Category: Open Source Software

eSciDoc Infrastructure Version 1.1 Released

Version 1.1 of the eSciDoc Infrastructure has been released.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

  • Improved Ingest with support for pre-set states (e.g., ingest objects in status 'released'). Ingest performance has been improved significantly.
  • Support for user preferences added
  • Group policies extend the existing authorization options and allow for better support of collaborative working environments
  • Support for Japanese character sets in full-text and metadata searches, including the extraction of Japanese text from PDF documents
  • Support for OAI-PMH with dynamic sets based on filters
  • Improved and extended functionality for the Admin Tool, which now comes with a web-based GUI

Here's a brief description of the eSciDoc Core Services, which are part of a larger software suite (see the General Concepts page for further information):

The eSciDoc Core Services form a middleware for e-Research applications. The Core Services encapsulate a repository (Fedora Commons) and implement a broad range of commonly used functionalities. The service-oriented architecture fosters the creation of autonomous services, which can be re-used independently from the rest of the infrastructure. The multi-disciplinary nature of the existing Solutions built on top of the Core Services ensure the coverage of a broad range of generic and discipline-specific requirements.

Fedora Repository 3.2.1 Released

The Fedora Commons has released version 3.2.1 of Fedora Repository.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The current release of Fedora Repository is 3.2.1 is a minor upgrade that addresses a security issue discovered in Fedora 3.2. . . .

Included within is the long-awaited, web-based administrative client, initial integration with the emerging Akubra storage-abstraction layer, many useful bug fixes, and the experimental release of a Fedora decoupled from the familiar 'fedora' context path.

Open Monograph Press to Launch During Second International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference, July 8-10

According to "Library Releasing New Publishing Tool," the Public Knowledge Project will launch its new Open Monograph Press during the Second International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference on July 8-10.

Here's an excerpt from the Open Monograph Press home page:

Open Monograph Press, a new open source publishing product under development by the Public Knowledge Project, will establish an online workspace for publishing monographs, edited volumes, and scholarly editions, while keeping an archival record of the process (compatible with the Fedora repository). . . .

The plans for OMP also include the potential for users to set up a Social Networking Incubator and Workspace system, which would enable editors to create a workspace for authors who appear to have a potential monograph project in hand, giving the author a chance to develop ideas within an invited or more open community, before moving into a formal book proposal and submission process.

This will provide author and editor with a series of tools and spaces that will allow them to see if there is a book residing within the author's article-length work, by bringing together authors and collecting pieces for engagement and response by select communities of interest or potentially by anyone interested, at the author and editor's discretion (Access Scheduler).

Omeka Image Annotation Plugin 1.0 Beta

The Center for History and New Media, George Mason University has released the Image Annotation Plugin 1.0 beta for Omeka.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Have you ever wanted to annotate your images on Omeka like you can on Flickr?

Now you can with the beta release of Omeka's Image Annotation plugin! Using an adaptation of Chris Woods' jQuery plugin, jquery-image-annotate, Omeka's new Image Annotation plugin allows users to add textual annotations to images. To add an image annotation, users select a region of the image and then attach a textual description.

SWORD PHP Library Version 0.7

Stuart Lewis has released the SWORD PHP Library Version 0.7.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This latest version adds two new features:

  • When performing a deposit, the client now sets the 'Content-Disposition:filename' header so that the SWORD server knows what to name the file. . . .
  • When performing a deposit, the optional X-No-Op (pretend to perform the deposit) and X-Verbose (provide a verbose response) headers can now be sent (as per http://www.swordapp.org/docs/sword-profile-1.3.html#b.9.2)

Open Content Alliance Releases New Version of E-Book Reader

The Open Content Alliance has released a new version of its e-book reader (GnuBook Book Reader).

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

In addition to a new theme and user interface, the reader has the following special features:

  • the reader includes unique (and simple to understand) URLs for each page, which update as you move through a book. These URLs can be used in citations and bookmarks, making it easier and more legible when referring to a particular page of a book.
  • books can be viewed in one or two-page mode.
  • in one-page mode, images can be zoomed up to 100% of the original scans. Because the Internet Archive scans are in color, this is an especially nice feature with illustrated books.
  • it has the capability of accommodating books that read right-to-left, such as those books in our Yiddish collection.
  • the reader is supported by all browsers (but IE 6).
  • there is an auto-play feature, so that you can set the pages to turn automatically.
  • As always, the reader is open source. If you have suggestions or bug reports, please add them to the book reader’s launchpad page so the engineers will see and prioritize them.

