Orbis and Quicksearch beta: planning for production

As we’ve noted often in posts and talks around the library, LIT is working on a new interface, Quicksearch beta, for searching records from two library catalogs: Orbis and Morris. We are currently soliciting input on prioritization of functionality development.  While we do this work it is worth noting that there are no plans to retire the Orbis and Morris interfaces.

The Solr-based Quicksearch beta is a very good simplified keyword search of catalog records. It offers superior relevancy ranking of search results. The faceted results it provides are useful for giving more visibility to the metadata in catalog records. However, it does not offer advanced searching at this time, and for some collections and staff advanced search is a necessity. Therefore, Orbis will remain a fully-supported production service, even as Quicksearch beta develops and becomes a more full-featured service. We will work toward a shift by  the spring semester 2016, where Quicksearch will drop its beta status and become the featured search on the library’s home page, but Orbis and Morris will still have important roles to play and will still be available and linked from the library’s home page.

 

LibGuides 2 check-in

The LibGuides 2 implementation project has moved out of the planning phase.  The LibGuides 2 implementation group has approved documentation for the upcoming LibGuides 2 upgrade, including:

  • A LibGuides best practices document that has gone to CRSC for vetting;
  • A communications plan;
  • LibGuide review instructions;
  • Technical documentation; and
  • A LibGuides styleguide that will also go to CRSC for vetting.

The LibGuides 2 implementation group is now meeting with YUL departments to inform LibGuide authors about the project and the work that LibGuide authors will need to do for the project to be successful.  The LibGuides 2 Road Show, as it’s called internally, will run until April 15.

Many thanks and burnt offerings to Sarah Tudesco who has put together a Google Analytics statistics dashboard for LibGuide authors to use when they review their guides.  The use of the dashboard is explained in the LibGuide review instructions and requires no knowledge of Google Analytics.

The LibGuide review instructions will be released to LibGuide authors in April. For an extremely brief overview of the roadmap for the LibGuides 2 upgrade, check out http://www.library.yale.edu/skw33/libguides-2-timeline.jpg.

Stay tuned for more updates in the coming weeks!

Update on Digital Collection Migration Initiative

In an effort to provide a unified interface for all Yale Library collections, Library IT has embarked on a wide scale project to migrate over sixty individual digital collections to a single Hydra / Fedora repository (findit.library.yale.edu).

The first collection that was successfully migrated is the Drama School Collection, consisting of 850 posters and photographs highlighting over 80 years of theater performed at Yale.

Other collection that are expected to be available in the coming months include the Lewis – Walpole Library digital collection, Chinese Rare Books at Yale, Yale Silk Roads, China Christian Colleges and Universities Image Database, Yale Medical Library Bookplates collection and Birren Collection of Books on Color.

For questions about this project please contact George Ouellette.

More Hydra Ingest Statistics

More on the Hydra ingest workflow from Library IT and MSSA:

Enterprise Systems and Services in Library IT and MSSA staff also do preparation work on files prior to ingest into the Hydra digital repository.

ESS runs ingest and digital QC of files, and MSSA runs visual QC as well as sorting printed copies of Yale and LC call numbers.

So far we have collected 2,884,363 files in 48,743 folders and the files are currently stored on disk totaling 49 TB.

First Library Tech Talk Lightning Round

Today LIT did its first Tech Talk Lightning Round. In this format LIT staff give a very brief five minute update and then take ten minutes of questions and discussion. Feedback about this talk was very positive, and we hope to do another in April with the same format. Please send us suggestions for updates and project overviews you would like to hear about at the talk.

This time staff presented

  • Quicksearch beta
  • Aeon
  • Libguides 2
  • EZproxy Pilot

For those of you who could not make the talk here are the slides and some very rough notes from the discussion.

Notes

Quicksearch beta (Kalee Sprague) 
Milestones 
  • went live with public beta on Feb 6
  • traveling information sessions to different departments
  • draft bookmarks to hand out
  • continuing new development – new features through fall 2015
  • dynamic display of Morris statuses 
  • goal is to have stable  release for fall 2015
  • Quicksearch becomes prominent on the library’s home page in January 2016. This does NOT mean Orbis is gone, just takes a step back in prominence.
  • Demo’ed a search for justice resnik. Facets can be used to include or exclude material (using IS NOT). Is not functionality has been requested for years.

