Category: Fedora

"The Ecosystem of Repository Migration"

Juliet L. Hardesty and Nicholas Homenda have published "The Ecosystem of Repository Migration" in Publications.

Here's an excerpt:

Indiana University was an early adopter of the Fedora repository, developing it as a home for heterogeneous digital library content from a variety of collections with unique content models. After joining the Hydra Project, now known as Samvera, in 2012, development progressed on a variety of applications that formed the foundation for digital library services using the Fedora 4 repository. These experiences have shaped migration planning to move from Fedora 3 to Fedora 4 for this large and inclusive set of digital content. Moving to Fedora 4 is not just a repository change; it is an ecosystem shift. End user interfaces for access, management systems for collection managers, and data structures are all impacted. This article shares what Indiana University has learned about migrating to Fedora 4 to help others work through their own migration considerations. This article is also meant to inspire the Fedora repository development community to offer ways to further ease migration work, sustaining Fedora users moving forward, and inviting new Fedora users to try the software and become involved in the community.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 9 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Supporting FAIR Data Principles with Fedora"

David Wilcox has published "Supporting FAIR Data Principles with Fedora" in LIBER Quarterly.

Here's an excerpt:

Making data findable, accessible, interoperable, and re-usable is an important but challenging goal. From an infrastructure perspective, repository technologies play a key role in supporting FAIR data principles. Fedora is a flexible, extensible, open source repository platform for managing, preserving, and providing access to digital content. Fedora is used in a wide variety of institutions including libraries, museums, archives, and government organizations. Fedora provides native linked data capabilities and a modular architecture based on well-documented APIs and ease of integration with existing applications. As both a project and a community, Fedora has been increasingly focused on research data management, making it well-suited to supporting FAIR data principles as a repository platform. Fedora provides strong support for persistent identifiers, both by minting HTTP URIs for each resource and by allowing any number of additional identifiers to be associated with resources as RDF properties. Fedora also supports rich metadata in any schema that can be indexed and disseminated using a variety of protocols and services. As a linked data server, Fedora allows resources to be semantically linked both within the repository and on the broader web. Along with these and other features supporting research data management, the Fedora community has been actively participating in related initiatives, most notably the Research Data Alliance. Fedora representatives participate in a number of interest and working groups focused on requirements and interoperability for research data repository platforms. This participation allows the Fedora project to both influence and be influenced by an international group of Research Data Alliance stakeholders. This paper will describe how Fedora supports FAIR data principles, both in terms of relevant features and community participation in related initiatives.

Academic Library as Scholarly Publisher Bibliography | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"IMLS Funds DuraSpace Fedora Investigation–Designing a Migration Path: Assessing Barriers of Upgrading to the Most Current Version of Fedora–No Collection Left Behind"

DuraSpace has released "IMLS Funds DuraSpace Fedora Investigation–Designing a Migration Path: Assessing Barriers of Upgrading to the Most Current Version of Fedora–No Collection Left Behind."

Here's an excerpt:

The Institute of Museum and Library Services has awarded DuraSpace a National Digital Platform Planning Grant for $49,279 to investigate barriers to upgrading hundreds of U.S.-based libraries and archives running unsupported versions of Fedora. In consultation with stakeholders this project will conduct an environmental scan of relevant community initiatives, and gather primary research data to inform recommendations to reduce barriers to upgrading to the most current version of Fedora.

There are approximately 240 U.S.-based libraries and archives identified as target beneficiaries of the deliverables of this project including universities, liberal arts colleges, and not-for-profit special libraries hosted by historical societies and small research institutes.

Academic Library as Scholarly Publisher Bibliography | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"HydraDAM2: Extending Fedora 4 and Hydra for Media Preservation"

Jon W. Dunn et al. have self-archived "HydraDAM2: Extending Fedora 4 and Hydra for Media Preservation."