EmeraldView Front-End to Greenstone Digital Library Software

A beta release of the EmeraldView front-end to the Greenstone digital library software is near completion. The current code is available via a Subversion checkout. A demo is available.

Here's an excerpt from the project home page:

We are aiming to solve several key weaknesses of the stock front-end:

  • Greenstone's cryptic URLs of unusual size are a fail for user comprehensibility, search engine crawlers, bookmarking, etc. . .
  • Though extensive customization of the display is possible, there are some stopping points where modification of the C++ source is required.
  • The customization that is supported is via a system of micro-templates referred to as macros. This system is so heavily nested and cross-referenced that it is very difficult to conceptualize how any given page is generated.

Digital Exhibit Software: Omeka 1.0

The Center for History and New Media at George Mason University has released Omeka 1.0.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This production-grade release marks the completion of Omeka’s basic requirement set. Maintaining our commitment to serious web publishing for scholarship and cultural heritage, Omeka 1.0 incorporates unqualified Dublin Core metadata for organizing and displaying collections; support for extensible element sets; robust, flexible theme and plugin APIs; and plugins for Zotero compatibility, static page creation, and building sophisticated online exhibitions.

“Evaluation of Digital Repository Software at the National Library of Medicine”

Jennifer L. Marill and Edward C. Luczak have published "Evaluation of Digital Repository Software at the National Library of Medicine" in the latest issue of D-Lib Magazine.

Here's an excerpt:

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Library of Medicine® (NLM) undertook an 18-month project to evaluate, test and recommend digital repository software and systems to support NLM's collection and preservation of a wide variety of digital objects. This article outlines the methodology NLM used to analyze the landscape of repository software and select three systems for in-depth testing. Finally, the article discusses the evaluation results and next steps for NLM. This project followed an earlier NLM working group, which created functional requirements and identified key policy issues for an NLM digital repository to aid in building NLM's collection in the digital environment.

DSpace and Fedora Commons Merge to Form DuraSpace

DSpace and Fedora Commons have merged to form a new organization, DuraSpace.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The joined organization, named "DuraSpace," will sustain and grow its flagship repository platforms – Fedora and DSpace. DuraSpace will also expand its portfolio by offering new technologies and services that respond to the dynamic environment of the Web and to new requirements from existing and future users. DuraSpace will focus on supporting existing communities and will also engage a larger and more diverse group of stakeholders in support of its not-for-profit mission. The organization will be led by an executive team consisting of Sandy Payette (Chief Executive Officer), Michele Kimpton (Chief Business Officer), and Brad McLean (Chief Technology Officer) and will operate out of offices in Ithaca, NY and Cambridge, MA.

"This is a great development," said Clifford Lynch, Executive Director of the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI). "It will focus resources and talent in a way that should really accelerate progress in areas critical to the research, education, and cultural memory communities. The new emphasis on distributed reliable storage infrastructure services and their integration with repositories is particularly timely."

Together Fedora and DSpace make up the largest market share of open repositories worldwide, serving over 700 institutions. These include organizations committed to the use of open source software solutions for the dissemination and preservation of academic, scientific, and cultural digital content.

"The joining of DSpace and Fedora Commons is a watershed event for libraries, specifically, and higher education, more generally," said James Hilton, CIO of the University of Virginia. "Separately, these two organizations operated with similar missions and a shared commitment to developing and supporting open technologies. By bringing together the technical, financial, and community-based resources of the two organizations, their communities gain a robust organization focused on solving the many challenges involved in storing, curating, and preserving digital data and scholarship," he said.

New Products

DuraSpace will continue to support its existing software platforms, DSpace and Fedora, as well as expand its offerings to support the needs of global information communities. The first new technology to emerge will be a Web-based service named "DuraCloud." DuraCloud is a hosted service that takes advantage of the cost efficiencies of cloud storage and cloud computing, while adding value to help ensure longevity and re-use of digital content. The DuraSpace organization is developing partnerships with commercial cloud providers who offer both storage and computing capabilities.

