DigitalKoans

The National Science Digital Library Core Integration team at Cornell University has released a partial version of NCore, a "general platform for building semantic and virtual digital libraries united by a common data model and interoperable applications," which is built upon Fedora.

Here's an excerpt from the NSDL posting:

The NCore platform consists of a central repository built on top of Fedora, a data model, an API, and a number of fundamental services such as full-text search or OAI-PMH. Innovative NSDL services and tools that empower users as content creators are now built on, or transitioning to, the NCore platform. These include: the Expert Voices blogging system (http://expertvoices.nsdl.org/);the NSDL Wiki (http://wiki.nsdl.org/index.php/NSDL_Wiki); the NSDL OAI-PMH metadata ingest aggregation system; the OAI-PMH service for distributing public NSDL metadata; the NSDL Collection System (NCS), derived from the DLESE Collection system (DCS); the NSDL Search service, and the OnRamp content management and distribution system (http://onramp.nsdl.org).

Because NCore is a general Fedora-based open source platform useful beyond NSDL, Core Integration developers at Cornell University have made the repository and API code components of NCore available for download at the NCore project on Sourceforge (http://sourceforge.net/projects/nsdl-core). Over the next six months, NSDL will release the code for major tools and services that comprise the full NCore suite on SourceForge.

For further information, see the NCore presentation.

A digital video of Mark Leggott's (University Librarian, University of Prince Edward Island) presentation from Access 2007 is now available.

Here's an excerpt from the program that describes the talk:

The University of Prince Edward Island has embarked on a substantial project to support the institutions Administrative, Learning and Research communities using a Web 2.0/3.0 framework and the Fedora/Drupal/Moodle systems as the foundation. The session will describe the architecture and demo some of the core systems, such as Learn@UPEI, UPEI VRE (Virtual Research Environment) and some sample digital library collections.

Version 1.0 of SWORD has been released The release includes DSpace (1.5 only) and Fedora implementations, GUI/CLI clients, and the common Java library.

Here's an excerpt from the SWORD Wiki that describes the project:

SWORD (Simple Web-service Offering Repository Deposit) will take forward the Deposit protocol developed by a small working group as part of the JISC Digital Repositories Programme by implementing it as a lightweight web-service in four major repository software platforms: EPrints, DSpace, Fedora and IntraLibrary. The existing protocol documentation will be finalised by project partners and a prototype 'smart deposit' tool will be developed to facilitate easier and more effective population of repositories. The project intends to take an iterative approach to developing and revising the protocol, web-services and client implementation through evaluative testing and feedback mechanisms. Community acceptance and take-up will be sought through dissemination activities. The project is led by UKOLN, University of Bath, with partners at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, the University of Southampton and Intrallect Ltd. The project aims to improve the efficiency and quality of repository deposit and to diversity and expedite the options for timely population of repositories with content whilst promoting a common deposit interface and supporting the Information Environment principles of interoperability.

DRAMA (Digital Repository Authorization Middleware Architecture) has released Muradora 1.0, a Fedora front-end that provides identity control (via Shibboleth), authorization (via XACML), and other functions. DRAMA is a sub-project of RAMP (Research Activityflow and Middleware Priorities Project). A Live DVD image simplifies installation.

Here’s an excerpt from the fedora-commons-users posting:

• "Out-of-the-box" or customized deployment options
• Intuitive access control editor allows end-users to specify their own access control criteria without editing any XML.
• Hierarchical enforcement of access control policies. Access control can be set at the collection level, object level or datastream level.
• Metadata input and validation for any well-formed metadata schema using XForms (a W3C standard). New metadata schemas can be supported via XForms scripts (no Muradora code modification required).
• Flexible and extensible architecture based on the well known Java Spring enterprise framework.
• Multiple deployments of Muradora (each customized for their own specific purpose) can talk to the one instance of Fedora.
• Freely available as open source software (Apache 2 license). All dependent software is also open source.

The University College Dublin has launched the Irish Virtual Research Library and Archive Repository.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

VRLA is a digital archive containing a number of digitised collections from UCD’s holdings, of use and interest to Irish humanities researchers. The IVRLA has developed a sophisticated interface enabling users to browse, search, tag and cite digital objects and view or download them in a variety of file formats. This interface sits on top of an open source repository architecture that functions as the IVRLA’s base content store. An elaborate collection model has been developed ensuring all content is viewed within context and structure. This model is particularly suited for organic primary source collections and enables hierarchy and sub-division in how objects are arranged and held within collections.

DRAMA (Digital Repository Authorization Middleware Architecture) has released Fiddler, a beta version of its mura Fedora front-end that provides access control, authentication, full-text searching and a variety of other functions. DRAMA is a sub-project of RAMP (Research Activityflow and Middleware Priorities Project).

