=fdnl1&m=lbball

Citation Links

Key components of the citations for each item are now also linked for easy searching, as in this example.

User Contributed Descriptions

UFDC now allows for user contributed descriptions. The descriptions can be activated for any collection (they’re turned off by default). When activated, this allows any logged in user to add a description to an item. The description is added in a note field, and the username and date that the description was added are automatically added as well.

Coming Soon

The next project (aside from the server move and related updates) is EAC/EAD integration. That’s expected soon and more details will be available as it gets closer to implementation.

Not only does the new interface for the Florida Aerial Photography Digital Collection support searching using the Google Map interface (complete with drag and drop pins for search refinement), it also supports searching by address. If that weren’t enough, Mark Sullivan (UF Digital Collections and Digital Library Center Programmer) now has the location circled on the images.

Drawing something on the images may seem easy, but it isn’t. Drawing on a normal image is easy - image size, where to draw, calculate, etc.  The images in the Florida Aerial Photography Digital Collection are being delivered by a JPEG2000 server. The server allows people to select the size of the image, the zoom level, and the area to focus on. Drawing on these images thus requires interaction with the JPEG2000 server to know the size and location on the image in all permutations. This is impressive alone, and made all the more impressive by having it along with so many other improvements, all of which work seamlessly together.

Other improvements include enhancements to the left-side navigation bar. It now includes a list of the specific resulting tiles by area, a thumbnail image of the complete tile for use in re-positioning on the tile, and a small Google Map for use in positioning in context.

Try out the new interface for the Florida Aerial Photography Digital Collection using the map search here!

The UF Digital Collections now has a new map interface. It’s only out in beta right now, but it’s already awesome. The new map interface is explained here and active in beta here.

The new interface allows users to:

• Search by address
• Search by selecting a point on a map
• Search by selecting an area on a map

The new interface is for the Florida historical aerial photographs, which people often use to find information on land use for a small area. The aerials are taken in flight lines, and so they cover large areas. To make them usable in the ideal manner, people need to be able to search by the address and then see the results that are closest to that address both overall (the flight level, with some matches) and the tile/individual photograph level for the exact matches.

Luckily for everyone involved with the Florida aerials, the UF Digital Collections, and for all of the users of all of the collections, Mark Sullivan both implemented the searching by collection and new functionality for using the results at the flight and tile levels.

For instance, see the results lists with all of the items and their locations like this. By clicking on one of those flights, then the matching individual tiles within the flight are shown on the left side like this.

As incredibly exciting as this is, what’s really exciting - to me - is how this continues the overall smart design of all of UFDC by making sure that all work serves existing and future needs. For future needs, this will eventually be incorporated into the online metadata editing. Then, people will able to draw an area or add a point to a Google map and have that automatically add the latitude and longitude to the metadata. Once the information is there, then everyone will be able to view and find those items using the map interface.

It can’t show all of the value from smart design and optimally leveraging new technologies. Of course, that doesn’t really matter because the new map interface is incredible even when viewed in isolation, so try it out!

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

With three iPhone apps out, downloads have increased, with 45 downloads of the main SobekPH App from 3/1-3/7/2010, 14 downloads of the Baldwin SobekPH app, and 5 downloads of the UF Archives SobekPH App. Given that the Baldwin and UF Archives apps were only out for 1/2 of the week, 19 downloads in just a few days means we’re already showing great results for sharing the UF Digital Collections more widely.

Hopefully all of the folks downloading the apps are also showing the apps and sharing with friends!

More content is almost always better, so the SobekPH App for accessing multiple collections from the UF Digital Collections is best for more content. However because each of the collections already has such a vast supply of content to offer, we’re also starting to release iPhone Apps for each of the individual collections.

Two new iPhone Apps are now available, one for UF’s University Archives photographs and another for the Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature Digital Collection. Check them out in the App store (SobekPH UF Archives and SobekPH Baldwin), or see them online in the UF Digital Collections!