Category: Open Source Software

Institutional Repository Software: IR+ 2.0 Released

The University of Rochester has released IR+ 2.0.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The new version has many new features and updates. These include:

  • OAI-PMH harvestable
  • Dublin Core mapping features for Identifiers and contributors
  • Improved batch metadata manipulation – automated re-indexing enhancements (changing control lists forces re-indexing of all items that use changed data)
  • Sponsor browsing / statistics
  • Paging and Sorting for contributor pages
  • Improved Search Engine Optimization(SEO) for better indexing of researcher pages and content within the repository
  • Researcher page interface enhancements
  • Content type listing and filtering at the repository and collection levels
  • Content type counts at the repository and collection levels
  • Increased download information and removal options for more accurate download counts
  • Updated Help, Installation and User manuals
  • RSS feeds for Collections/Contributor Pages
  • Upgraded pdf/word/excel/power point text extraction libraries
  • Updated user account management features
  • Submission performance enhancements
  • Improved home page module placement
  • Improved change tracking

| Digital Scholarship |

Digital Repository Deposit: SWORD Course Videos

The SWORD (Simple Web-service Offering Repository Deposit) project has released a series of tutorial videos.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

  1. An Introduction to SWORD: Gives an overview of SWORD, the rationale behind its creation, and details of the first three funded SWORD projects
  2. SWORD Use Cases: Provides an introduction to use cases, and examines some of the use cases that SWORD can be used for
  3. How SWORD Works: A high level overview of the SWORD protocol, lightly touching on a few technical details in order to explain how it works
  4. SWORD Clients: The reasons for needing SWORD clients are shown, followed by a tour of some of the current SWORD clients
  5. Create Your Own SWORD Client: An overview of the EasyDeposit SWORD client creation toolkit, including the chance to try it out

VuFind 1.0 Released

VuFind 1.0 has been released. VuFind is an open source resource discovery system.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

VuFind's long beta period is now over. Today, VuFind 1.0 has been released. In addition to improved stability, the new release includes several features missing from the previous release candidate: flexible support for non-MARC metadata formats, a mobile interface, Dewey Decimal support, integration with Serials Solutions' Summon, and more!

Institutional Repositories: BibApp 1.0

The BibApp development team has released BibApp 1.0.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

BibApp is a campus research gateway and expert finder. It matches researchers on your campus or research center with their publication data and mines that data to see collaborations, create visualizations of areas of research, and find experts in research areas. With BibApp, it is easy to see what publications can be placed on the Web for greater access and impact. BibApp can push those publications directly into an institutional repository.

BibApp allows researchers and research groups to promote research, find collaborators on campus, and make research more accessible. It also allows libraries to better understand research happening in local departments, facilitate conversations about author rights with researchers, and ease the population of the institutional repository. Finally, BibApp allows campus administrators to achieve a clearer picture of collaboration and scholarly publishing trends on campus.

BibApp is the result of a collaboration between the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The Illinois Informatics Institute at the University of Illinois (https://www.informatics.illinois.edu/icubed/) provided generous funding for the development of the 1.0 release of BibApp.

BibApp is a Ruby on Rails application, coupled with the Solr/Lucene search engine, and either MySQL or PostgreSQL as its datastore. It uses open standards and protocols such as OpenURL and SWORD and automatically pulls in data from third party sources such as Google Books and the Sherpa/Romeo publisher policy database. BibApp imports publication data in RIS, MEDLINE and Refworks XML bibliography formats and exports data in several citation formats (APA, Chicago, IEEE, MLA, more) via CiteProc. BibApp also provides a web services API for delivering data as XML, YML, JSON, and RDF. BibApp is released under a University of Illinois/NCSA Open Source License (http://www.opensource.org/licenses/UoI-NCSA.php).

Digital Library Software: 2009 Greenstone User and Developer Survey

Laura Sheble et al. have released the 2009 Greenstone User and Developer Survey.

Here's an excerpt:

The 2009 Greenstone User and Developer Survey was designed to gather information about the organizational and technical contexts in which organizations and individuals use Greenstone Digital Library Software. A major component of the survey focused on how support resources are used and how current resources meet user needs.

