Category: Open Source Software

Public Knowledge Project: Report to the Community 2015/2016

The Public Knowledge Project has released Report to the Community 2015/2016.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Highlights include:

  • New grant awards from MacArthur, CIRA, and MediaX
  • Continued progress on Open Journal Systems 3.0
  • The release of Open Monograph Press 1.2
  • The integration of user experience design into our development workflow
  • Ongoing development and improvement of our XML parsing stack’s accuracy
  • Initiating the open access publishing cooperative study
  • Launching the new PKP Index and PKP LOCKSS Network
  • The 5th PKP Conference in Vancouver

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

Open Library Foundation Launched

The Open Library Foundation has been launched.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The Open Library Foundation has been established to promote open source projects for libraries and to foster and support contribution, distribution, and sustainability of the benefits of these projects. . . . .

The foundation was inspired by the creation of the FOLIO project. FOLIO was announced in June and is now building a diverse community of libraries, vendors and software developers. The goal of FOLIO is to create an open source Library Services Platform that can power innovative approaches to current practice, and encourage new and expanded library services that more fully support scholarly inquiry and knowledge production. The Foundation's inaugural projects also include two existing open source communities, the Open Library Environment (OLE) and the Global Open Knowledgebase (GOKb). . . .

The Open Library Foundation will make sure the code created from open source projects remains available and act as a "safe haven" for the projects' output-separated from the needs and goals of any contributor, user or affiliated party. The Open Library Foundation also will ensure that the code is freely available under an Apache v2 license.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"TRY IT OUT: DSpace 6.0 Release Candidate #3 Available"

DuraSpace has released "TRY IT OUT: DSpace 6.0 Release Candidate #3 Available."

Here's an excerpt:

The third release candidate of 6.0 is now available for download and testing. 6.0-RC3 (Release Candidate #3) is a pre-release of 6.0, and we hope that the 6.0 final release will follow closely in its footsteps. . . .

We believe the 6.0 release is nearly production-ready, but could use your help in verifying there's nothing we've overlooked.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"OJS 3 is Here!"

The Public Knowledge Project has released "OJS 3 is Here!." OJS stands for Open Journal Systems.

Here's an excerpt:

This is the most comprehensive software upgrade since we moved from OJS 1.0 to 2.0 way back in 2005. It incorporates a decade of feedback from our users on the community forum, through usability testing, and through thousands of conversations, feature requests, and helpful critiques.

As we approach the milestone of having 10,000 journals actively using OJS as their publishing platform, we believe this new release will significantly enhance their productivity and ease of use, and provide a modern foundation for innovation in online publishing.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Deploying Islandora as a Digital Repository Platform: a Multifaceted Experience at the University of Denver Libraries"

Shea-Tinn Yeh et al. have published "Deploying Islandora as a Digital Repository Platform: a Multifaceted Experience at the University of Denver Libraries" in D-Lib Magazine.

Here's an excerpt:

The Library Technology Department at the University of Denver was tasked with implementing an Islandora open-source framework for its Special Collections Department because the current host was being retired. Although Islandora's front-end is tailored for librarians, its back-end is complex, and built upon many subsystems. A failure in any of the subsystems guarantees a domino effect and a chain reaction which can obfuscate the root cause of the issue. Though product documentation and support communication channels exist, many of the problems we faced were unique to our specific hardware and software configuration. The development team had to learn fast, and be innovative, agile, and systematic in order to work with such a complicated system. This article describes the tactics used in this repository development effort, as well as the library's stakeholder relationship management.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Fifty Shades of Open"

Jeffrey Pomerantz and Robin Peek have published "Fifty Shades of Open" in First Monday.

Here's an excerpt:

Open source. Open access. Open society. Open knowledge. Open government. Even open food. The word "open" has been applied to a wide variety of words to create new terms, some of which make sense, and some not so much. This essay disambiguates the many meanings of the word "open" as it is used in a wide range of contexts.

Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Practical Digital Forensics at Accession for Born-Digital Institutional Records"

Gregory Wiedeman has published "Practical Digital Forensics at Accession for Born-Digital Institutional Records" in Code4Lib Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

Archivists have developed a consensus that forensic disk imaging is the easiest and most effective way to preserve the authenticity and integrity of born-digital materials. Yet, disk imaging also has the potential to conflict with the needs of institutional archives – particularly those governed by public records laws. An alternative possibility is to systematically employ digital forensics tools during accession to acquire a limited amount of contextual metadata from filesystems. This paper will discuss the development of a desktop application that enables records creators to transfer digital records while employing basic digital forensics tools records' native computing environment to gather record-events from NTFS filesystems.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

Berkman Center Releases Amber, a Web Preservation Tool

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society has released Amber.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University is pleased to release Amber, a free software tool for WordPress and Drupal that preserves content and prevents broken links. When installed on a blog or website, Amber can take a snapshot of the content of every linked page, ensuring that even if those pages are interfered with or blocked, the original content will be available.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Open Journal Systems and Dataverse Integration—Helping Journals to Upgrade Data Publication for Reusable Research"

Micah Altman et al. have self-archived "Open Journal Systems and Dataverse Integration—Helping Journals to Upgrade Data Publication for Reusable Research."

Here's an excerpt:

This article describes the novel open source tools for open data publication in open access journal workflows. This comprises a plugin for Open Journal Systems that supports a data submission, citation, review, and publication workflow; and an extension to the Dataverse system that provides a standard deposit API. We describe the function and design of these tools, provide examples of their use, and summarize their initial reception. We conclude by discussing future plans and potential impact.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Omeka Curator Dashboard"

Jess Waggoner has published "Omeka Curator Dashboard" in the Omeka blog.

Here's an excerpt:

The Omeka Curator Dashboard (or "the OCD" as we endearingly refer to it) is a suite of fifteen plugins (though a bonus sixteenth will be coming soon!) designed to facilitate object import and export, manage metadata, and curate collections. Several of our plugins are already available on the official list of Omeka plugins. The others are still undergoing testing, but can be downloaded from the UCSC Library GitHub in the meanwhile. We are actively soliciting feedback on these plugins from the Omeka user community so we can continue to improve their features and interfaces.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"Barriers to Initiation of Open Source Software Projects in Libraries"

Curtis Thacker and Charles Knutson have published "Barriers to Initiation of Open Source Software Projects in Libraries" in the Code4Lib Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

Libraries share a number of core values with the Open Source Software (OSS) movement, suggesting there should be a natural tendency toward library participation in OSS projects. However Dale Askey's 2008 Code4Lib column entitled "We Love Open Source Software. No, You Can't Have Our Code," claims that while libraries are strong proponents of OSS, they are unlikely to actually contribute to OSS projects. He identifies, but does not empirically substantiate, six barriers that he believes contribute to this apparent inconsistency. In this study we empirically investigate not only Askey's central claim but also the six barriers he proposes. In contrast to Askey's assertion, we find that initiation of and contribution to OSS projects are, in fact, common practices in libraries. However, we also find that these practices are far from ubiquitous; as Askey suggests, many libraries do have opportunities to initiate OSS projects, but choose not to do so. Further, we find support for only four of Askey's six OSS barriers. Thus, our results confirm many, but not all, of Askey's assertions.

| New: Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 5 | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"The Open Access Interviews: John Willinsky"

Richard Poynder has published "The Open Access Interviews: John Willinsky" in Open and Shut?.

Here's an excerpt:

I was fortunate enough to draw together a wonderful team, led by the Associate University Librarian Brian Owen and technical wonder Alec Smecher at Simon Fraser University Library, who, through the research and development funds we were able to raise, created open source systems for scholarly workflow management and publishing. Together, we created Open Journal Systems (OJS) beginning in 2002, to answer the question of what will it cost to put a journal online. . . .

Over the course of the next decade, the use of OJS has spread across the globe to the point where—with 8,000 journals actively using it in 2013—we now feel a considerable responsibility at PKP for ensuring that this system provides a high-quality editorial workflow and publishing environment, and all the more so with roughly half of those journals in the Global South.

So in terms of your question on what PKP has developed into, I would say that it has become primarily but not entirely an open source software development and community support project in a global scale.

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"

VIVO 1.7 Released

The VIVO Project has released VIVO 1.7.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The VIVO 1.7 release combines new features with improvements to existing features and services and continues to leverage the VIVO-Integrated Semantic Framework (VIVO-ISF) ontology introduced in VIVO 1.6. No data migration or changes to local data ingest procedures, visualization, or analysis tools drawing directly on VIVO data will be required to upgrade to VIVO 1.7.

VIVO 1.7 notably includes the results of an ORCID Adoption and Integration Grant to support the creation and verification of ORCID iDs. VIVO now offers the opportunity for a researcher to add and/or confirm his or her global, unique researcher identifier directly with ORCID without the necessity of applying through other channels and re-typing the 16-digit ORCID identifier.

