WHY DIGITAL ASSET MANAGEMENT? WHY ISLANDORA? Digital asset management gives you full access to and control of to the true value hidden within your data: Stories. Digital asset management allows you to discover, create, preserve, and share these stories. Stories describe your identity and purpose and help others learn who you are, what you do, and what you can offer them. 1 P age
WHAT IS ISLANDORA? Islandora is an open source (not proprietary) digital repository that preserves, manages, and showcases your institution s unique material. Below are examples of how some of our partners showcase their digital assets and stories. 2 P age
THE TALKING POINTS What does Islandora mean? Islandora is an open source digital asset management system originally developed by the University of Prince Edward Island. The name Islandora comes from combining Island and Fedora, which is the digital repository software used by Islandora. Island and Fedora becomes Islandora. Many different formats Islandora supports a number of different formats including audio, video, pdfs, photographs, newspapers, and scholarly works like masters theses and dissertations. As open source software, Islandora can be adopted to work with additional formats that may be needed. Solution Packs Islandora uses Solution Packs, which are collections of Drupal modules, to provide the appropriate display tools and functionality for each data format. Solution Packs are based on best practices for each format. For example, there is a Newspaper Solution Pack that provides the ability to browse an entire publication by date. In addition, the Newspaper Solution Pack automatically performs OCR (Optical Character Recognition) so that all issues are full text searchable. Ingest Forms and Automatic Processes Each Solution Pack comes with default ingest forms and unique automatic processes that occur when you add objects to your repository. You will only ever need to add the original object (either pdf, tiff, video, audio, or otherwise) to your repository. By taking advantage of Drupal, and using the Solution Packs, Islandora will generate derivatives from the original object. These derivatives include the access and use copies, technical metadata for the object, checksums, thumbnails, and metadata records. Customization/Marketing You have total control over your repository with Islandora. Ingest forms can be customized, Solution Packs modified, and the search index, facets, and search options changed. Islandora provides granular access control. Collections and individual objects can be restricted from the public. Islandora uses Drupal for its user interface, so extensibility is only limited by Drupal s capabilities. Want to brand your site? No problem. Islandora allows sites to be as unique as you wish and modifications in the user interface can be made by local staff. Adaptability One of the major strengths of Islandora is its flexibility and ability to meet your local needs. We highly encourage you to ask us if you have ideas for enhanced or new functionality, theming, or anything else. 3 P age
Our Community: No longer alone The Islandora community consists of five partners. Knowledge and expertise is shared among members of the Islandora community along with all current features and available Drupal templates used for branding. You can explore our partners sites at http://islandora.mnpals.net. 4 P age
ISLANDORA CORE FUNCTIONALITY Solution Packs Islandora takes advantage of Drupal s nature and uses Solution Packs to support the needs of different formats. Each Solution Pack has different tools used to display its supported content, default ingest forms, and automatic processes that result in the creation of various derivatives (also called datastreams). Solution Packs are essentially collections of Drupal modules that work together to provide robust, powerful features to manage digital objects of the same format. For example, in the Large Image Solution Pack, used for TIFF images, you ingest (upload) the original master tiff file. At ingest, several derivatives are generated: the MODS and Dublin Core metadata records, the technical metadata, a thumbnail which gets displayed in search results, a JPG, and a JPEG2000, which is the display copy. This process is illustrated below. Datastreams (derivatives) stored together JPEG2000, JPG, thumbnail, TECHMD, Dublin Core, and MODS record are all datastreams. All are stored together on the server and can be easily managed through the Islandora administrative interface. Below is an example of how datastreams look in the Islandora administrative web interface. This is for a photograph. The original, or master file, is a tiff image. 5 P age
The OBJ datastream is the tiff image you ingested into the repository. The RELS-EXT, MODS, DC, TECHMD, JP2, JPG, and TN (Thumbnail) datastreams/derivatives are created automatically when you add the object. Each format (audio, video, newspaper, large image, basic image, etc.) has a Solution Pack. Each Solution Pack includes: Default ingest (data entry) forms o These can be customized Different tools which are used to create different datastreams (derivatives) when objects get added to the repository, for example: o ImageMagick for image derivatives o Tesseract for OCR o PREMIS and FITS for preservation metadata Tools to display content for that format, for example: o JW Player is used to stream videos on the web in the Video Solution Pack o Adore Djatoka for JP2000 6 Page
ISLANDORA CORE FUNCTIONALITY Ingest Forms Ingest forms, or metadata entry forms, are included with each Solution Pack. The original forms are built around best practices for each format. PALS will help customize these forms to fit your needs. Ingest forms are built through an XML Form Builder. The ingest form is what the Islandora administrative user sees when adding objects (photographs, newspapers, etc.) to the repository. Every aspect of the form can be customized. This includes: Which metadata standard is used What fields are required Instructions that the form user sees Links on the form to other sites Controlled vocabulary lists Default text Drop down menus A customized ingest form, following Minnesota Digital Library Guidelines, is shown below: PALS can easily customize your ingest forms to fit the needs of your collections. This involves deciding which metadata standard to use, which elements to use, which elements are required, what controlled vocabulary to use, what default text to use, and determining how to handle copyright. An ingest form is never final. Changes can always be made later. 7 P age
ISLANDORA CORE FUNCTIONALITY Preservation Technical metadata in Islandora is generated automatically when you add objects. This is enabled by the Islandora FITS module in version 1.2 and the upcoming Islandora PREMIS module in 1.3. When you have the FITS module and PREMIS module configured properly, technical metadata will be generated automatically in all Solution Packs when you add an object. Technical metadata is its own datastream and gets stored with the original object in Fedora. Islandora FITS Module = File Information Tool Set Extracts technical metadata information for various formats Created by Harvard University Library Office for Information Systems for use in its Digital Repository Service This is an example of the technical metadata that gets extracted: 8 P age
Islandora PREMIS Module Produces XML and HTML representations of PREMIS metadata for objects. Documents fixity checks performed in datastreams Checksum Module Gives repository managers the ability to enable creation of checksums for objects Checksum Checker Module Verifies checksums derived from Islandora object datastreams and adds PREMIS fixity check Triggered periodically using Drupal cron functionality Used to check for file corruption 9 P age
ISLANDORA CORE FUNCTIONALITY Statistics PALS uses Piwik to track web statistics. Piwik is an open source solution similar to Google Analytics. The Piwik site can be viewed at http://piwik.org/. Piwik provides usage statistics, impact statistics, and much more. Islandora also offers an easy to use dashboard with Piwik statistics from within Islandora. Stats include: 10 P age
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SUMMARY Islandora presents an ideal balance between extensibility and flexibility it really is possible to do most anything. Just ask and we will show you! Islandora does not hinder the imagination and innovation needed to meet your needs and build your repository. Islandora gives you access to the value in your data. With digital asset management, your digital assets can tell a story through photographs, videos, and articles. You have complete control over the look and feel of your website due to the flexibility of Drupal. Collaboration among our partners is encouraged. You will no longer be alone. You will be able to do more with less by leveraging our community s knowledge and expertise. Examples of other Islandora sites can be found here: http://islandora.ca/islandora-installations. CUSTOMER SATISFACTION We love Islandora and firmly believe it will be a very important resource for the campus in the years to come. We are capturing a lot of history of the campus and our community that could have otherwise been lost. - Vi Bergquist, CIO, St. Cloud Technical and Community College A few years ago our library began exploring a digital archive initiative. We opted to start by digitizing our university s alumni news magazine. This was an ideal publication to begin our initiative with as it reaches a wide audience, contains valuable information on many aspects of our university, and has been consistently published since 1980. I worked with our University Foundation office to secure grant funding to get the initiative off the ground, and continue communication with our Alumni Director on ways to promote and support the digital archives. - Pam Gladis, University Librarian, Southwest Minnesota State University Contact Us Contact us at https://www.mnpals.org/content/request-information, or call 507-389-2000. For more information on Islandora, see https://www.mnpals.org/products/islandora. You can explore our sites at http://islandora.mnpals.net. 12 P age