OCLC Releases MARCView and MARConvert as Open Source Software

OCLC has released MARCView and MARConvert as open source software.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

OCLC and Systems Planning are pleased to announce the donation of MARCView and MARConvert to OCLC, and OCLC’s release of MARCView and MARConvert as open source software under the Apache 2.0 license.

MARCView and MARConvert software, developed by Systems Planning of Bethesda, Maryland, USA, are widely-used applications designed to assist librarians and developers working with MARC records. MARCView provides a user-friendly interface to navigate and display individual MARC, MARCXML and UNIMARC records. MARConvert™ supports the conversion of bibliographic or authority records into or out of MARC21, UNIMARC or MARCXML and can also convert MARC records from one character set to another.

Digital Repositories: Multiple-Deposit Function Added to EasyDeposit SWORD Client

Stuart Lewis has announced that a multiple-deposit function has been added to the EasyDeposit SWORD client.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

For those of you unfamiliar with EasyDeposit, it is an online tool that allows you to configure your own SWORD client. It is intended that you run multiple copies of EasyDeposit and configure each for a specific tailored use, such as thesis deposit, journal deposit, multiple deposit etc. The deposit process is made up of a set of 'steps' which you can configure and change into a preferred order to make your chosen client. . . .

The new multiple deposit functionality allows the administrator to 'hard code' the details of a set of repositories, and upon completion of the deposit process the item is deposited into each of those repositories. EasyDeposit has been designed with extensibility in mind, so if you wish to write your own 'steps,' for example to allow the depositor to select which repositories from a given list they would like to deposit into, this is easy and straightforward to write in PHP.

Open Source OPAC: Blacklight 2.5 Released

Blacklight 2.5 has been released.

Here's the announcement:

Here's an excerpt from the FAQ that describes Blacklight:

Blacklight is an open source OPAC (online public access catalog). That means libraries (or anyone else) can use it to allow people to search and browse their collections online. Blacklight uses Solr to index and search, and it has a highly configurable Ruby on Rails front-end. Currently, Blacklight can index, search, and provide faceted browsing for MaRC records and several kinds of XML documents, including TEI, EAD, and GDMS. Blacklight was developed at the University of Virginia Library and is made public under an Apache 2.0 license.

Digital Repository Software: DSpace 1.6.1 Released

DuraSpace has released DSpace 1.6.1.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

DSpace 1.6.1 is primarily a bug-fix release, which means it does not introduce any new features but improves existing features and fixes bugs discovered in earlier versions of DSpace. This is also the first [minor] version of DSpace to use a “time-driven” approach to release, rather than a “feature-driven” approach: we set a deadline and worked towards releasing on that date, instead of releasing when a certain number of issues were resolved. DSpace 1.7 will be the first major time-driven release.

Open Source Data Registry Software: CKAN (Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network) Version 1.0 Released

The Open Knowledge Foundation has released CKAN (Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network) version 1.0.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

As well as being used to power http://ckan.net and http://data.gov.uk CKAN is now helping run 7 data catalogues around the world including ones in Canada (http://datadotgc.ca / http://ca.ckan.net), Germany (http://de.ckan.net/) and Norway (http://no.ckan.net).

CKAN.net has also continued to grow steadily and now has over 940 registered packages:

Here's a description of CKAN from the project page:

CKAN is a registry or catalogue system for datasets or other "knowledge" resources. CKAN aims to make it easy to find, share and reuse open content and data, especially in ways that are machine automatable.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations: OpenETD Software Released

The Rutgers University Libraries have released OpenETD.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The Rutgers University Libraries are pleased to announce the availability of OpenETD, a web-based software application for managing the submission, approval, and distribution of electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs). OpenETD is the open source release of the Rutgers University Libraries. RUetd application and will be maintained on the RUetd annual release schedule. Releases will include fixes for known problems and recommendations for enhancements received from internal projects and the user community at large.

OpenETD can be used as either a standalone ETD submission system, or it can be implemented as a component of an institutional repository by using its METS/XML export functionality. Using the METS/XML export functionality, native to OpenETD, implementers can export acquired ETDs to their local institutional repositories for preservation and presentation purposes.

