Management of images and multimedia using Fedora

Jane Secker, Learning Technology Librarian, j.secker@lse.ac.uk

Marie Lagerwall, Technical Officer, m.e.lagerwall@lse.ac.uk

Centre for Learning TechnologyLondon School of Economics and Political Science

MIDESS Dissemination Event 4th May 2007

MIDESS at the LSEBackground and context

• CLT built a media database to manage resources such as digitised lectures, digitised video and broadcast material (recorded under the ERA Licence)

• LSE Archives had recently digitised a large collection of images from the Malinowski archive

• At the outset of the project there was no scope to manage these resources in the institutional repository: LSE Research Online (Eprints version 2)

• The project also tied in with a review of LSE requirements for the institutional repository which was at the time (late 2005 - mid 2006) being undertaken by the E-services Librarian

• Also a concern that multimedia resources / images were being uploaded into the VLE and this wasn’t an ideal way to facilitate sharing of these resources with others at the LSE

• A feeling that repositories might better manage these resources than the VLE

LSE MIDESS working group

• Led by Jane Secker (Learning Technology Librarian, CLT), with IT support from Mike McFarlane (Library IT)

• LSE MIDESS working group include – Sue Donnelly (Archivist) – Frances Shipsey (E-Services Librarian)– Sarah Rosenblum (Information Services Manager)– Steve Ryan (Director of CLT)– Sarah Leach (Media Specialist, CLT)– Steve Bond (Learning Technologist, CLT)

• Academic input: Jose-Carlos Mariategui (Information Systems Group)

Fedora: the rationale

• The LSE had originally chosen to evaluate DSpace and E-Prints as well as Fedora in the context of MIDESS. This selection was narrowed down to Fedora in July 2006, in light of both Leeds and Birmingham focusing on one repository software each.

• DSpace was dropped as it was being piloted by Birmingham, and E-Prints was dropped (for the purposes of MIDESS) considering the LSE had already gathered extensive experience of the software through the institutional repository LSE Research Online.

• Considerable interest in Fedora at LSE, seemed to offer most functionality and keen to find out how much technical support it really required!

FedoraFlexible Extensible Digital Object Repository Architecture

• Development started in the second half of the 1990s at Cornell University. The core development team is now associated with both Cornell and the University of Virginia. The developers (some at least) contribute to/respond to enquiries made to the Fedora mailing lists: Fedora-commons-users and Fedora-commons-developers.

• Financial support is currently provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Stakeholders are also hoping for a grant from the Moore Foundation to initiate the setting-up of the Fedora Commons organisation.

• Current version: Fedora 2.2 (released in January 2007), supplanted Fedora 2.1.1.

• The up: “powerful digital object model”, “extensible metadata management”

• The down: Fedora “out of the box” is not at all a complete repository solution (no web interface), and would necessitate a dedicated technical team in order to offer the services expected of an institutional repository.

Fedora at the LSE: outcome

• 1 Fedora 2.1.1 installation (http://lib-2.lse.ac.uk:8080/fedora/search)

• 1 Fedora 2.2 installation (http://clt03.lse.ac.uk:8080/fedora/search)• Elated (and Fez) pilots carried out• Repository population:

– CLT media database ingested to repository (c.700 objects)– Part of the Malinowski photographic archive ingested to

repository (c.150 objects)– Coming up: SSEES digitised Cold War video collection

• Metadata mapping:– CLT metadata to DC (European Broadcasting Union application

profile)– EAD to DC

• Experience gathered in the use of METS (Metadata Encoding & Transmission Standard) for bulk ingest

• Installation of Repository Bridge Fedora plug-in to facilitate exchange of METS files from DSpace to Fedora

Fedora: demo

http://lib-2.lse.ac.uk:8080/fedora/search

Elated at the LSE

• Short-term pilot carried out Sept./Oct. 2006, Elated has not been maintained since.

• Elated is an open-source application developed to work on top of Fedora.

• According to the development team, Elated “could be used as a digital assets management system, an institutional repository, or to meet other collection archiving, publishing and searching needs” (http://elated.sourceforge.net/#overview). However, its core functionality resides primarily in the creation of collections and in the submission of single or multiple files to these collections.

• The up: easy to install, easy to use.• The down: lots of bugs with item submission/DC metadata

entry, with image previews/thumbnails, erratic searching, malfunctions with zip file ingest, with ‘user feedback’, etc.

Further developments: SSEES video digitisation

• SSEES (School of Slavonic and East European Studies, now part of UCL) holds an extensive collection of films and videos, mostly in VHS format (http://www.ssees.ac.uk/videos/intro.htm).

• As part of the MIDESS project extension till August, some of this content (related to the Cold War) is to be digitised.

• An initial selection is to be made by Gillian Long, user service librarian at SSEES, which will be further refined by CLT in collaboration with LSE academics from the LSE Cold War Studies Centre.

• The resulting digital video files will be ingested to the Fedora repository in CLT and will be available for use in teaching and learning at the LSE.

Fedora: overall challenges

• Fedora “out of the box” requires a lot of work in order to be implemented as institutional repository. Work with Fedora in the context of MIDESS at the LSE has been experimental in nature, with not a single member of staff working full-time on the project and with limited technical (and institutional) support.

• A shame the standard Fedora installation does not include a web client and front-end.

• No headway with Fez.

• Experience with METS for bulk ingest has developed by trial and error (lots of it).

Conclusions and the future

• Overall LSE have learnt a lot from MIDESS• CLT media database can be imported into a repository – team

need to decide if Fedora is going to be used in place of the media database

• Raised the profile of image and multimedia collections at LSE, we hope?

• Built up experience of using METS• Highlighted IPR issues as many of the CLT multimedia

collections are managed under licence agreements such as the ERA Licence, or from a specific licence from the publisher

• Valuable experience which will be shared with the community in the form of the MIDESS workpackages