The DuraCloud service will be run by the DuraSpace organization. Its target audiences are organizations responsible for digital preservation and groups creating shared spaces for access and re-use of digital content. DuraCloud will be accessible directly as a Web service and also via plug-ins to digital repositories including Fedora and DSpace. The software developed to support the DuraCloud service will be made available as open source. An early release of DuraCloud will be available for selected pilot partners in Fall 2009.

Key Benefits of the DuraSpace Organization

DuraSpace will support both DSpace and Fedora by working closely with both communities and when possible, develop synergistic technologies, services, and programs that increase interoperability of the two platforms. DuraSpace will also support other open source software projects including the Mulgara semantic store, a scalable RDF database.

DuraSpace is mission-focused. The organization will be associated with its broader mission of working towards developing services and solutions on behalf of diverse communities rather than focusing on single-solution product development. This change in orientation can be characterized as moving beyond the software and toward the mission.

DuraSpace will bring strength and leadership to a larger community and amplify the value brought by each organization individually. With both organizations working in unison, there can be significant economies of scale, synergies in developing open technologies and services, and a strong position for long-term sustainability.

djatoka Version 1.1/djatoka Viewer Version 2.0 Released

djatoka version 1.1 and djatoka Viewer version 2.0 have been released.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

djatoka is a Java-based open source image server with an attractive basic feature set and extensibility under control of the community of implementers. Off-the-shelf, djatoka provides compression and region extraction of JPEG 2000 images, URI-addressability of regions, and support for a rich set of input/output image formats (e.g., BMP, GIF, JPG, PNG, PNM, TIF, JPEG 2000). djatoka also comes with a plug-in framework that allows transformations to be applied to regions and resolutions (e.g., watermarking).

SWORD Named Most Innovative Project at JISC Repositories and Preservation Conference

UKOLN's SWORD (Simple Web-service Offering Repository Deposit) Project was named most innovative project at the JISC Repositories and Preservation conference.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

SWORD, whose partners include developers of the DSpace, EPrints, Fedora and IntraLibrary repository software platforms, plus the University of York and CASIS at the University of Wales, has created a mechanism for repositories to deposit and receive deposits via a standard protocol, thus making it possible for different repositories and other applications to move content around more easily. SWORD has received much interest, and a growing community of active developers is building, including Microsoft whose SWORD plug-in can support deposits direct to a repository from within Microsoft Word. FeedForward, a close second for the award, is also SWORD-compliant. Work on SWORD continues within the UKOLN suite of activities.

Open Source OPAC: Blacklight 2.1 Release

The Blacklight 2.1 Release is now available.

Here's an excerpt from the Blacklight Frequently Asked Questions:

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.

DigitalKoans

OAI-PMH: MOAI Server 1.0 Released

Infrae has released the MOAI Server 1.0, an open source OAI-PMH application.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

MOAI is an open access server platform for institutional repositories. The server aggregates content from disparate sources, transforms it, stores it in a database, and (re)publishes the content, in one or many OAI feeds. Each feed has its own configuration.

The server has a flexible system for combining records into sets and uses these sets in the feed configuration. MOAI also comes with a simple yet flexible authentication scheme that can easily be customized. Besides providing authentication for the feeds, the authentication also controls access to the assets.

MOAI is a standalone system that can be used in combination with any repository software that comes with an OAI feed such as Fedora Commons, EPrints or DSpace. It can also be used directly with an SQL database or just a folder of XML file. . . .

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)
  • Provide simple and robust authentication through integration with the Apache webserver
  • Serve assets through Apache while still using configurable authentication rules

DigitalKoans

Open Source Biological Specimen Database System for Museums: Specify 6 Released

Specify 6, an open source biological specimen database system for museums, has been released. (Thanks to Peter Scott’s Library Blog.)

Here's an excerpt from the project home page:

After more than twelve developer years of design and engineering and over two million USD of investment, the Specify Software Team is delighted to release today, April 10, 2009, Specify 6 for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux desktops.