Features of OpenETD include:

  • UTF-8 Compliant

    UTF-8 compliance ensures that diacritics, foreign languages, mathematical symbols, and other characters will be preserved in the metadata and abstract.

  • Support of multiple graduate schools

    Large universities often have several graduate schools. OpenETD provides a centralized system for managing submissions from a System Administrator perspective while also limiting Reviewers' access to only their schools. OpenETD also allows schools to have their own unique degree types, program/curriculums, and submission terms and policies and embargo period(s).

  • Site configuration

    Configurable unique title, logo, color scheme and footer information for the entire university or for each graduate school.

  • Local or Centralized Authentication

    Configurable authentication module to use a centralized LDAP system or local system, or both. LDAP support is limited in release 1.1-beta of the software.

  • Support of supplementary files.

    The ETDs often have supporting materials, all with unique metadata. Restrictions may be applied to acceptable filetypes.

  • Automated Margin and Page Number Validator

    No more rulers! Reviewers can check margins and page numbers on PDF documents with this handy tool.

  • Email Notification System

    Users are notified when the status of their paper changes. Reviewers are notified upon submission and resubmission. Email notifications may be turned off.

  • Graduation Report

    Generate an Excel compatible report of all students with accepted papers for a given semester. This is useful for graduation role call, or the printing of name tags, letters, etc.

  • Semi-Automated Export to ProQuest/UMI

    Export tools generate metadata and zip files of "accepted" ETDs for easy FTP upload to ProQuest's ETD processing facility.

  • Export in METS/XML

    Export tools allow for the generation of METS/XML from submitted papers.

EasyDeposit, Toolkit for Creating SWORD Deposit Interfaces, Released

Stuart Lewis has released EasyDeposit, a toolkit for creating SWORD deposit interfaces.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

EasyDeposit allows you to create customised SWORD deposit interfaces by configuring a set of 'steps'. A typical flow of steps may be: login, select a repository, enter some metadata, upload a file, verify the information is correct, perform the deposit, send a confirmation email. Alternatively a deposit flow may just require a file to be uploaded and a title entered. A configuration file is used to list the steps you require.

EasyDeposit makes use of the CodeIgniter MVC PHP framework. This means each 'step' is made up of two files: a 'controller' which looks after the validation and processing of any data entered, and a 'view' which controls the web page that a user sees. This separation of concerns makes it easy for web programmers to edit the controllers, and web designers to tinker with the look and feel of the interface in the views.

Harvard University Library OIS Releases File Information Tool Set Version 0.3.1

Harvard University Library's Office for Information Systems has released File Information Tool Set version 0.3.1.

Here's an excerpt from the user guide:

The File Information Tool Set (FITS) identifies, validates and extracts technical metadata for a wide range of file formats. It acts as a wrapper, invoking and managing the output from several other open source tools. Output from these tools are converted into a common format, compared to one another and consolidated into a single XML output file. FITS is written in Java and is compatible with Java 1.5 or higher. The external tools currently used are:

Library of Congress Establishes Procedures to Release Open Source Software

The Library of Congress has established procedures to release open source software.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

"The overall effect will be to clarify and streamline the process for releasing software as open source," said Michelle Springer, a digital initiatives project manager at the Library, "allowing the Library and its partners to more fully participate in the open source development community."

The Library has been especially active in developing tools that support digital preservation processes, including the secure transfer of digital files. This includes the release of a full suite of digital content transfer tools that support the Bagit specification.

These tools marked the first release of Library-authored open source software to a public repository. The tools were first registered on SourceForge in December 2008 and are available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/loc-xferutils/. While Sourceforge was the first external repository to host Library code, other repositories may be used in the future.

Source code originating from the Library may only be distributed as open source if developed by Library staff or under a contract granting the Library the necessary distribution rights. Additionally, the code cannot be based or dependent on any proprietary software and must be releasable without restrictions or cost.

Works created by Library of Congress staff will be designated in the code comments as a work within the public domain. The addition of the public domain notation in the code comments serves the function of letting developers know that section of the code is free for reuse even if the Library's code is incorporated into a software project with a more restrictive license.