What is VIVO?

VIVO is an open source semantic web application originally developed and implemented at Cornell. When installed and populated with researcher interests, activities, and accomplishments, it enables the discovery of research and scholarship across disciplines at that institution and beyond. VIVO supports browsing and a search function which returns faceted results for rapid retrieval of desired information. Content in any local VIVO installation may be maintained manually, brought into VIVO in automated ways from local systems of record, such as HR, grants, course, and faculty activity databases, or from database providers such as publication aggregators and funding agencies.

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

Omeka 2.1.4 Released

The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media has released Omeka 2.1.4.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This maintenance release includes some style additions and corrections in the admin theme, as well as a fix to how records are sorted for newer versions of MySQL. . .

Updated versions of the COinS and Exhibit Builder plugins are also bundled with this release, fixing an error in COinS for PHP 5.2. The updated Exhibit Builder plugin improves many parts of the styling, especially across interaction with many plugins, and expands the data returned by the API.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

Wellcome Library Releases Digital Asset Player and Timeline Software

The Wellcome Library has released a digital asset player and timeline software.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

What does it feel like to interact with a digital version of a book? How can we replicate the experience of working with physical collections&—on the web? What features will enhance a researcher's experience of using digital collections? . . .

We asked these big questions, along with innumerable others, during the development of the Wellcome Library's "digital asset player" and interactive timeline. Now we are offering the player and timeline software to you.

Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap

Open Monograph Press, Release 1.0

The Public Knowledge Project has released the Open Monograph Press, Release 1.0.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

OMP is designed to assist university presses, learned societies, and scholar-publishers interested in publishing scholarly books in print-on-demand and multiple electronic formats, whether on an open access or purchase basis. OMP is intended to:

  • Handle edited volumes, with different authors for each chapter;
  • Involve editors, authors, reviewers, designers, indexers, and others in book production;
  • See submission through multiple rounds of both internal and external reviews;
  • Utilize industry standard ONIX for bookseller metadata requirements (e.g., Amazon);
  • Create document libraries for submissions, recording contracts, permissions, etc.;
  • Handle thumbnail covers in Catalog, as well as Spotlight features; and
  • Enable Series Editors to see books through review to publication.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap |

"A Mobile Interface for DSpace"

Elías Tzoc has published "A Mobile Interface for DSpace" in the latest issue of D-Lib Magazine.

Here's an excerpt:

Academic libraries were among the first adopters of mobile websites in universities, but much of the early development was focused exclusively on traditional library content such as the library's homepage, catalog, contact information, etc. As libraries continue to work on new technology developments, a mobile interface for their institutional repositories can be a good new way to reach out to faculty and other interested parties. Miami University's Scholarly Commons runs on DSpace as part of a shared infrastructure administered by OhioLINK. DSpace is used at academic institutions, research and resource centers, museums, national libraries, and government and commercial organizations. With over a thousand installations in more than 90 countries, DSpace is the most widely used open source repository platform by any measure. The steady popularity of DSpace suggests that a lot of institutions will benefit from an out-of-the-box mobile interface. This article describes the development and implementation of the first mobile interface developed for DSpace using the jQuery Mobile Framework.

Note: Includes links to software.

| Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Publications Overview | Sitemap |

Omeka 2.0 Released

The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University has released Omeka 2.0.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The most important improvement is a completely revamped admin interface, which includes many features to improve workflow and make it easier to build your sites. The search functionality is also dramatically improved, and covers much more of the content in the sites. . . .

Omeka users will notice improvements right away with an upgrade to 2.0 or the launch a new installation. For example, site administrators have much better tools to build custom site navigation without having to hack around in the code (Check for "Navigation" under the Appearance settings.) Also, you'll notice major improvements in file handling. Now you can reorder item files, and the system produces derivatives (thumbnails, etc.) from a much wider array of file types, not just image files.

| Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 2 | Digital Scholarship |

Scholars’ Lab Releases BagIt and SolrSearch Plugins for Omeka

The Scholars' Lab has Released BagIt and SolrSearch Plugins for Omeka.

Here's an excerpt from the BagIt announcement:

BagIt is a specification by the Library of Congress for creating containers of files with metadata. . . .

The first part of this release is the BagIt PHP library. This is a generic PHP library for working with BagIt files. . . .

The second part is the BagIt Omeka plugin. This is built upon the BagIt library and provides an easy-to-use user interface for it.

