[Web4lib] selecting a CMS/DAMS for a digital library

Sat Feb 20 07:37:22 EST 2010

Thanks to Cary for mentioning Islandora. I thought I would provide a few quick updates since our website is undergoing a major change.

We are close to putting an updated version of the Islandora code on the DuraSpace and Islandora sites and it should be there by the end of the month. The Drupal contrib module will be accessible via the Drupal site hopefully later in March. We also have a number of community members that are working with us to create install packages for various operating systems and distributions, these will be made available as we get them. New cloud/VM versions (including an updated EC2 image) will also be forthcoming.

As Cary clarified in another message Islandora is an open source project that links Drupal and Fedora (http://www.fedora-commons.org/) together and does so using modular functionality we call Solution Packs. Our first Solution Pack is the Institutional Repository SP, parts of which can be seen via the VirtualBox demo and the live site http://islandscholar.ca/. This SP also provides a lot of functionality not obvious here, such as LDAP authentication, automatic conversion of various document formats to PDF, immediate indexing on ingest, multiple metadata records for each object, Dublin Core editor and integration with SHERPA/RoMEO. 

The code release that I mention above will include this IR Solution Pack. Our next SP will be Books, which will be based on the functionality seen in http://islandlives.ca/. Included here is an OpenLayers J2K viewer, automated backend workflows, community tagging, TEI editor and more. Following this will be Maps, Images and Video/Audio SPs, all with features optimized for these data formats. If your institution has an interest in stewarding research data we will also be releasing SPs for specific research domains.

I can also say that we are working hard on updating the main http://islandora.ca/ site with more information. We just received major funding of $2 million to build the Islandora framework and will be working with other open source efforts to integrate a wide range of functionality into the Islandora ecosystem, so we hope to have a number of announcements in the coming months.

Since hosting was mentioned by Kelly I should also mention that we are providing hosting services for the Islandora stack as well as installation services and support and I would happy to respond to questions about these offline.

Mark

On 2010-02-18, at 4:26 PM, Cary Gordon wrote:

> Islandora has a VirtualBox Image that you could use either to test or
> in production.
> 
> They also have a EC2 image that you can both demo and/or use to create
> an EC2 instance.
> 
> The EC2 instance is running the latest versions of Drupal and dSpace.
> 
> http://islandora.ca/Module
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Cary
> 
> On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 10:51 AM, Kelly McElroy <kellymce at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Thanks to all for the responses and helpful suggestions. As requested, here
>> is a bit more information about the situation: the organization aims to
>> collect documents (mostly PDFs of text, but possibly other formats,
>> including TIFFs of maps, PowerPoint presentations, and so on) related to a
>> particular treaty. This will include some published material, as well as
>> some archival material, so there will need to be some creative use of
>> metadata to reflect the full context. The most common users are expected to
>> be academics and government agency employees, although a secondary tier of
>> secondary students and amateur historians is also anticipated. There has
>> been relatively little interest in any 2.0 or social interaction component.
>> 
>> In terms of specific products suggested, I have been looking at both DSpace
>> and Omeka. Omeka is especially appealing for its simplicity, since there
>> will not be a long-term librarian or archivist working on the project.
>> However, neither of these solutions is compatible with the existing IT
>> infrastructure, which is very Microsoft-focused: Windows Server, SQL Server,
>> Exchange Server, IIS, .Net programming. I've heard some experiences of
>> installing DSpace onto Windows servers, but it requires knowledge of Linux
>> that we will not have. Hosting off-site is another possibility. The other
>> option seems to be using a virtual appliance such as JumpBox. I'm still
>> researching the implications of this -- again, I would be very grateful to
>> hear any experiences with such things.
>> 
>> Thank you again for all your assistance.
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Kelly
>> 
>> On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 9:28 AM, Pollock, Chad <cpollock at rogersark.org>wrote:
>> 
>>> I have wanted to try the opensource OMEKA for this type of project.  I
>>> have never used it, but it looks like it might suit your needs.
>>> http://omeka.org/ .  It's from the Center for History and New Media, the
>>> same folks that brought us Zotero.
>>> 
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Cary Gordon [mailto:listuser at chillco.com]
>>> Sent: Thursday, February 18, 2010 8:36 AM
>>> To: Kelly McElroy
>>> Cc: web4lib at webjunction.org
>>> Subject: Re: [Web4lib] selecting a CMS/DAMS for a digital library
>>> 
>>> I recommend that you take a look at UPEI's Islandora project which
>>> marries Drupal on the front end and dSpace/DuraSpace on the back end.
>>> There system is very straightforward to use (The word. easy. is not
>>> something that I would apply to any digital library system, but it
>>> makes great strides.).
>>> 
>>> Of course, the combined cost of these two great free and open source
>>> products is free.
>>> 
>>> http://islandora.ca/
>>> 
>>> Thanks,
>>> 
>>> Cary
>>> 
>>> On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 4:32 PM, Kelly McElroy <kellymce at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>> Hello all,
>>>> 
>>>> I am brand new to the list, so apologies if this is off-topic. I am a
>>>> student in the MLIS program at the University of British Columbia, and
>>> am
>>>> currently doing a co-op work term helping a non-profit organization
>>> start a
>>>> digital library. We're currently considering different software
>>> programs,
>>>> and while I've been sifting through the big players (including
>>> CONTENTdm,
>>>> Greenstone, and per IT's request, SharePoint) I keep wondering if
>>> there is a
>>>> simpler option that I am missing. I've used a few helpful case studies
>>> as
>>>> well asinformation put out by JISC, but I'm curious: are there are
>>> other
>>>> good tools out there for this sort of decision-making?
>>>> 
>>>> Thank you in advance, and feel free to respond off-list.
>>>> 
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> Kelly McElroy
>>>> MAS/MLIS candidate, University of British Columbia
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Web4lib mailing list
>>>> Web4lib at webjunction.org
>>>> http://lists.webjunction.org/web4lib/
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> --
>>> Cary Gordon
>>> The Cherry Hill Company
>>> http://chillco.com
>>> 
>>> 
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> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Cary Gordon
> The Cherry Hill Company
> http://chillco.com
> 
> 
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Mark Leggott, University Librarian
University of Prince Edward Island
550 University Ave. Charlottetown, PE C1A 4P3
902-566-0460  mleggott at upei.ca  Skype: markleggott