Category: Open Source Software

National Science Digital Library NCore Team Releases NSDL Search, MediaWiki Extensions, and WordPress MU Plug-Ins

The National Science Digital Library NCore team has released three applications:

Open Source Multimedia Document Creation and Reading Tool: Sophie Version 1.0 Released

The Institute for the Future of the Book has released version 1.0 of Sophie, an open source tool for creating and reading multimedia networked documents.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Sophie is software for writing and reading rich media documents in a networked environment.

Sophie’s goal is to open up the world of multimedia authoring to a wide range of people and institutions and in so doing to redefine the notion of a book or "academic paper" to include both rich media and mechanisms for reader feedback and conversation in dynamic margins.

Read more about Sophie at "Sophie Project Gets $1 Million from Macarthur Foundation," the Sophie documentation, and the Sophie tutorials.

Vertov Plug-in Brings Digital Audio/Video Annotation to Zotero

Concordia University’s Digital History Lab has released Vertov, an open-source Zotero plug-in that allows users to create clips from digital audio or video files, annotate them, and include the annotations in Zotero.

Read more about it at "Vertov: A Media Annotating Plugin for Zotero" and "Vertov Brings Video Annotation to Zotero."

Presentations from the Open Access Collections Workshop Now Available

Presentations from the Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories' Open Access Collections workshop are now available. Presentations are in HTML/PDF, MP3, and digital video formats. The workshop was held in association with the Queensland University Libraries Office of Cooperation and the University of Queensland Library.

NEH Awards $474,474 in Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants

The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded $474,474 to Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants recipients.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Note: The We the People program encourages and strengthens the teaching, study, and understanding of American history and culture. Grants bearing this designation have been recognized for advancing the goals of this program.

ALASKA

Fairbanks

University of Alaska, Fairbanks $50,000
Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants
Project Director: Siri Tuttle
We the People Project Title: Minto Songs Project Description: The collection, digitization, organization, and archival storage, as well as dissemination among the Minto Athabascan community, of recorded performances of Alaskan Athabascan songs.

ARIZONA

Tucson

University of Arizona $25,000
Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants
Project Director: Douglas Gann
Project Title: Virtual Vault
Project Description: Electronic access to the world's largest collection of whole pottery vessels from the American Southwest through digital renderings of Arizona State University's Pottery Vault and relevant prehistoric archaeological sites as well as interviews with anthropologists, conservators, and Native American potters.

ILLINOIS

Lake Forest

Lake Forest College $25,000
Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants
Project Director: Davis Schneiderman
We the People Project Title: Virtual Burnham Initiative
Project Description: The development of the Virtual Burnham Initiative (VBI), a multimedia project that would examine the history and legacy of Daniel H. Burnham's and Edward H. Bennett's Plan of Chicago (1909).

MARYLAND

College Park

University of Maryland, College Park $11,708
Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants
Project Director: Matthew Kirschenbaum
Project Title: Approaches to Managing and Collecting Born-Digital Literary Materials for Scholarly Use
Project Description: A series of planning meetings and site visits aimed at developing archival tools and best practices for preserving born-digital documents produced by contemporary authors.

MASSACHUSETTS

Boston

University of Massachusetts, Boston $24,748
Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants
Project Director: Joanne Riley
We the People Project Title: Online Social Networking for the Humanities: the Massachusetts Studies Network Prototype
Project Description: The development and evaluation of a social networking platform for the members of the statewide Massachusetts Studies Project.

Norton

Wheaton College $41,950
Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants
Project Director: Mark LeBlanc
Project Title: Pattern Recognition through Computational Stylistics: Old English and Beyond
Project Description: Development of a prototypical suite of computational tools and statistical analyses to explore the corpus of Old English literature using the genomic approach of tracing information-rich patterns of letters as well as that of literary analysis and interpretation.

MISSISSIPPI

Mississippi State

Mississippi State University $50,000
Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants
Project Director: Paul Jacobs
Project Title: Distributed Archives Transaction System
Project Description: Development of open source web tools for accessing online digitized collections in the humanities via a system that communicates with multiple database types while protecting the integrity of the original data sets.

NEW YORK

Brooklyn

Unaffiliated Independent Scholar $23,750
Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants
Project Director: Daniel Visel
Project Title: Sophie Search Gateway
Project Description: The development of an interoperable portal within the Web authoring program, "Sophie," for locating and incorporating multi-media sources from the Internet Archive.

Hempstead

Hofstra University $23,591
Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants
Project Director: John Bryant
We the People Project Title: Melville, Revision, and Collaborative Editing: Toward a Critical Archive
Project Description: The development of the TextLab scholarly editing tool to allow for analysis of texts that exist in multiple versions or editions, beginning with the Melville Electronic Library.

New York City

New York University $49,657
Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants
Project Director: Brian Hoffman
Project Title: MediaCommons: Social Networking Tools for Digital Scholarly Communication
Project Description: Development of a set of networking software tools to support a "peer-to-peer" review structure for MediaCommons, a scholarly publishing network in the digital humanities.

RHODE ISLAND

Providence

Brown University $49,992
Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants
Project Director: Julia Flanders
Project Title: Encoding Names for Contextual Exploration in Digital Thematic Research Collections
Project Description: The advancement of humanities text encoding and research by refining and expanding the automated representation of personal names and their contexts.

TEXAS

Austin

University of Texas, Austin $49,251
Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants
Project Director: Samuel Baker
Project Title: The eCommentary Machine Project
Project Description: Development of a web-based collaborative commentary and annotation tool.

VIRGINIA

Charlottesville

University of Virginia $49,827
Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants
Project Director: Scot French
We the People Project Title: Jefferson's Travels: A Digital Journey Using the HistoryBrowser
Project Description: Development of an interactive web-based tool to integrate primary documents, dynamic maps, and related information in the study of history, with the prototype to be focused on Thomas Jefferson's trip to England in 1786.

Tool for Digital Preservation: Recover Dead Websites or Rebuild Websites with Warrick

Warrick is an open source software tool from the Old Dominion University Computer Science Department for recovering or reconstructing Websites using composite data from Google, Internet Archive, Live Search, and Yahoo. It can used at the Warrick Website or downloaded.

Read more about it at "About Warrick" and "Warrick."

Scriblio Final Report: Open Source WordPress-Based Online Catalog and CMS

The Scriblio project, which was partially funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, has issued "Scriblio MATC Project Final Report." Scriblio is an open source, WordPress-based online catalog and content management system.

Here's an excerpt from the report:

Open source software may be good for the community, but it succeeds because it solves problems for those who use it. For Plymouth, this is an easy question: compared to commercial offerings now available, Scriblio can be said to have saved the University hundreds of thousands of dollars in acquisition, license and support costs. Further, the staff time necessary to develop and support Scriblio for Plymouth’s use is similar to that necessary to support those commercial alternatives. Because ongoing development is limited to the library-specific features not provided by WordPress, the investment required to maintain the software is expected to remain low and Plymouth is likely to continue using and supporting Scriblio as long as it continues to deliver value and solve problems. . . .

Some features, such as development of a hosted solution based on WordPress MU suitable for representing consortia, OAI input and output (including eXtensible Catalog project-specific OAI features), support for additional ILSs, and OpenSearch (and Z39.50) input and output are outside the strict scope of Plymouth’s needs, but would greatly aid adoption of the software and build the community. Softer features, such as the development of reusable sample content and more discussion of best practices in online library services, would also greatly aid the project. Because a rich and active Scriblio community will lower the development costs for all participants, Plymouth is seeking opportunities to begin development on those features and expand the community.

JHOVE 1.1 Released: Identification, Validation, and Characterization of Digital Objects

Version 1.1 of the open-source JHOVE (JSTOR/Harvard Object Validation Environment) software has been released.

Here's an excerpt from the project home page that describes JHOVE:

JHOVE provides functions to perform format-specific identification, validation, and characterization of digital objects.

  • Format identification is the process of determining the format to which a digital object conforms; in other words, it answers the question: "I have a digital object; what format is it?"
  • Format validation is the process of determining the level of compliance of a digital object to the specification for its purported format, e.g.: "I have an object purportedly of format F; is it? . . . ."
  • Format characterization is the process of determining the format-specific significant properties of an object of a given format, e.g.: "I have an object of format F; what are its salient properties?"

A Legal Issues Primer for Open Source and Free Software Projects, Version 1.5

The Software Freedom Law Center has published version 1.5 of A Legal Issues Primer for Open Source and Free Software Projects.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The guide, written by members of SFLC's staff, covers a variety of legal topics and their practical application to free software development. These topics include copyrights and licensing, organizational structure, patents, and trademarks.

Omeka 0.9.0 Released: Software for Digital Collections and Exhibits

Version 0.9.0 of Omeka has been released.

Here's an excerpt from the About page that describes Omeka:

Omeka is a web platform for publishing collections and exhibitions online. Designed for cultural institutions, enthusiasts, and educators, Omeka is easy to install and modify and facilitates community-building around collections and exhibits. It is designed with non-IT specialists in mind, allowing users to focus on content rather than programming.

Omeka will come loaded with the following features:

  • Dublin Core metadata structure and standards-based design that is fully accessible and interoperable
  • Professional-looking exhibit sites that showcase collections without hiring outside designers
  • Theme-switching for changing the look and feel of an exhibit in a few clicks
  • Plug-ins for geolocation, bi-lingual sites, and a host of other possibilities
  • Web 2.0 Technologies, including:
    • Tagging: Allow users to add keywords to items in a collection or exhibit
    • Blogging: Keep in touch with users through timely postings about collections and events
    • Syndicating: Update your users about your content with RSS feeds

Read more about it at "Introducing Omeka" and "New Tool for Online Collections."

Muradora Version 1.2.1 Released: Federated Identity and Authorization for Fedora

The DRAMA (Digital Repository Authorization Middleware Architecture) team has released version 1.2.1 of Muradora.

Here's an excerpt from the Muradora home page that describes Muradora:

Muradora is an easy to use repository application that supports federated identity (via Shibboleth authentication) and flexible authorization (using XACML). Muradora leverages the modularity, flexibility and scalability of the well-known Fedora repository.

Muradora's unique vision is one where Fedora forms the core back-end repository, while different front-end applications (such as portlets or standalone web interfaces) can all talk to the same instance of Fedora, and yet maintain a consistent approach to access control.

Read more about it at "Muradora 1.2.1 Release."

Kete 1.0, Web 2.0 Digital Library Software, Released

Version 1.0 (stable release branch) of the Kete digital library software has been released.

Here's an excerpt about Kete from Katipo Communications' "Kete is Open Source Digital Library and Archiving Software":

Kete is an Open Source application written in Ruby on Rails, released under the GPL. Initial development has been a partnership between the Horowhenua Library Trust and Katipo Communications Ltd. funded as part of the Community Partnership Fund in 2006.

Kete stores, organises, indexes and retrieves all sorts of digital files including Office documents, PDF's, images, videos, audio such as spoken word and music, website links, and html pages/text.

Kete encourages you to make links between different items that enable users to browse your collection. It also faciltates discussion about items and topics, so you can build understanding and foster collaboration.

Read more about it at "Kete 1.0 Release Branch and Upgraded Kete.net.nz."

Archivists' Toolkit Version 1.1 Released

The project team from the Five Colleges, Inc., New York University Libraries, and the UCSD Libraries have released Version 1.1 of the Archivists' Toolkit.

Here's an excerpt from the project's home page that describes the new features of the release:

  • Batch import of EAD files: target a directory containing the EAD files to be imported and import all EAD files in the directory
  • Batch export of EAD and MARCXML records: from the resource browse screen select two or more resources that you want to export as either EAD files or MARCXML records
  • Import of XML encoded accession data: Import of multiple names using the XML import method.  Use the accessionsImport.xsd file to map your accession data and to create an accessions import file
  • EAD schema: replaces the EAD DTD for importing / exporting EAD files
  • Extended accession record: includes new fields, including many user definable
  • Extended repository record: includes new fields for recording repository statistics, per recommendations of Archival Metrics Project
  • Support for other database backends. In addition to the open source database backend MySQL, the application can be run using either Oracle or MS SQL server as a backend
  • Updated documentation. User manual and additional documentation have been updated to reflect new features

Podcasts from the CNI Fall 2007 Task Force Meeting

Podcasts are now available from CNI's Fall 2007 Task Force Meeting. Here's a selection:

Wikia Search Debuts to Pundits’ Criticism

An alpha version of Wikia's open source Wikia Search has gone public, but the consensus seems to be that this user-tuned search engine has a long way to go to compete with the likes of Google.

Read more about it at "Jimmy Wales Argues That His Wikia Needs More Time," "Wiki Citizens Taking on a New Area: Searching," "Wikia Launching Human-Powered Search," "Wikia Search Alpha Preview Leaves Much to Be Desired," "Wikia Search Is A Complete Letdown," and"Wikia Search—Miles Behind the Competition."