Here's an excerpt:

The overarching goal of the HydraDAM2 project, funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities Preservation and Access Research and Development program, was to extend the existing HydraDAM digital asset management system, developed with prior NEH support, to be able to serve as a digital preservation repository for time-based media collections implementable at a wide range of institutions using multiple digital storage strategies. The new open source digital preservation repository system developed as part of the project by partners Indiana University (IU) and WGBH, known as Phydo, is based on the Fedora 4.x digital repository system and Samvera (formerly Hydra) repository application development framework and is intended to support storage and long-term preservation management of audio and video files and their accompanying metadata. This white paper describes the work of the HydraDAM2 project to develop the Phydo system, along with future plans.

Academic Library as Scholarly Publisher Bibliography | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

Fedora 4 Production Release

The international Fedora repository community and DuraSpace have released the Fedora 4 production release.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This significant release signals the effectiveness of an international and complex community source project in delivering a modern repository platform with features that meet or exceed current use cases in the management of institutional digital assets. Fedora 4 features include vast improvements in scalability, linked data capabilities, research data support, modularity, ease of use and more.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"Flexible and Extensible Digital Object and Repository Architecture (FEDORA)"

Sandra Payette and Carl Lagoze have self-archived "Flexible and Extensible Digital Object and Repository Architecture (FEDORA)."

Here's an excerpt:

We describe a digital object and repository architecture for storing and disseminating digital library content. The key features of the architecture are: (1) support for heterogeneous data types; (2) accommodation of new types as they emerge; (3) aggregation of mixed, possibly distributed, data into complex objects; (4) the ability to specify multiple content disseminations of these objects; and (5) the ability to associate rights management schemes with these disseminations. This architecture is being implemented in the context of a broader research project to develop next-generation service modules for a layered digital library architecture.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

Michele Kimpton Named Chief Executive Officer of DuraSpace

DuraSpace has named Michele Kimpton as its Chief Executive Officer.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

DuraSpace, a not-for-profit organization providing open source software and services, announced today that Michele Kimpton will assume the role of Chief Executive Officer, effective March 1, 2011. Kimpton is currently the Chief Business Officer of DuraSpace, and formerly the Executive Director of the DSpace Foundation.

Kimpton will succeed current CEO, Sandy Payette, who will be entering a doctoral program at Cornell University to pursue a PhD and new research focused on the intersection of technology, society, and policy. Payette will continue to work with DuraSpace as strategic advisor to the Executive Team through June 2011. Brad McLean will continue in his current role on the Executive Team as Chief Technology Officer. . . .

Also effective March 1, 2011, Jonathan Markow will assume the newly created position of Chief Strategy Officer for DuraSpace. Markow brings years of experience in open source software strategy and community leadership. Most recently, Markow was the Executive Director of JASIG, a not-for-profit organization devoted to sponsoring and supporting open source software for higher education.

Kimpton was recently featured by the Library of Congress as a "Digital Preservation Pioneer" for her work in developing entrepreneurial, community-driven and culturally sensitive approaches to creating tools and strategies in support of digital archiving (http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/partners/pioneers/detail_kimpton.html). Kimpton’s ability to create nimble technologies and solutions that are "out of the gate" quickly were especially noted. Kimpton says, "Get a version out into the world as soon as possible and refine it as you go along." She has a strong background in technology development in Asia and Europe bringing innovative open source business practices and technologies to DuraSpace global communities.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview |

Cloud Computing: TierraCloud Launches HC2 Open Source Project with Fedora Plug-in

TierraCloud has launched the HC2 Open Source Project. HC2 has a Fedora Repository plug-in.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Web2.0s have invented a new storage architecture that runs on industry standard x86 servers using sophisticated software to create extremely reliable and scalable storage systems. This architecture, that may be called Private Cloud Storage, is so compelling that enterprises will have no option but to use it. Although enterprise storage architectures have been fairly stable since the mid 80’s with external block and file storage, TierraCloud expects these architectures will undergo a sea-change in the next decade.

"Current mainstream solutions are ill-suited to address new private cloud storage requirements" said Sriram Rupanagunta, founder of TierraCloud. "Acquisition cost, management cost, scalability and reliability are the key requirements. With HC2’s unique advantages in the areas of automated data management, extreme data mobility, and ability to run third-party storage apps, the total-cost-of-ownership will get slashed by 10x." . . .