QUESTIONS

  •  MARC for eresources are loaded to Orbis/Morris – what deduping will there be in QS? Will we cease loading e-records?
    ANSWER from cataloging – we do coordinate with Law library on ebooks. After some discussion there was some agreement that all records should continue to be loaded in catalogs, we can dedupe at the point of ingest to Quicksearch.  Noted also that occurrence of duplication between Law and SML is rare
  • Will search Articles+ be replaced?
    ANSWER- we are focusing on making Articles+ work with QS beta now
  •  When we will push to students?
    ANSWER  It’s public beta and some staff are teaching or showing QSbeta, but others are waiting until Fall 2015.
    There was another comment that Articles+ is very helpful for some students, especially date limits, and it should continue to be prominent (not just in Quicksearch).
  • Finally, LIT staff are looking for feedback from RIO and other groups, please invite us to speak and demo!
Aeon (Melissa Wisner)
Overview of changes scheduled for Aeon, including the expanded use by the Lewis Walpole and Cushing/Whitney Medical Historical libraries.
  • Aeon is expanding – patron registration now available at all YUL Special Collections Libraries
  • Go to website, connect to link and be prompted to create account
  • TOU agreement (privacy, id type, security)
  • Staff approves request for access to materials
  • Once the user is approved, she can now request from any collection!
  • Showed Special Collections LibGuide
  • All Yale community members need to self-initiate registration in Aeon
  • aeonrouting.library.yale.edu

QUESTIONS:

  •  Right now, a patron can’t go to one interface to say they want items from multiple collections- is there an interest in simplifying that process?
  • ANSWER Routing from the different discovery places happens per item (because each special collection has its own Aeon instance) Unification for multi-collection requests might be further down the road.
    It was noted problem requesting things by location/instance because you need to physically go to the location to view or pick up. YFAD does do cross collection search
  • Do you have to register twice –
    ANSWER No just once!
  • We are interested in using same authentication for all services for people who are not Yale community members, I think Steelsen is working on that.
    ANSWER: It would be nice to be able to manage patrons universally for the Library across services.
  • Michael Dula noted we are moving towards using Aeon as the way to manage non-Yale people’s authentication.
Libguides V2 (Steve Wieda)
Overview of the project to upgrade to a new version of Libguides, the software behind library subject guides http://guides.library.yale.edu
  • Implementation project going on now until summer
  • New features – responsive design. professional look and feel, improved authoring interface
  • Responsive design – mobile versions are automatically created.
  • There is a more professional look rightout of the box, without any customization.
  •  Huge improvement is spell check as you type!
  • Timeline and milestones – LG2 implementaton group meeting regularly
    • roadshows in March and April
    • training in June
    • roll out on July 31st

QUESTIONS

  • Is there integration with online learning systems?
    ANSWER: not so much, but tighter with other Springshare 2.0 products, still having links into Classesv2 via LTI
  • Andy S. – will migration take whats existing now an dput into new guides? will you need to do much cleanup?
    ANSWER some box types are no longer supported so these may need some cleanup (TOC, feedback, etc). There will be doco for this before that time comes.
  • Is the migration only going to take published guides?
    ANSWER published and unpublished both will migrate.
  • Will there be changes in A to Z list of databases (provided in Libguides)?
    ANSWER: Permanent will be available, subject tagging and database content type tagging.
  • Will there be data about traffic through guides still available?
    ANSWER Historic data needs to be downloaded before migration. looking at new solution for getting data from guides – Libguides stats dashboard coming soon.  Watch for an announcement coming later next week about training and a new dashboard for Libguides use data.
EZproxy Pilot (Ray Frohlich)
Preview of the upcoming pilot of EZproxy at Yale . EZproxy is a tool many schools use for providing access to restricted e-resources.
  • We use VPN, which works for most, but not all, Yale patrons. It is a particular problem for the medical school and affiliated hospitals, and occasionally for some students and faculty abroad.
  • Medical maintains a squid proxy, but they are phasing it out. 
  • VPN does not provide fine-grained access control to services. It is an all or nothing service. EZProxy can introduce more granular control.
  • VPN may also not install correctly on some computers/mobile devices.
  • Purpose of pilot is to test if these use cases can be solved by EZProxy.
  • We are partnering with ITS on this as part of largerauthentication project.
  • In phase one the test team will discuss roles of staff support, etc and will configure the EZproxy.
  • Phase 2 is rollout, targeted testing with faculty staff and students

QUESTIONS:

  • How does this dovetail with ITS dual factor authentication?
    ANSWER:ITS wants to roll out two step authorization for VPN and hen CAS?Outlook on web is Phase 2.
  • Does that mean better cell service in bass?
    ANSWER no idea!
  • Do you have lists of test users, or are you open to suggestions?
    ANSWER we are open to suggestions/ideas for test cases. We are interested in user populations  and testing different types of resources.  Specifically let us know about resources that use exotic tech or may be problematic in other ways.
  • What does this mean, do you have to install it?
    ANSWER no, we are looking at providing EZproxy access through plugin in browser that will employ EZproxy. Such plugins exist, but we would like to start a project with ITS to improve the plugin so that the user only turns the plugin on once and then links are automatically routed through EZproxy.
  • There are ebook databases that requires individual logins, despite VPN. They say to use EZ proxy to get around this. Should I send?
    ANSWER Yes, sounds like it might be Books24x7, which is on the list to test.
  • Have you heard about EduRoam
    ANSWER will look into this

Other Information about EZproxy

It doesn’t solve ALL of our offsite access problems. Look for a fall implementation. It was pointed out by several in the audience that new people come to some schools in the middle of the summer, particularly impacts medical and CSSSI. We need to be ready for the mid-summer turnover.