Here's an excerpt from the SolrSearch announcement:

SolrSearch allows you to replace Omeka's default search with Solr. Solr is a standard, popular, open source, fast text search engine server. It handles hit highlighting, date math, numeric aggregation functions (mean, max, etc.), indexing for 33 languages, replication, and many, many more things.

| Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog | Digital Scholarship |

Digital Preservation: SiteStory Released

Herbert van de Sompel has announced the release of SiteStory.

Here's an excerpt:

I am very pleased to announce the open source release of our SiteStory transactional web archiving solution. The solution is compatible with the Memento "Time Travel for the Web" framework and its current implementation can be used to archive Apache web servers.

Read more about it at Memento: Adding Time to the Web.

| Digital Curation Bibliography: Preservation and Stewardship of Scholarly Works | Digital Scholarship |

Future Proofing: Enabling Practical Preservation of Born-Digital Records

JISC has released Future Proofing: Enabling Practical Preservation of Born-Digital Records.

Here's an excerpt:

The results show that is it possible to build a low-cost, practical solution that addresses immediate preservation problems, makes use of available open source tools, and requires minimal IT support. We think the results of the case study can feasibly be used by other Institutions facing similar difficulties, and scaled up to apply to the preservation of other and more complex digital objects. It will enable non-specialist information professionals to perform certain preservation and information management tasks with a minimum of preservation-specific theoretical knowledge.

| Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |

SURF’s EJME Project Releases Data File Plug-ins for Open Journal Systems

SURF's EJME (Enhanced Journals…Made Easy!) Project has released data file plug-ins for Open Journal Systems.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The Internet makes it possible to present publications in combination with related research data, as Enhanced Publications. The Enhanced Journals…Made Easy project (EJME), which is funded by SURF, has designed a practical work process for publishers of Open Access journals so as to enhance academic journals with the associated data files. The project involved the development of two plug-ins for Open Journal Systems, a system for managing and publishing journals. Open Journal Systems (OJS) is the most frequently used open source package worldwide for academic journals.

| Institutional Repository and ETD Bibliography 2011 | Digital Scholarship |

California Digital Library and Public Knowledge Project Form Partnership to Advance Open Access Publishing

The California Digital Library and the Public Knowledge Project have formed a partnership to advance open access publishing through the development of open source publishing tools.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

As a result of this agreement, the CDL will assist with PKP’s ongoing development and support of its open source software suite&,dash;Open Journal Systems (OJS), Open Conference Systems (OCS), and Open Harvester System (OHS), with Open Monograph Press (OMP) due for release in the coming year.

The California Digital Library, in partnership with the University of California campus libraries, supports and encourages open access publishing initiatives within the UC system through its eScholarship publishing and institutional repository platform. eScholarship provides a suite of open access, scholarly publishing services and research tools that enable departments, research units, publishing programs, and individual scholars associated with the University of California to have direct control over the creation and dissemination of the full range of their scholarship. Home to 45 peer-reviewed journals (http://escholarship.org/uc/search?smode=browse;browse-journal=aa), eScholarship has recently transitioned to OJS as its journal management and submission system and has integrated OJS with its pre/post-print, books and working papers repository, which contains more than 45,000 UC-affiliated publications. . . .

PKP is dedicated to improving the scholarly and public quality of research. With more than 11,500 installations of Open Journal Systems (OJS); Open Conference Systems (OCS); and Open Harvester Systems (OHS) around the world, the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) has proven that open source software can be a game changer in scholarly publishing.

| Digital Scholarship's Digital/Print Books | Digital Scholarship |

DAITSS (Dark Archive in the Sunshine State) Released under GPL v. 3 License

The Florida Center for Library Automation has released DAITSS (Dark Archive in the Sunshine State) under a GPL v. 3 License.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

DAITSS provides automated support for the functions of Submission, Ingest, Archival Storage, Access, Withdrawal, and Repository Management. It is architected as a set of RESTful Web Services and micro-services but enforces strict controls to ensure the integrity and authenticity of archived content. It implements active preservation strategies based on format-specific processing including, where necessary, normalization and forward migration. It is particularly well suited for materials in text, document, image, audio and video formats.

DAITSS was written for a multi-user environment and supports consortial as well as institutional preservation repositories.

Read more about it at "DAITSS, an OAIS-based Preservation Repository" and "DAITSS Grows Up: Migrating to a Second-Generation Preservation System."

| Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography 2010 | Digital Scholarship |