Specify is a client-server database platform for museums and herbaria which processes specimen information for computerizing holdings, managing collection management transactions, and for mobilizing species occurrence data to the web. Specify is free and open source software licensed under the GNU GPL2. Downloadable installation packages for all three desktop flavors as well as Specify's Java source code are linked to this site. . . .

Non-profit U.S. research collections are eligible for our helpdesk and data conversion services thanks to our financial support from the U.S. National Science Foundation, Division of Biological Infrastructure. We look forward to working with you to increase the research impact of your institution's investment in biodiversity collection curation and specimen data management.

DSpace 1.5.2 Stable Released

DSpace 1.5.2 Stable has been released.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This release is primarily a bug fix release incorporating numerous bug fixes and enhancements.

We want to highlight the following additions:

  • SWORD module/version 1.3.1 supporting the sword standard version 1.3
  • cocoon upgraded to 2.2
  • fix for the UTF-8 issues with the XMLUI
  • new authentication methods: Hierarchical LDAP and Shibboleth
  • full update translations: German, Italian for both XMLUI and JSPUI and Ukrainian for JSPUI
  • new translations for 1.5.x: Greek and Thai
  • graceful resolver for urn in the item page for the JSPUI

Indiana University Digital Library Program Releases IN Harmony Sheet Music Cataloging Tool

The Indiana University Digital Library Program has released the IN Harmony Sheet Music Cataloging Tool.

Here's an excerpt from the tool's page:

The IN Harmony Sheet Music Cataloging Tool is an open source tool developed by the Indiana University Digital Library Program with funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as part of the IN Harmony: Sheet Music From Indiana project. This tool has been designed to assist libraries, archives, museums, and individual collectors describe their sheet music collections in a robust and standards-based way. This is a production system of the Indiana University Digital Library Program and was used to catalog more than 10,000 pieces of sheet music for the IN Harmony project.

The tool collects descriptive metadata about sheet music and exports it in the MODS, simple Dublin Core, and OAI-PMH Static Repository formats.

Digital Collections/Exhibitions Software: Omeka 1.0 Alpha Released

Omeka 1.0 alpha has been released.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This version of Omeka includes:

  • New helper functions and updates current helper function;
  • Enhancements and fixes bugs throughout the admin panel;
  • An autocompleter to the tags field for items;
  • Filtering for the users list in the admin;
  • An upgrade notification to admin dashboard if you're version of Omeka is older than the latest stable release.
  • A "Remember Me" checkbox to the login.
  • A global view page and helpers for file metadata, which will allow you to edit file metadata and display it in public themes.

CDL Releases Self-Guided Tutorial for the eXtensible Text Framework

The California Digital Library has released a self-guided tutorial for its eXtensible Text Framework (XTF).

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

XTF is an open source, highly customizable piece of software supporting the search, browse, and display of heterogeneous digital content and offering efficient and practical methods for creating customized end-user interfaces for distinct digital collections. The tutorial provides guidance for implementing and customizing XTF, from core functionality to overall look and feel. . . .

The tutorial comes with a complete XTF package that is ready to run when uncompressed; no other installation is required. It contains nine modules spanning the most powerful and popular features, including how to:

  • Add new content
  • Change metadata
  • Change logo and colors
  • Increase significance of titles in ranking hits
  • Customize and enable default status of advanced search
  • Change fields displayed in search results
  • Enable structural searching
  • Create a hierarchical facet
  • Change footnote behavior

eXtensible Catalog Webcast Released

The eXtensible Catalog (XC) Project has released a six-part webcast that describes the software, which is expected to be released by the end of the month.

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

The eXtensible Catalog (XC) Project is working to design and develop a set of open-source applications that will provide libraries with an alternative way to reveal their collections to library users. XC will provide easy access to all resources (both digital and physical collections) across a variety of databases, metadata schemas and standards, and will enable library content to be revealed through other services that libraries may already be using, such as content management systems and learning management systems. XC will also make library collections more web-accessible by revealing them through web search engines.

University of Rochester Releases New Institutional Repository System, IR Plus

The University of Rochester has released version alpha 0.1 of its new open source institutional repository system, IR Plus. A test version of the system is available, and a discussion group has been established on Google.

Here are the documentation links: