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DLP Updates Newsletter - Spring 2019

DLP Updates Newsletter - Spring 2019

Created by Emily Porter
Last updated: Apr 29, 2019

In This Issue

  • Spotlight On…
  • Project Overview & A Brief History
  • Project Updates
  • Samvera & Digital Library Community Updates

Spotlight On...

DLP is Hiring!

Three new positions have been established to support the work of the Digital Library Program and related efforts in the Library Technology & Digital Strategies team. Building on the recommendations of an operational readiness consultation conducted in summer 2018, a new Digital Preservation Program Manager role has been created. This position will collaborate with other product managers in the newly established Digital Product Strategy team, with a focus on establishing specialized preservation software features and workflows to support the preparation, ingest and migration of content into Emory’s preservation repository. The Library Software Engineering Team is also hiring two additional software engineers for three-year term appointments to support the ongoing development of the new digital repository platform.

Project Overview & A Brief History

The Digital Library Program has developed through multiple project phases:

  • Phase 1: Planning and Discovery (2016 - 2018)
  • Phase 2: Technical Design (2018)
  • Phase 3: Implementation (2019 – 2020)

Cor (Latin for “heart”, inspired by the Emory motto: “the wise heart seeks knowledge”) is the internal name for the Emory Preservation Repository platform currently in development. Cor will include multiple, inter-related software applications based on the Samvera (previously known as Hydra) digital repository technology framework.

Project Updates

The Digital Library Program team began the first stage of implementation for the Cor repository in 2019, focused on initial application development along with pilot migrations for five digital collections identified by the Digital Collections Steering Committee. This first phase of implementation will also develop migration utilities for selected data sources. Frequently Asked Questions have been added to the project wiki to provide more information about implementation.

Software Development

The Cor Repository Suite will be comprised of three Samvera-based applications:

  1. Discovery/Front-End (Lux): a customized Blacklight-based application which provides discovery and delivery of Emory repository assets to the Emory community and greater research community
  2. Staff Curation and Preservation (Curate): a customized Hyrax-based Library Staff curation tool providing specialized ingest, management and preservation of Emory repository digital assets
  3. Self Deposit: a customized Hyrax-based mediated submission tool supporting multiple deposit workflows for campus content creators and submitters

The first phase of implementation will produce version 1 features for the Curate and Lux products (the Self Deposit application will be developed in a future project phase). Cor products will continue to receive enhancements and new feature development over time as we continue to migrate additional content and integrate with additional systems.

Curate Product Development

The Curate product is being developed incrementally using a Scrum process. The development team completed Release 0.1: Environments Setup in early April. This release provisioned interim development, QA, and production Amazon Web Hosting (AWS) environments with Samvera framework components installed. Preliminary Shibboleth integration was also established. We are also consulting with the AWS@Emory team to inform selection of the DLP’s long-term hosting infrastructure.

The development team has also just completed Release 0.2: Models and Metadata, in which the DLP Metadata Application Profile and Archival Information Package requirements were configured within the Hyrax software. This work is a prerequisite for us to begin configuring deposit and preservation features.

The software engineering team is now focused on Release 0.3: Basic Deposit and Editing. This release will provide a basic interface to populate metadata and upload files to create a digital object and store it in the repository. Additional queued releases for Curate include Digital Preservation, Migration Support, Staff UI and Reporting, Discovery Support, and Production Launch.

Lux Product Development

The Lux product team has also identified a preliminary release map for version 1. The development team began work to establish interim development, QA, and production environments in AWS. Development on the Lux product will become more active after content has been migrated, and as the Emory Libraries web redesign project completes. The Lux product interface will utilize the Libraries’ forthcoming new visual design and pattern library assets.

Migration Planning

The Migration team is preparing the first five collections for migration: the Oxford College Collection of Asian Artifacts collection, selected Yellowbacks volumes, Health Sciences Center Library Artifact collection, the Robert Langmuir African American photograph collection, and Emory yearbooks. We will migrate over 14,000 digital objects containing nearly 1.5 million files (around 4TB of data) in this first phase.

Preparatory work has included developing an overall migration readiness checklist that the team is working through for each collection. Mapping worksheets have been developed for digital files and metadata to assist with the current and future migrations. The team is revising both the DAMS metadata schema and the Digital Collection Development pull-list template to include any new properties required for Cor repository ingest.

The project team is also engaging the services of Data Curation Experts, a Samvera framework consultant who worked with the Emory Libraries on the 2017 ETD redevelopment project. DCE will assist us with developing and configuring bulk import methods to support migrations.

Samvera & Digital Library Community Updates

Distributed Digital Preservation Grant Activities

Members of the DLP project team (Rosalyn Metz and Collin Brittle) are contributing to development of distributed digital preservation efforts in the community. Emory use cases identified in the Discovery Phase are being shared as part of this work. Beyond the Repository: Integrating Local Preservation Systems with National Distribution Services extends an IMLS planning grant originally funded in 2016, and will develop a shared BagIt profile and accompanying API to facilitate data exchange between local repositories and preservation service providers. The One to Many: Preserving Local Repository Content in Distributed Digital Preservation Systems grant, funded by Mellon, also focuses on the goal of interoperability and exchange of material between repositories, leveraging expertise from the Samvera community and Oxford Common Filesystem Layout (OCFL) specification team.

Samvera Community Sprints

Collin Brittle, DLP’s Technical Lead, recently participated in a Samvera community development sprint working on the Hyrax product’s codebase. The development sprint included developers from seven institutions, and was one of several planned over the next few months to significantly revise the Hyrax product architecture to enable it to support multiple data and file storage platforms in addition to Fedora (the standard option in Samvera).

Project Contacts

For more information or questions about the Digital Library Program, or to send feedback about this newsletter,  please contact:

Emily Porter , Digital Repository Program Manager

Tiffany Miles , Project Manager

Rosalyn Metz , DLP Project Sponsor

Collin Brittle , DLP Technical Lead

Nik Dragovic , DLP Product Manager