Royal Library Presents Chronos

The Royal Library (National Library of Denmark and Copenhagen University Library) recently released a new Hydra application named Chronos.

Details of the project can be found here: http://www.kb.dk/en/nb/afdelinger/db/index.html

The project spanned a little over two years during which the bulk of the work  was in establishing policies for long term digital preservation and then setting a strategic plan based on the policies.

The work then segued into the cost models to support the newly developed policies and strategic plan. Using a shared set of principle and guidelines from Collaboration to Clarify the Cost of Curation (http://www.4cproject.eu/), they developed a sustainable cost model for long term preservation of their digital assets.

Once they had policies, strategies and costs established, they moved their work into a more detailed level and focused on the metadata requirements for preservation. The focus was on event data to be stored in PREMIS and structure data to be stored in METS. This led to much more detailed discussions related to the discovery of the digital assets for public discovery as well as metadata required for creating internal reports for performing tasks related to digital preservation.

Once this work was complete, they moved into the process of specifications for the system. They selected Hydra as the best approach for digitally preserving millions of documents. The planning process started in June 2014 and continued through the end of October 2014. This past December work begun on the new system and the week of March 16, 2015 they will release videos and additional information to the Hydra community.

Indiana University and Northwestern University Libraries Receive Mellon Grant for Avalon

Hydra community:

I’m pleased to be able to announce that the Indiana University Libraries, in partnership with Northwestern University Library, have received a $750,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support work on the Avalon Media System project through January 2017.

This funding will help to support the following activities: 1) developing additional features and functionality for Avalon to better meet needs of collection managers and users; 2) conducting studies of use of audio and video collections by researchers in humanities disciplines to help ensure future support for scholarly use; 3) integrating the Spotlight exhibit tool with Avalon to allow librarians, archivists, and scholars to showcase and provide additional context for media items and collections; 4) developing and implementing a community-funded business and governance model to sustain ongoing support and development for Avalon; and 5) deploying Avalon in a hosted software-as-a-service model for use by institutions that need the functionality of Avalon but would prefer to utilize a cloud-based software-as-a-service option rather than support a locally hosted instance.

I’d like to offer thanks to the Hydra community for building and maintaining a solid technical foundation that enables systems such as Avalon to be built and to members of the Hydra community who have assisted with Avalon’s development by providing feedback on requirements and implementation experiences.

More information is available in a press release from Indiana University at http://news.indiana.edu/releases/iu/2015/03/mellon-grants-digital-preservation.shtml

Best,
Jon

Jon Dunn

Interim Assistant Dean for Library Technologies

Indiana University Bloomington Libraries

Indiana University and Northwestern University Release Avalon 3.3

Indiana University and Northwestern University are pleased to announce Avalon Media System 3.3. Release 3.3 adds the following capabilities:

  • MARC metadata Import
  • Ingestion of pre-transcoded derivatives with multiple quality levels
  • Script for recovering disk space taken up by temporary Matterhorn files
  • UI Improvements and Bug fixes

Users of Avalon 3.2 can take advantage of these new features by Upgrading Avalon 3.2 to Avalon 3.3.

For a more comprehensive list of changes, see the 3.3 release notes.

For more details on each of these new features, visit the What’s New in Avalon 3.3 wiki page: https://wiki.dlib.indiana.edu/display/VarVideo/What%27s+New+in+Avalon+3.3

Please feel free to try out Avalon 3.3 on our public test server (http://pawpaw.dlib.indiana.edu) before installation. Installation options include virtual machine image, manual installation, and source code installation. More information on all available options can be found on the Avalon web site’s Download page: http://www.avalonmediasystem.org/download

We welcome your feedback on Avalon 3.3 via the avalon-discuss-l discussion list. Join the discussion list at http://www.avalonmediasystem.org/connect

Best regards,

Jon

Jon Dunn
Interim Assistant Dean for Library Technologies

Indiana University Bloomington Libraries

Princeton Hydra Release: Digital Archive of Latin American and Caribbean Ephemera

Recent Announcement from Princeton:

We’ve finally soft launched our first public application that is serving content from Hydra: http://lae.princeton.edu/. There is still some tweaking to do to Solr and the CSS, but we’re getting close. Staff have been adding data to this application at a rate of 150-300 items per month since for about 6 months now, and we expect to be at a consistent rate of 300/month or more by the summer.

This public interface has some features that may not be obvious to the average end-user:
* All of the images are served via IIIIF (e.g. http://libimages.princeton.edu/loris2/puls%2F0%2Fj%2F0%2Fg%2F1.jp2/full/75,/0/default.jpg)
* The individual catalog pages are displaying data drawn from IIIF Presentation manifests: http://lae.princeton.edu/catalog/0d7hm.jsonld (and, as you can see, also available as IIIF Manifests)
* All of the data is also available as RDF, e.g.: http://lae.princeton.edu/catalog/0d7hm.ttl