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 all metadata files, and locate, copy, and send any files per patron request. This was a very small technical change, with significant day-to-day operational benefits. In keeping with principles for smart design, the internal Directory View is built within the same external user views – ensuring that we trouble-shoot and verifyRead More →

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 ofRead More →

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.Read More →

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, writeRead More →

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, andRead More →

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 purposesRead More →

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.Read More →

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,Read More →

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.Read More →