Colonial North American Project at Harvard University

Harvard University has embarked on a remarkable multi-year project to digitize and make freely available all 17th and 18th century archival records and publications from all its campus repositories relating to life in colonial North America. This ambitious enterprise is called the Colonial North Amercian Project at Harvard University.

In addition to the collection itself, there are also a series of thematic essays which provide deeper insight into the contents of this digital library and archives.

It appears that the public interface is powered by the Omeka open source software.

ArchivesCanada.ca in beta on AtoM 2.0

Great to see ArchivesCanada.ca, the national database of Canadian archival descriptions, running in beta mode under AtoM 2.0 (formerly ICA-AtoM). AtoM stands for Access to Memory. Only a small sampling of descriptions are available in the beta version. According to the header blurb, "Archival descriptions from archival institutions across all provinces and territories will be available when the site goes live at http://archivescanada.ca in September 2013." The Canadian Council on Archives, which nearly ceased to exist thanks to the Conservative Government's cutting the funding for the National Archival Development Program, is to be commended for persevering in the face of such humiliating circumstances. They rose to the challenge and I'm looking forward, since I manage the British Columbia equivalent of this database which is called MemoryBC, to the fall and beyond when all the BC descriptions can finally be updated.

NetarchiveSuite Web harvesting software from Denmark

According to the Web site for the NetarchiveSuite software, it was "developed by the two national deposit libraries in Denmark, The Royal Library and The State and University Library, and has been running in production, harvesting the Danish world wide web for three years. The Danish netarchive currently contains over 120 TB of data that are mirrored on two different geographical locations." It's open source software based on the Heritrix web crawler from the Internet Archive. You can read more information about it on the netarchive.dk project site. I first took note of it on my Ten Thousand Year Blog on July 20, 02004.

Anthologize that WordPress blog, just not your WordPress.com one

Form follows feed promises Anthologize, a new open source blog publishing tool that according to its About page

is a free, open-source, plugin that transforms WordPress 3.0 into a platform for publishing electronic texts. Grab posts from your WordPress blog, import feeds from external sites, or create new content directly within Anthologize. Then outline, order, and edit your work, crafting it into a single volume for export in several formats, including—in this release—PDF, ePUB, TEI.

Please note that Anthologize cannot be installed on blogs hosted at WordPress.com.

Anthologize is a project of One Week | One Tool a project of the Center for History and New Media, George Mason University. Funding provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Get thee a Web 2.0 OPAC with VuFind release 1.0

From the announcement on the WEB4LIB mailing list (0210 07 16):

VuFind's long beta period is now over. Yesterday [02010 07 15], VuFind 1.0 was released. In addition to improved stability, the new release includes several features missing from the previous release candidate:

* Flexible support for non-MARC metadata formats
* A mobile interface
* Dewey Decimal support
* Integration with Serials Solutions' Summon
* Dynamic "recommendations modules" to complement search results with relevant tips

For all the details and to obtain the software, please visit http://vufind.org/.

Pretty cool stuff, so congrats VuFind team!

Go local (news) with OpenBlock

While this new open source software project, OpenBlock, is geared at the moment to news organizations and cities in the United States, here's hoping some Canadian news outlets will also pick up on this most promising innovation. OpenBlock code is based on EveryBlock.com, described as a civic news aggregator or hyper-local news.

PLANETS End of Project Conference, May 20, 02010, Berlin, Germany, and the new Open Planets Foundation

Registration is open for the PLANETS (Preservation and Long-term Access through Networked Services) End of Project Conference to be held on May 20, 02010 in Berlin, Germany. Registration closes on May 12, 02010.

Although the project is ending, the good work of PLANETS is continuing through the Open Planets Foundation.

PREMIS in METS Toolkit released by Library of Congress and Florida Center for Library Automation

From the announcement on DIGLIB (2010 04 23):

The Library of Congress and the Florida Center for Library Automation (FCLA) are pleased to announce the availability of the PREMIS-In-METS Toolbox at http://pim.fcla.edu. The PREMIS-in-METS Toolbox is a set of open-source tools developed to support the implementation of PREMIS preservation metadata in the METS container format.

The Toolbox includes three tools: Validate, Convert and Describe.

Validate will validate a PREMIS or a PREMIS-in-METS document and return a list or errors or a conformation message. PREMIS documents are validated against the PREMIS schema. METS documents containing PREMIS are validated against the METS schema, the PREMIS schema, and the best practice Guidelines for Using PREMIS with METS (http://www.loc.gov/standards/premis/guidelines-premismets.pdf).

Convert will convert between stand-alone PREMIS and PREMIS embedded in METS. A PREMIS document will generate a METS document containing the PREMIS elements in multiple or single METS metadata sections. A METS document containing PREMIS elements in it will generate a stand-alone PREMIS document.

Describe will output a complete PREMIS description of a file, including extensions for format-specific metadata. Describe uses the DAITSS 2 Format Description Service, which in turn uses DROID for format identification and JHOVE for format characterization. The resulting PREMIS document can then be run through Convert to turn it into PREMIS in METS if desired. Types of file formats that are covered are text, image, audio, video and software.

All three tools support various modes of input: a source document or file can be addressed by URL or uploaded. PREMIS and METS documents can also be typed or copied directly into Validate and Convert.

The PREMIS-in-METS Toolkit was developed by FCLA under contract to the Library of Congress. The Toolkit code will be released under an open source license in SourceForge.

Recommended: VMplayer for your virtual machine appliances

I've been trying out virtual macine software that allows me to run Linux distributions on a Windows PC. I discovered that Sun VirtualBox, which was the first one I tried, does not currently support the 64-bit edition of Windows even though the download page indicates it does. The latest release is version 3.1.6. build 59338, which appeared on March 25, 02010. Sun VirtualBox is open source and Oracle, which now owns Sun Microsystems, continues to maintain it. Versions prior to 3.1.6 may have worked on a 64-bit Windows PC.

As an alternative to Sun VirtualBox for those of you faced with the challenge of finding 64-bit VM software, I can recommend the free VMplayer from VMware. While it is not open source, it is a well-supported application and, according to the Web site, there are "over 200 supported operating systems including Windows 7, Chrome OS, Ubuntu 9.04, and many other versions of Windows, Linux, and more." VMware also offers a free Web browser virtual machine application called VMware Server. VMware Server offers many more options for setting up a virtual machine but in my one attempt to get one running, I had no luck. Also, you can only install EITHER VMware Player or VMware Server on a single Windows PC. The installation wizards for both will detect the other.

VMware's Virtual Appliances Marketplace is a good place to start with finding VMware compatible virtual machine appliances.

If you are looking for Linux operating system VM distributions, the best place to begin is with the Linhost VMware Repository.

Code4Lib Journal Issue 9 now available

Issue 9 of the Code4Lib Journal has at least one article of interest to the archival community, quoting from the announcement on various mailing lists (02010 03 22):

Challenges in Sustainable Open Source: A Case Study Sibyl Schaefer
http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/2493

The Archivists’ Toolkit is a successful open source software package for archivists, originally developed with grant funding. The author, who formerly worked on the project at a participating institution, examines some of the challenges in making an open source project self-sustaining past grant funding. A consulting group hired by the project recommended that — like many successful open source projects — they rely on a collaborative volunteer community of users and developers. However, the project has had limited success fostering such a community. The author offers specific recommendations for the project going forward to gain market share and develop a collaborative user and development community, with more open governance.

Three other articles may be of broader interest as well to readers outside the usual audience:

Using Cloud Services for Library IT Infrastructure Erik Mitchell
http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/2510

Cloud computing comes in several different forms and this article documents how service, platform, and infrastructure forms of cloud computing have been used to serve library needs. Following an overview of these uses the article discusses the experience of one library in migrating IT infrastructure to a cloud environment and concludes with a model for assessing cloud computing.

Creating an Institutional Repository for State Government Digital Publications Meikiu Lo and Leah M. Thomas
http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/2563

In 2008, the Library of Virginia (LVA) selected the digital asset management system DigiTool to host a centralized collection of digital state government publications. The Virginia state digital repository targets three primary user groups: state agencies, depository libraries and the general public.
DigiTool’s ability to create depositor profiles for individual agencies to submit their publications, its integration with the Aleph ILS, and product support by ExLibris were primary factors in its selection. As a smaller institution, however, LVA lacked the internal resources to take full advantage of DigiTool’s full set of features. The process of cataloging a heterogenous collection of state documents also proved to be a challenge within DigiTool. This article takes a retrospective look at what worked, what did not, and what could have been done to improve the experience.

Wrangling Electronic Resources: A Few Good Tools Brandy Klug
http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/2634

There are several freely available tools today that fill the needs of librarians tasked with maintaining electronic resources, that assist with tasks such as editing MARC records and maintaining web sites that contain links to electronic resources. This article gives a tour of a few tools the author has found invaluable as an Electronic Resources Librarian.

Joomla and Drupal for libraries (and archives)

Mark Jordan, head of library systems at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, replied to a question on the WEB4LIB mailing list about the open source content management system Joomla which led to other replies, including ones about Drupal, another popular CMS for library sites. So here are some of the resources about Joomla and Drupal as content management systems for libraries (and archives).

• Joomla Community Showcase of libraries running Joomla


• Joomla in Libraries "started as a conference presentation for Computer In Libraries 2007 hosted by Information Today" and includes a Showcase of libraries using Joomla.


• drupalib is "A place for library drupallers to hang out" with links to Groups.Drupal: Libraries, Drupal4Lib email list and the LITA Drupal4Lib Interest Group


• Library Technology Guides' lib-web-cats directory of libraries using Drupal and libraries using Joomla; this information is maintained by Marshall Breeding and he welcomes contributions

Terrier wags its IR tail on verison 3

From the front page of Terrier, which is now at version 3.0 (02010 03 11):

Terrier is a highly flexible, efficient, and effective open source search engine, readily deployable on large-scale collections of documents. Terrier implements state-of-the-art indexing and retrieval functionalities, and provides an ideal platform for the rapid development and evaluation of large-scale retrieval applications.

Terrier is open source, and is a comprehensive, flexible and transparent platform for research and experimentation in text retrieval. Research can easily be carried out on standard TREC and CLEF test collections.

Terrier is written in Java, and is developed at the Department of Computing Science, University of Glasgow.

ArchivePress plugin for WordPress sites

Update for April 20, 02010:

The first release candidate of the ArchivePress plugin put in an appearance.

According to its front page, ArchivePress

ArchivePress is a blog-archiving project being undertaken by the University of London Computer Centre and the British Library Digital Preservation department, funded by the JISC Information Environment Programme under its Rapid Innovation Grants Call (03/09).

The project will explore practical issues around the archiving of weblog content, focusing on blogs as records of institutional activity and corporate memory. As an alternative to the web crawling/harvesting approach of the Internet Archive and the UK Web Archive, ArchivePress will test the viability of using RSS feeds and blog APIs to harvest blog content (including comments, embedded content and metadata). The archived content will be stored and managed using instances of Wordpress, thereby maintaining the blogs’ native data structures, formats and relationships.

We hope to develop tools and methodology that will enable organisations to use simple, free, open source blogging software to manage a central archive of designated institutional blog outputs, even if they are spread over different blog hosts and platforms. The benefits of this approach will include:

* targeted gathering of selected weblogs
* improved reliability and authenticity of records
* citable blog content with persistent identifiers
* automated, ongoing harvesting, via newfeeds
* accessibility of content, using native blog interfaces
* use of native web and database file formats, compatible with registry-based preservation activities.

Islandora.ca, another Canadian, open source digital records lifecycle system

Close on the heels of Archivematica, a digital preservation system built from open source products and created by British Columbia's Artefactual Systems, comes Islandora.ca from the Robertson Library at the University of Prince Edward Island. According to the About page, "Islandora combines the Drupal and Fedora software applications to create a robust digital asset management system that can be used for any requirement where collaboration and digital data stewardship, for the short and long term, are critical." You can see some examples of how the Islandora project is being deployed through IslandArchives, a set of digital collections, and IslandScholar, a "Repository-In-A-Box" solution for institutional repositories. Islandora also maintains a list of Virtual Research Environment (VRE) sites.

OpenSource.com launched by Red Hat

Red Hat, the purveyors of Red Hat Linux and other products, have launched OpenSource.com as a "community service." According to the About page, "opensource.com is where we explore what happens when the open source way is applied to the world." Though that sounds very Zen-like and mystical, there's lots of practical information and news here about how open source is being used in government, by business, education and the legal profession. The Open Source Initiative is completely different and there is a link to it on OpenSource.com

ICA-AtoM virtual appliance

Artefactual Systems of New Westminster, BC, Canada, the company developing the ICA-AtoM archival management system on behalf of the International Council of Archives has released the ICA-AtoM virtual appliance. It takes a page out of the company's Archivematica, the open archival information system for digital preservation, the ICA-AtoM virtual appliance allows you to run and access the application using your Web browser from within the Sun VirtualBox.

Fedora 3.3 available as of 02009 12 21

From the announcement on DIGLIB (02009 12 22),

Today [02009 12 21], the DuraSpace not-for-profit organization and the Fedora digital repository project announced the release of Fedora 3.3 (http://fedora-commons.org/confluence/x/jQ3S). This release marks a new milestone in the process of developing the Fedora open source software. For the first time, the Fedora community came together under the leadership of a Community Release Manager who facilitated the software development process and the integration of community contributions. The effort was led by Kai Strnad, Software Engineer with FIZ Karlsruhe (http://www.fiz-karlsruhe.de/) and member of the eSciDoc project team (https://www.escidoc.org/).

OSS Watch, Open Source Software Advisory Service for the UK academic community

OSS Watch, which sounds like the title of a World War II B-movie, is managed through the UK's University of Oxford and is an open source software advisory service whose audience is actually more than just the UK academic community. The service features all kinds of useful information for software developers and others in the IT (information technology) community. Good stuff made possible in large part through funding from JISC, the Joint Information Systems Committee.

The OSS Watch Wiki is here.

The OSS Watch Twitter feed is at http://twitter.com/osswatch.

A number of OSS Watch RSS feeds are also available.

Release of Web Curator Tool (WCT) version 1.5

From the announcement on DIGITAL-PRESERVATION@JISCMAIL.AC.UK (02009 11 19) about version 1.5 of the Web Curator Tool 1.5, the fourth major update:

Key enhancements include the optional integration of Wayback as an additional quality review tool and the simplification of system configuration using properties files. This release also contains a small number of additional enhancements and bug fixes. ...

This release was commissioned by the British Library and developed during July and August of 2009 by software developers from Oakleigh Consulting in the UK. ....

Version 1.5 of the Web Curator Tool is now available for download on Sourceforge: http://webcurator.sourceforge.net/.

Version 2 of Archivist's Toolkit released

Version 2 of the Archivist's Toolkit software, "an open source collection management / metadata authority application funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation" was released on September 30, 02009. According to the announcement on the ARCHIVES & ARCHIVISTS (A&A) LIST,

New features added to AT 2.0
• Revised Digital Object module, so that Digital Object records can be created and managed independent of Resource records.
• Tab delimited Digital Object import
• Batch export of Digital Objects
• Assessment module
• New reports for Digital Object and Assessment modules
• Revision of all other reports (Names, Subjects, Accessions, Resources)
• Improved stylesheets for EAD to PDF and EAD to HTML outputs
• Bug fixes as noted in release notes