In addition to great added functionality like item-level statistics for external users, the UF Digital Collections‘ underlying SobekCM system is always improving in terms of internal infrastructure. One recent major enhancement is the “Directory” view. The Directory View is very important to ensure we can easily and quickly check and verify all files, including...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...