LoomWare

CDL, UCLA and DiscoveryGarden Partner on Islandora

The latest CDLINFO newsletter mentions plans to integrate the Islandora system with CDL's Merritt backend:

In coordination with the UCLA Library and DiscoveryGarden, we are planning to move forward on work to integrate Islandora with Merritt.  UCLA will be conducting the development work using a forthcoming Islandora API, with consulting, testing, and project support from DiscoveryGarden and CDL.  Islandora is an open source digital asset management system currently under evaluation for implementation by the UCLA Library.  We are seeking to deploy Merritt as the preservation storage layer under Islandora’s Drupal-based system, in place of Fedora, which usually fills that role.   We will prepare documentation, to assist other Islandora implementers with this process, once the project is completed.

DiscoveryGarden is looking forward to working with CDL and UCLA in demonstrating the flexibility of the Islandora approach and the value of an open, collaborative development process.

New Islandora 6 & 7 Releases Available

The Islandora team released 2 new version last week:

• Islandora 12.2.0 (the latest Drupal 6-compatible version) features a new version of the book solution pack, along with improvements and bug fixes to many other modules. You can read about all the changes in the release notes: https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/ISLANDORA6122/Release+Notes+and+Downloads.
• Islandora 7 is the 1st release of our new Drupal 7-compatible release, and features a host of new behind-the-scenses changes, reflecting a move to help the community make better use of the Drupal part of the framework. 
  https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/ISLANDORA710/Release+Notes+and+Downloads

Islandora 7 makes use of the Tuque API and reflects our new testing approach. You can access Tuque and more technical documentation as well as test results at http://hudson.islandora.ca/.

We are proud of the new Islandora 7, especially with the 2-week sprint that we did prior to release. It has convinced us that there is no better way to focus on a big coding challenge and "get er done"! Many thanks to the DiscoveryGarden and UPEI teams for pulling this off. Expect more soon on the Islandora 7 front. 

Go to the Islandora downloads page to get the latest, or go to the Sandbox site (http://sandbox.islandora.ca/). The Sandbox site will be a good demonstration of the power of Islandora, as both Drupal 6 and 7 versions are running in the virtual machine and using a single Fedora instance. The 7 version is not quite ready so I will announce it when it is. 

Islandora 7 Code Sprint Underway

I'm a little late in getting this out, but you know how it goes.

The University of PEI and DiscoveryGarden teams are hard at work on a 2-week code sprint to create the initial Islandora/Drupal 7 release. We have been so busy for the last year that this target kept slipping by, so we decided to go with the time-honored sprint+scrum approach - and I'm glad we did! The output of the team after a week and a half is incredible - you can follow their efforts via code updates at Github, or by following team leader Jonathan's Green's blog posts at the Islandora site.

The team is updating 2 test sites (1 ubuntu and one centos) as they code, providing a set of test sites for reviewing the latest developments. Some of the new features recently added include:

• a port of the Collection Manager Tool and integration into the new Collection Module (which will make the creation/management across the repo much easier);
• a complete port and improvements to the Islandora Solr Search module as well as a merge of the Advanced Search and Extended Search blocks;
• many tweaks to the display of images and collections;
• template approach to the display of metadata (using Drupal pre-processor and templating functions) to make the job of Drupal themer's much easier;
• support for Fedora's Enhanced Content Model Architecture specifically parsing of the DS-COMPOSITE-MODEL to determine what should be added to a collection;
• addition of a new Add datastream form.

The team will put their keyboards down this Friday and take stock, but based on what I've seen so far the new release will be awesome :-) More updates to come.

New Islandora Site in Italy

I want to start highlighting new Islandora sites as we come across them, so please let me know when you find or create a new site using the Islandora framework.

The BESS (Biblioteca Elettronica Di Scienze) Digital Archive is a new Islandora site in Italy:

Archivio digitale di BessBiblioteca digitale sulle trasformazioni sociali ed economiche del Piemonte e Torino | Digital library on the social and economic transformations of the Piedmont and Turin

The BESS team has also done a great job of documenting their effort on a Dev Page, including a comprehensive PDF guide to their processes. Excellent work and a good indication of what can be done using open source software!

If There Was Ever Any Doubt...

this latest battle of the IT overlords should dismiss any that remains. The emerging legal details in the Google-Oracle battle over Java highlights why Oracle and open source are like oil and water. The attempt to copyright a language is the fascinating detail in this skirmish. Maybe we should strive to actually speak in Java and see what would happen if we did so freely at the next big Oracle love-in?

NOW AVAILABLE: Fedora GSearch Version 2.4.1 | DuraSpace

NOW AVAILABLE: Fedora GSearch Version 2.4.1 | DuraSpace

The latest GSearch is available and includes some very nice new features: use of Tika for metadata/text extraction; support for Solr/Lucene 3.5 and ability to embed RISearch queries in Solr/Lucene. 

Update: Islandora 11.3.1 | Islandora

I know, this is a month old, but it is the latest Islandora release :-)

Islandora has been updated to version 11.3.1. This minor release addresses a bug in the 11.3.0 release - all users of Islandora 11.3.0 should update to 11.3.1. More details can be found on the Release Notes and Downloads page.

via islandora.ca

New Islandora Release for Q1 2011

The Islandora project announces an RC1 candidate for our Q1 2011 release

The Islandora team has been working hard on the 2011 roadmap, and the new RC1 is just the start. We are actually up to release 11.1.1, which is a bug release for the 1st 2011 release. We will be following suit with a new VM in the next few days, so stay tuned.

via islandora.ca

New DuraCloud Beta Released

Thinking about moving your ILS to the cloud? Wondering how you are going to manage all that research data over the next few decades? You may want to keep your options open and work with an open system like DuraCloud from the good folks at DuraSpace. DuraCloud is open source and yet works with common commercial cloud systems (currently Amazon, AWS and Rackspace) and provides a number of useful features for building an enhanced repository infrastructure.

The Islandora team will be piloting DuraCloud for a number of use cases, including running the entire stack in the cloud, so stay tuned for new developments on that front.

Access 2010 Conference - Don't Miss It!

A quick promo for the upcoming Access 2010 Conference, which is looking to be a typical stimulating Access conference, with lots of time to spend with your Library colleagues.

Conference Site