Not all software repositories offer the option of a public domain designation. Under those circumstances the Library will apply the most permissive license possible. BSD-style licenses are being used by multiple National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program partners.

OAI-PMH: MOAI 1.0.7 Released

Infrae has released MOAI 1.0.7, a standalone OAI-PMH server that can “can be used in combination with any repository software that comes with an OAI feed.”

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

MOAI is a platform for aggregating content from different sources, and publishing it through the Open Archive Initiatives protocol for metadata harvesting. It's been built for academic institutional repositories dealing with relational metadata and asset files. . . .

More specifically MOAI has the ability to:

  • Harvest data from different kinds of sources
  • Serve many OAI feeds from one MOAI server, each with their own configuration
  • Turn metadata values into OAI sets on the fly, creating new collections
  • Use OAI sets to filter records shown in a feed, configurable for each feed
  • Work easily with relational data (e.g. if an author changes, the publication should also change)
  • Simple and robust authentication through integration with the Apache webserver
  • Serve assets via Apache while still using configurable authentication rules

Open Library Environment (OLE) Becomes Kuali Foundation Project

The Open Library Environment (OLE) project has become a Kuali Foundation project.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The Kuali Foundation, Inc., is pleased to announce that a group of leading academic research libraries is partnering in the Kuali Open Library Environment (OLE) (pronounced Oh-LAY) project to develop software created specifically for the complex business management and workflow operations of academic and research libraries. . . .

More than 300 libraries, educational institutions, professional organizations, and businesses participated in some phase of planning for the OLE project, which was supported by a planning grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and led by Duke University. Based on that broad insight, OLE will create a next-generation library system that breaks away from print-based workflows and reflects the changing nature of library materials and new approaches to scholarly work. The project is designed to work well with other enterprise systems and to be easily modified to suit the needs of different institutions.

Consistent with the values of the Kuali Foundation, the resulting software will be made freely available to libraries around the world, which will then also contribute their expertise and enhancements through community processes that work for the library community. The project will build on the far-reaching expertise of its current and future partners. . . .

Integrated library systems, composed of relational databases and the application software to support them, are used to track materials within library collections, from ordering and paying for them to loaning them to library patrons. Because large academic research libraries are responsible for managing and providing access to millions of items, the need to be more proactive in software development is especially acute in light of the workflow needed to manage and curate a varied digital collection that includes leased electronic journal content and owned special collections. . . .

Kuali OLE partners include Indiana University (lead); Florida Consortium (University of Florida representing Florida International University, Florida State University, New College of Florida, Rollins College, University of Central Florida, University of Miami, University of South Florida, the Florida Center for Library Automation); Lehigh University; Triangle Research Libraries Network, represented by Duke University and North Carolina State University; University of Chicago; University of Maryland; University of Michigan; and the University of Pennsylvania.

Omeka 1.1 Released

Version 1.1 of Omeka has been released. Omeka is a "free and open source collections based web-based publishing platform for scholars, librarians, archivists, museum professionals, educators, and cultural enthusiasts."

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

In 1.1., users will have more control over their installation through the admin interface, such as:

  • Toggling more easily between the public site and the item and collection pages by clicking on a new "View on Public Site" link;
  • Browsing through more than 10 collections;
  • Managing and upgrading plugins;
  • Displaying only item fields containing metadata on the public site with a new setting in the theme panel (without needing to edit on the server).

Read more about it at "Release Notes for 1.1."

Archivists Toolkit Version 2.0 Released

The Archivists Toolkit version 2.0 has been released.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

New features added to AT 2.0 include:

  1. Revised Digital Object module, so that Digital Object records can be created and managed independent of Resource records.
  2. Tab-delimited Digital Object import
  3. Batch export of Digital Objects
  4. Assessment module
  5. New reports for Digital Object and Assessment modules
  6. Revision of all other reports (Names, Subjects, Accessions, Resources)
  7. Improved stylesheets for EAD to PDF and EAD to HTML outputs
  8. Bug fixes as noted in release notes

Read more about it at "New/Updated Features for AT Release 2.0."

