Exploring Fedora/Islandora for Digital Services: Insights from the Alliance Summer Meeting
The 2012 Fedora/Islandora Pilot Digital Services Team Alliance meeting highlighted the crucial interest institutions have in digital content management and cost containment. Discussions focused on the feasibility and advantages of Fedora as a backend system due to its flexibility and potential for a wide array of use cases, complemented by Islandora as a viable frontend. Goals included testing technology, developing workflows, and strategizing migration from existing platforms. Challenges identified included the readiness of institutions to adopt these solutions, as well as the impacts of shared initiatives.
Exploring Fedora/Islandora for Digital Services: Insights from the Alliance Summer Meeting
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Presentation Transcript
Fedora IR Pilot Digital Services Team Alliance Summer Meeting July 13, 2012
Why explore a pilot? • Virtually all institutions are interested in IR cost containment • Almost 90% provide or plan to provide locally-held digitized content • Significant majorities are interested in: • Hosted services • Aggregating content • Collaborative opportunities
Why Fedora/Islandora? • In 2011, DST examined a number of IR options (DSpace, OJS, Eprints, Greenstone, Omeka, CONTENTdm, SimpleDL, BePress, Fedora/Islandora, Fedora/Hydra, IRPlus, Zentity, LASR) • Fedora had most flexible back end which would serve the greatest number of use cases • Islandora was the only viable front end for Fedora. Hydra is way too nascent and Fez is obsolete • Easy migration path
Built in features • Institution specific branding • Browse and search functionality with facets that allow users to drill into topics • Easily harvested by Google • Make resources visible in WorldCat Local via OAI-PMH • Handles specialized content types • Thumbnails for images and documents • Zoom functionality provided for images
Why partner with Colorado? • Setting up and maintaining Islandora is nontrivial • Colorado has expertise and the ability to support a production installation • Lack of depth of Fedora/Islandora knowledge in the Alliance
Goals of pilot • Test the technology • Determine appropriate workflows • Develop migration strategy from other platforms • Model recurring fixed and overhead costs as well as staff time
Goals of pilot Test the technology Determine appropriate workflows Develop migration strategy from other platforms Model recurring fixed and overhead costs as well as staff time
Challenges Not enough institutions ready to move now to be financially viable Shared ILS initiative absorbs much energyTransitions in Digital Services Program and technical issues create support and functionality issue
Recommendations Wait for the time being If we enter into a contract for a vendor on the Shared ILS initiative that offers a credible IR solution, explore the viability of that option before taking further action Those specifically interested in Islandora should monitor the UO/OSU joint project