This post celebrates two key recent events. The first is that digital collections and libraries powered by SobekCM have now seen over 100 million user views! This is particularly impressive given that SobekCM is only 7 years old. The second point to celebrate is that a single SobekCM host has now server 100 million views!
I wrote about the history of SobekCM for it’s last birthday, in March 2012.
Since that time, more digital libraries and collections are powered by SobekCM, including shared, collaborative, and innovative libraries and collections like:
- Orange Grove Texts Plus
- FIU-Wolfsonian Digital Image Catalog
- NewspaperCat
- SobekCM METS Editor in use internationally and heavily used by Florida State University Libraries
- And, many more digital libraries and collections hosted on shared servers for Florida and with external sites and systems located internationally
In addition to SobekCM growing in terms of what it powers, features, and functionality, its incredible ability to handle scale, scope, and complexity of the full digitization production and born digital curation process is perhaps most impressive. In fact, SobekCM now supports over 500 digital collections and over 8 million pages of Open Access content from unique manuscripts and letters, antique maps, rare children’s literature books, theses and dissertations, newspapers, historic photographs, oral histories, data sets, audio and video, and so much more, and all with rapid response times and ease of use. This functionality literally makes my work in digital scholarship and digital publishing possible. Without a feature-rich and easy to use system like SobekCM, my work in data/digital curation and digital humanities simply would not be possible, or not at the high level that is made possible through SobekCM.
In addition to the existing rich features, enhancements are also underway with a Haitian Creole interface in process for the Vodou Archive, advanced EAD handling and even further enhanced geospatial support in process as part of the Unearthing St. Augustine grant, and new supports for display and digital publishing always developing as part of the work with faculty and scholars for their needs, as with the amazing Island Luminous scholarly edited collection and exhibit which is again powered by SobekCM.
The feature-rich supports for patrons or users are just part of the picture. In addition, the supports for internal library, archive, and museum folks for digital production also continue to improve with enhanced metadata handling, TEI support now in place (thanks to interest from the Early Caribbean Digital Archive), more advanced thumbnail overviews, and soon to be in place online quality control (working from the extensively used and loved desktop quality control tool as part of the SobekCM toolbox and the dLOC Toolkit).
Perhaps more important than all of these enhancements is the sheer size, scope, and capacity of SobekCM. A single instance of it hosted for Florida contains over 8 million pages, and so over 40 million digital files, and this past month saw 4 million human user views alone!
The 4 million user views brought this single Florida instance of SobekCM to a total of over 100 million user views!
Over 100 million user views is definitely something to celebrate, and definitely worth celebrating even more when it happens for SobekCM’s birthday!
Happy Birthday to SobekCM!
Happy Birthday to the collections it already powers, including the:
Happy Birthday to all!
Congratulations to all partners, scholars, patrons, and users who contributed to this! Thanks and congratulations to Mark Sullivan and his team with the UF Libraries, and thanks and congratulations to the UF George A. Smathers Libraries!
Happy Birthday SobekCM, and congratulations to all who benefit and thanks to all who contribute to this ongoing success!