"It has become clear that data curation will require distributed storage and application frameworks," said Sayeed Choudhury, Associate Dean of University Libraries at Johns Hopkins University. "No single institution can develop the comprehensive, necessary infrastructure to preserve and provide access to the large amount of data being generated by all disciplines ranging from the sciences to the humanities. HC2's emphasis on hardware choices, geographically distributed data and open-source software is compelling. Most institutions will be eager to experiment with private cloud storage and HC2 represents a useful option in this regard."

DuraSpace Announces Registered Service Provider Program

DuraSpace has announced its new Registered Service Provider Program.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Today, the DuraSpace not-for-profit organization announced its new Registered Service Provider Program to establish partnerships with companies that provide support services to institutions using the DSpace and Fedora digital repository software.

The new program will establish an network of service providers offering a range of services including customer support, technical consulting, software development, and systems integration. The program will benefit universities, libraries, museums, research institutions, and others that require support in building or maintaining repository-based systems built with DSpace, Fedora, and related open source and commercial technologies.

Registered Service Providers will be easily identified. They will be featured on the DuraSpace web site (duraspace.org) and relevant project websites, with contact information and a profile of their service offerings. Providers will also exhibit their affiliation with DuraSpace by displaying the special DuraSpace Service Provider Logo on their marketing materials and websites.

Registered Service Providers share the DuraSpace commitment to ensuring that current and future generations have access to our collective digital heritage. Service Providers are active participants in open source software communities and are committed to providing expertise and technical consulting to enable customers to achieve their goals with open technologies.

Digital Audio: What's New in Fedora 3.3 and DSpace 1.6

DuraSpace has released What's New in Fedora 3.3 and DSpace 1.6.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

On March 17, 2010 Chris Wilper and Stuart Lewis offered a one-hour overview of new features in Fedora 3.3 and DSpace 1.6. The session concluded with a lively question and answer period with some of the 55 participants from around the globe.

Preservation and Curation in Institutional Repositories

The Digital Curation Centre has released Preservation and Curation in Institutional Repositories.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The DCC has produced a report that provides a snapshot of the state of the art of preservation and curation in an institutional repository context in early 2010, noting areas of recent and current research and development. It should be of interest principally to institutional repository managers and others concerned with the strategic planning for these services. The report begins with a brief introduction to preservation and curation, followed in chapter 3 by a summary of the current provision for these activities in EPrints, DSpace and Fedora. Some repository models and architectures relevant to preservation and curation are presented in chapter 4 and chapter 5 respectively, while a selection of preservation planning tools of possible use in a repository context are described in chapter 6. Pertinent developments in metadata are reviewed in chapter 7, while tools for working with such metadata are presented in chapter 8. Technologies that assist in performing emulation, reverse engineering and migration are described in chapter 9. The issue of identifiers for repository materials is tackled in chapter 10. A selection of guidelines and tools for auditing curatorial aspects of institutional repositories is presented in chapter 11, and a selection of tools for calculating the costs and benefits of curation is presented in chapter 12. Finally, some conclusions are drawn in chapter 13.

Cloud Computing and Repositories: Fedorazon: Final Report

JISC has released Fedorazon: Final Report.

Here's an excerpt:

The Fedorazon project is first and foremost the experiences of a small HE/FE team running and maintaining a Repository in the Cloud for one year. Being early adopters we provide both technical, fiscal and practical advice for both our successes and failures in this endeavour. We hope this report provides insight for other institutions wishing to utilise the Cloud for their Repository instance which we wholeheartedly recommend given they read this report first and prepare accordingly.

The Fedorazon project has discovered that a 'Repository in the Cloud' is easy to get up and running (both figuratively and literally); after that, all the complexity of hardware management, political costings and human resource allocation are still right where you left them. None the less we think there are significant cost savings in the Cloud that will only increase over time. We also believe that utilising the 'network effect' of the Cloud institutions can relieve the burden of having a local hardware expert to manage the repository instance. Finally, we believe that Cloud will lead to a significant change in the way we view repository architectures, especially in regards to how a 'preservation architecture' is achieved.