Here’s an excerpt from the news item that describes Fiddler’s features:

• Hierarchical access control enforcement: Policies can be applied at the collection level, object level or datastream level. . . .
• Improved access control interface: One can now view existing access control of a particular user or group for a given datastream, object or collection. . . .
• User-centric GUI: mura only presents users with operations for which they have permissions.
• XForms Metadata Input: We employ an XForms engine (Orbeon) for metadata input. XForms allow better user interaction, validation and supports any XML-based metadata schemas (such as MARC or MODS).
• LDAP Filter for Fedora: The current Fedora LDAP filter (in version 2.2) does not authenticate properly, so we have developed a new LDAP filter to fix this problem.
• Local authentication for DAR and ASM: In addition to Shibboleth authentication, the DAR and ASM can be configured to use a local authentication source (eg. via a local LDAP).
• Generic XACML Vocabulary: XACML policies are now expressed in a generic vocabulary rather than Fedora specific ones. . . .
• XACML Optimization: We have optimized of the evaluation engine by employing a cache with user configurable time-to-live. We have also greatly reduced the time for policies matching with DB XML, through the use of bind parameters in our queries.
• Flexible mapping of Fedora actions to new Apache Axis handlers: Axis is the SOAP engine that Fedora employs to provide its web services. The new flexibility allows new handlers to be easily plugged into Fedora to support new features that follow the same Interceptor pattern as our authorization framework.
• Version control: mura now supports version control.
• Full-text search: We enabled full-text search by incorporating Fedoragsearch package.

The REMAP Project at the University of Hull has been funded by JISC investigate how record management and digital preservation functions can be best supported in digital repositories. It utilizes the Fedora system.

Here’s an except from the Project Aims page (I have added the links in this excerpt):

The REMAP project has the following aims:

• To develop Records Management and Digital Preservation (RMDP) workflow(s) in order to understand how a digital repository can support these activities
• To embed digital repository interaction within working practices for RMDP purposes
• To further develop the use of a WSBPEL orchestration tool to work with external Web services, including the PRONOM Web services, to provide appropriate metadata and file information for RMDP
• To develop and test a notification layer that can interact with the orchestration tool and allow RSS
  syndication to individuals alerting them to RMDP tasks
• To develop and test an intermediate persistence layer to underpin the notification layer and interact
  with the WSBPEL orchestration tool to allow orchestrated workflows to take place over time
• To test and validate the use of the enhanced WSBPEL tool with institutional staff involved in RMDP activities

Led by UKOLN, The JISC SWORD (Simple Web-service Offering Repository Deposit) Project is developing "a prototype ’smart deposit’ tool" to "facilitate easier and more effective population of repositories."

Here’s an excerpt from the project plan:

The effective and efficient population of repositories is a key concern for the repositories community. Deposit is a crucial step in the repository workflow; without it a repository has no content and can fulfill no further function. Currently most repositories exist in a fairly linear context, accepting deposits from a single interface and putting them into a single repository. Further deployment of repositories, encouraged by JISC and other funders, means that this situation is changing and we are beginning to see an increasingly complex and dynamic ecology of interactions between repositories and other services and systems. By and large developers are not creating repository systems and software from scratch, rather they are considering how repositories interface with other applications within institutions and the wider information landscape. A single repository, or multiple repositories, might interact with other components, such as VLEs, authoring tools, packaging tools, name authority services, classification services and research systems. In terms of content, resources may be deposited in a repository by both human and software agents, e.g. packaging tools that push content into repositories or a drag-and-drop desktop tool. The type of resource being deposited will also influence the choice of deposit mechanism. If the resources are complex packaged objects then a web service will need to support the ingest of multiple packaging standards.

There is currently no standard mechanism for accepting content into repositories, yet there already exists a stable and widely implemented service for harvesting metadata from repositories (OAI-PMH—Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting). This project will implement a similarly open protocol or specification for deposit. By taking a similar approach, the project and the resulting protocol and implementations will gain easier acceptance by a community already familiar with the OAI-PMH.

This project aims to develop a Simple Web-service Offering Repository Deposit (SWORD)—a lightweight deposit protocol that will be implemented as a simple web service within EPrints, DSpace, Fedora and IntraLibrary and tested against a prototype ’smart deposit’ tool. The project plans to take forward the lightweight protocol originally formulated by a small group working within the Digital Repositories Programme (the ‘Deposit API’ work) . The project is aligned with the Object Reuse and Exchange (ORE) Mellon-funded two-year project by the Open Archives Initiative, which commenced in October 2006. Members of the SWORD project team are represented on its Technical and Liaison Committees. . . . . The SWORD project is not attempting to duplicate work being done being done by ORE, but seeks to build on existing work to support UK-specific requirements whilst feeding into the ongoing ORE project.