Presentation on Digital Repository Development at CNI Fall Meeting

Library IT’s CTO Michael Dula presented on digital repository development last week at the Coalition for Networked Information’s fall 2014 meeting in Washington D.C. The presentation is linked here.

via CNI.org: The Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) is dedicated to supporting the transformative promise of digital information technology for the advancement of scholarly communication and the enrichment of intellectual productivity. Some 220 institutions representing higher education, publishing, information technology, scholarly and professional organizations, foundations, and libraries and library organizations make up CNI’s members; CNI is entirely funded through membership dues. Semi-annual membership meetings bring together representatives of CNI’s constituencies to discuss ongoing and new projects, and to plan for future initiatives.

ScholarSphere Conference at Yale University Library

Yale University Library and Yale ITS are pleased to sponsor a conference and public lecture on ScholarSphere, a software project developed at Penn State University, based on the same open-source Hydra/Fedora framework in use at YUL.

Yale University Library and ITS are investigating the possible adoption of this solution to enable Yale faculty and researchers to self-archive their own digital content in a managed, secure repository for controlled or open dissemination as well as for their own use. Our speakers will talk about the ScholarSphere project both from a technical perspective and as a service model. More information on the ScholarSphere website here.

Speakers:

Patricia Hswe, Digital Content Strategist and Head, ScholarSphere User Services at Penn State University
Daniel Coughlin, Ph.D. Candidate at Penn State University

via Yale University Library News: ScholarSphere Conference Archives.

Avalon Meeting Notes for Nov 24

We had a very productive meeting with three guests: Jon Dunn, Project Director, Indiana University; Mark Notess, Product Owner, Indiana University; Julie Rudder, Product Owner, Northwestern University.

The day started with an introduction to Avalon Media Systems in the Library Lecture Hall which included demonstrations of the work of Indiana and Northwestern who very recently released their first Avalon collections to the public. Powerpoint from the presentation is attached here: Yale Avalon Conference This lecture was video taped but sound is lacking, please contact michael.friscia@yale.edu for access.

Later in the day a smaller group convened to have a technical discussion about the future roadmap of Avalon. A recent poster that gives a very high level view can be seen here: RudderAvalon2. I am hoping to acquire a copy of the powerpoint presentation which has bullet lists of all the planned work that will go into version 3.2 through 4.0.

While we are still in the discussion stages of a project to bring Avalon up at Yale, two of the most important features for us include integration with Fedora 4 and possible integration of the backend transcoding processes into Sufia (Penn State has a version of Sufia called ScholarSphere). Our goal would be to integrate the two Hydra applications together so that audio and video files loaded into the self archiving product, Sufia, would take advantage of all the features of the Avalon Media System.

In addition, we discussed many topics including scaling Avalon so that it could transcode more than one file at a time, use RDF for describing complex relationships between multiple files/tracks and digital preservation.

 

 

Yale ITS to hold Tech Summit this month, Library IT to present

Join us for the inaugural Yale Technology Summit, a day-long program of conversations with Yale faculty, students, and staff working with innovative and cutting-edge technologies. The event, coordinated by Yale Information Technology Services, is free and open to all members of the Yale community.

Library and Library IT presentations at this event include:

  • Library Development for Digital Repositories: What is this Hydra Fedora stuff?
    In response to a fragmented digital collections environment developed over many years using many systems, the Yale Library has launched a project to unify digital collections within a single open source software framework using Hydra/Fedora. Michael Dula, the Library CTO, will talk about the decision to go open source with Hydra and Fedora as the underlying technologies. Topics will include Yale’s contributions to the open source Hydra community, a demonstration of initial projects, and future development plans and possibilities. 
  • Quicksearch: Universal Search at the University Library
    The Library offers several search interfaces: Orbis and MORRIS search the Library and Law Library catalogs, Articles+ for articles, journals and newspapers, and several digitized collection searches. The many search interfaces present a challenge to our patrons, who have to select the correct search depending on the material they need. The Library will combine several of these search interfaces into one unified ‘Quicksearch’, which over time will become a comprehensive search interface for the majority of Library resources. The Quicksearch poster session will highlight progress on the project so far. We will also provide laptops so Summit Participants can try the new search for themselves.

  • Humanities Data Mining in the Library
    In response to increased scholarly demand, Yale University Library is helping humanists make sense of large amounts of digital data. In this presentation, we will highlight recent projects based on Yale-digitized data, data from large commercial vendors, and data from the Library of Congress. We’ll address 1) working with digitized collections that are subject to license & copyright, 2) thinking about both explicit metadata and latent structure in large digital collections, and 3) moving beyond text to consider machine vision and computational image analysis.

  • Preservation and Access Challenges of Born-Digital Materials
    We will provide an introduction to the scope of born-digital materials at Sterling Memorial Library and the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, and in particular will discuss the innovative ways staff at the Yale libraries are collaborating with colleagues on different initiatives, including a digital forensics lab devoted to the capture of born-digital materials, an emulation service that can provide online access to vintage computing environments via a web browser, and a vision for digital preservation to ensure that collection materials we capture today will remain usable in the future.

Watch the conversation on #YaleTechSummit2014 on Twitter!

via 2014 Tech Summit | Yale ITS

Yale Library Technology Roadmap: Where are We, and Where are We Going?

Yale Library Technology Roadmap: Where are We, and Where are We Going?

Thursday, November 6, 2:00pm

SML International Room

Michael Dula, the Yale Library’s Chief Technology Officer, will summarize major Library IT activities from the past year, talk about projects being launched in the current fiscal year, and provide a roadmap of anticipated and potential technology projects for the next two to three years. There will be time for questions about past and current projects, but this should also be an opportunity for an interesting dialogue about future paths for library technology.

This event is sponsored by SCOPA and is free and open to all.

via Yale University Library News: Yale Library Technology Roadmap: Where are We, and Where are We Going? Archives.