Towards Repository Preservation Services. Final Report from the JISC Preserv 2 Project

Steve Hitchcock, David Tarrant, and Les Carr have self-archived Towards Repository Preservation Services. Final Report from the JISC Preserv 2 Project in the ECS EPrints Repository.

Here's the abstract:

Preserv 2 investigated the preservation of data in digital institutional repositories, focussing in particular on managing storage, data and file formats. Preserv 2 developed the first repository storage controller, which will be a feature of EPrints version 3.2 software (due 2009). Plugin applications that use the controller have been written for Amazon S3 and Sun cloud services among others, as well as for local disk storage. In a breakthrough application Preserv 2 used OAI-ORE to show how data can be moved between two repository softwares with quite distinct data models, from an EPrints repository to a Fedora repository. The largest area of work in Preserv 2 was on file format management and an 'active' preservation approach. This involves identifying file formats, assessing the risks posed by those formats and taking action to obviate the risks where that could be justified. These processes were implemented with reference to a technical registry, PRONOM from The National Archives (TNA), and DROID (digital record object identification service), also produced by TNA. Preserv 2 showed we can invoke a current registry to classify the digital objects and present a hierarchy of risk scores for a repository. Classification was performed using the Preserv2 EPrints preservation toolkit. This 'wraps' DROID in an EPrints repository environment. This toolkit will be another feature available for EPrints v3.2 software. The result of file format identification can indicate a file is at risk of becoming inaccessible or corrupted. Preserv 2 developed a repository interface to present formats by risk category. Providing risk scores through the live PRONOM service was shown to be feasible. Spin-off work is ongoing to develop format risk scores by compiling data from multiple sources in a new linked data registry.

ETD Self-Archiving Tools: ICE-TheOREM Final Report

JISC has released the ICE-TheOREM Final Report.

Here's an excerpt:

ICE-TheOREM was a project which made several important contributions to the repository domain, promoting deposit by integrating the repository with authoring workflows and enhancing open access by prototyping new infrastructure to allow fine-grained embargo management within an institution without impacting on existing open access repository infrastructure.

In the area of scholarly communications workflows, the project produced a complete end-to-end demonstration of eScholarship for word processor users, with tools for authoring, managing and disseminating semantically-rich ETD (Electronic Theses and Dissertations) documents fully integrated with supporting data. This work is focused on theses, as it is well understood that early career researchers are the most likely to lead the charge in new innovations in scholarly publishing and dissemination models.

The authoring tools are built on the ICE content management system, which allows authors to work within a word processing system (as most authors do) with easy-to-use toolbars to structure and format their documents. The ICE system manages both small data files and links to larger data sets. The result is research publications which are available not just as paper-ready PDF files but as fully interactive semantically aware web documents which can be disseminated via repository software such as ePrints, DSpace and Fedora as complete supported web-native and PDF publications.

"Getting Started with Fedora"

Fedora Commons has released "Getting Started with Fedora."

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The "Getting Started with Fedora" Guide is designed to offer new users, or potential users, a basic understanding of the Fedora architecture and the core repository management software, along with some general ideas about how to use it. Whether you want to adopt one of the existing Fedora-based solutions or develop you own, this general introduction should be useful to you.

SWORD2 Project Final Report

JISC has released SWORD2 Project Final Report.

Here's an excerpt:

The SWORD vision is about 'lowering the barriers to deposit', primarily for depositing content into repositories, and additionally, for depositing into any system which may wish to receive content from remote sources. The SWORD protocol defines a standard mechanism for depositing into repositories and other systems. The project and protocol were developed because there was previously no standardised way of doing this. A standard deposit interface allows repository services to be built that can offer functionality such as deposit from multiple locations, e.g. disparate repositories, desktop drag'n'drop tools, or from within standard office applications. SWORD can also facilitate deposit to multiple repositories, increasingly important for depositors who wish to deposit to funder, institutional or subject repositories. There are many other possibilities, including migration of content between repositories and transfer to preservation services. In addition to refining the existing SWORD application profile, the SWORD2 project has developed a number of tools and services to demonstrate these possibilities. It has also been pro-active in promoting SWORD and encouraging uptake within other repositories, services and tools, notably with its adoption into the Microsoft Article Authoring Add-in for Word 2007 and with the new Microsoft Zentity repository system .

The core aims of the project were to update the SWORD Protocol, the SWORD repository code libraries in the DSpace, Fedora, EPrints and Intrallect repositories, and the existing reference demonstrators. A Facebook application and validator have also been developed. Advocacy efforts include an e-learning case study, a briefing paper, a new SWORD website, and a range of additional dissemination activities, including conference papers, presentations, demonstrations and workshops at a number of national and international conferences and meetings.

Enhanced Ingest to Digital E-Research Repositories: Final Report

JISC has released Enhanced Ingest to Digital E-Research Repositories: Final Report.

Here's an excerpt:

The project developed a demonstrator that implemented an enhanced deposit and ingest process to a digital repository based on Fedora. The process incorporates the SWORD API for deposit, and accepts deposits that contain multiple files (packaged as a zip file). The workflow performs preservation actions (e.g. capturing PREMIS metadata, format migration), extraction of resource discovery metadata (for text-based formats such as PDF, MS Word, HTML), and capture of publisher self-archiving policies (for post-prints). The resources are ingested into the repository following an atomistic model—individual files and directories correspond to individual digital objects, and relationships between them (i.e. the membership relation between files/directories) are represented as RDF statements. The workflow was constructed from a variety of components developed by other projects.

Digital Preservation: Repository of Authentic Digital Objects Source Code Released

The National Archive Institute of Portugal has released the Repository of Authentic Digital Objects source code.

RODA works in conjunction with the Fedora (Flexible Extensible Digital Object Repository Architecture) software.

Read more about it at "RODA—A Service-Oriented Repository to Preserve Authentic Digital Objects" and "Source Code Available from RODA 'Repository of Authentic Digital Objects'" (includes a QuickTime video about RODA).

JISC Final Report—CTREP, Cambridge TETRA Repositories Enhancement Project

JISC has released JISC Final Report—CTREP, Cambridge TETRA Repositories Enhancement Project .

Here's an excerpt:

CTREP created a connector between an Institutional VRE and an Institutional Repository. It is designed to be reusable in a number of different institutions where policy on deposit varies by means of a flexible deposit configuration system. In the process of executing the project:

  • the various stakeholders came to understand institutional cultural differences and address them in such a way that recent projects with a strong Repository and research dissemination/visualisation aspect have been more joined up than would previously have been possible
  • we developed an approach to policy expression designed both to avoid creating unnecessary tension within the institution during its development, and also to be authorable by a wide range of individuals
  • we have sought to record and capture lessons learnt (based, in part on case studies) for future institutionalisation projects
  • we developed a number of techniques which allowed apparent barriers to integration to be overcome by technical-architectural tools
  • we open-sourced the integration
  • we modified our approach to metadata/data binding in light of community feedback and developed a spreadsheet-based automated approach with which contributors felt comfortable, but which required a number of technical obstacles to be overcome through the use of creative programming techniques.

Sun Launches Enterprise-Wide Digital Repository and Archive Solution

Sun has launched its Enterprise-Wide Digital Repository and Archive solution.

Here's an excerpt from Enterprise-Wide Digital Repositories and Archives:

The result is a solution which is more than the sum of its parts. Drupal with Islandora provides an easy, powerful way to create customized Web sites with an organization's own unique content and branding and offers fine control over access to collections and individual data assets. Adding the Fedora Repository provides durability to the content while also enabling seamless sharing of content with other applications. The Sun Open Archive Framework’s Preservation Software layer adds robust storage protection and data handling combined with powerful management tools, while Sun Open Storage delivers the most cost effective and easily deployed storage available. Together these components get customers up and running fast with the assurance they will be able to grow and evolve the system gracefully, protecting investments.

Read more about it at "New Fedora-based Solution Offerings from Sun and its Partners."