Open Journal Systems 2.3 Released

The Public Knowledge Project has released Open Journal Systems 2.3.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

OJS 2.3.0 introduces a major rewrite of core aspects of PKP applications that reconciles common code (e.g. shared between OJS, OCS, and the Harvester) into a separate library called the PKP Web Application Library (WAL). Many parts of the system have been changed in a way that is transparent to users but that will vastly improve maintainability and the ease with which PKP can deploy fixes and new features across multiple applications. Wherever possible, this has been done in a way that minimizes code breakage e.g. for modified installs of OJS and custom plugins.

Read more about it at "OJS 2.3: What's New."

"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.

SWORD PHP Library Version 0.9

The SWORD PHP library version 0.9 has been released. SWORD is "a lightweight protocol for depositing content from one location to another. It stands for Simple Web-service Offering Repository Deposit and is a profile of the Atom Publishing Protocol (known as APP or ATOMPUB)."

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

  • Changed swordappservicedocument to build the servcedocument from the xml response rather than having the swordappclient do the work. This allows the service document to be parsed at a later time.
  • Changed the swordappclient deposit method to stream the file being deposited straight from disk rather than via memory to avoid using excessive memory and potentially exceeding the PHP memory limit. I’ve successfully tested this against DSpace with deposits of 600MB CD images.
  • Added some validation to the SWAP/METS packager to allow it to cope with filenames and metadata containing ampersands

CONTENTdm Image Viewer: dmMonocle 1.0 Released

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas Libraries have released dmMonocle 1.0.

Here's an excerpt from the project page:

dmMonocle is a stand-alone image viewer for CONTENTdm® collections, intended as a replacement for the default image viewer provided with CONTENTdm® 4.x and 5.x. The goal of the project is to make CONTENTdm® images, such as photos, maps, and scanned documents, easier to view and navigate. dmMonocle is written in JavaScript using jQuery, and provides patrons with the ability to zoom, pan, and rotate images on the fly without reloading the entire page. dmMonocle slices up large images into smaller square tiles, loading only the tiles in the visible area, much like Google Maps. In addition to the improved main viewing area, dmMonocle provides a thumbnail-sized navigator, showing patrons which part of the larger image they are viewing. The navigator may also be used to quickly move around an image

Digital Preservation: Alpha Prototype of JHOVE2 Released

An alpha prototype of JHOVE2 is now available. JHOVE2 is a tool for the characterization (i.e., identification, validation, feature extraction, and assessment) of digital objects that is used for digital library and digital preservation purposes.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

An alpha prototype version of JHOVE2 is now available for download and evaluation (v. 0.5.2, 2009-08-05). Distribution packages (in zip and tar.gz form) are available on the JHOVE2 public wiki at (http://confluence.ucop.edu/display/JHOVE2Info/Download). The new JHOVE2 architecture reflected in this prototype is described in the attached architectural overview (also available at http://confluence.ucop.edu/display/JHOVE2Info/Architecture). . . .

The prototype supports the following features:

  • Appropriate recursive processing of directories and Zip files.
  • High performance buffered I/O using the Java nio package.
  • Message digesting for the following algorithms: Adler-32, CRC-32,
  • MD2, MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512
  • Results formatted as JSON, text (name/value pairs), and XML.
  • Use of the Spring Inversion-of-Control container for flexible module
  • configuration.
  • A complete UTF-8 module.
  • An minimally functional Shapefile module.

OAI-PMH: MOAI 1.0.6 Released

MOAI 1.0.6 has been released.

Here's an excerpt from the MOAI Web page:

MOAI has some interesting features not found in most OAI servers. Besides serving OAI, it can also harvest OAI. This makes it possible for MOAI to work as a pipe, where the OAI data can be reconfigured, cached, and enriched while it passes through the MOAI processing.

More specifically MOAI has the ability to:

  • Harvest data from different kinds of sources
  • Serve many OAI feeds from one MOAI server, each with their own configuration
  • Turn metadata values into OAI sets on the fly, creating new collections
  • Use OAI sets to filter records shown in a feed, configurable for each feed
  • Work easily with relational data (e.g. if an author changes, the publication should also change)
  • Simple and robust authentication through integration with the Apache webserver
  • Serve assets via Apache while still using configurable authentication rules

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).