STANFORD UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

Spotlight: A Self-Service Tool for Showcasing Digital Collections

Gary Geisler, Jessie Keck, Chris Beer & Stuart SnydmanStanford University

STANFORD UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

Outline

• What is Spotlight?

• Why Spotlight?

• Key features and design process

• Demo

• Community-oriented development

• What’s next

STANFORD UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

What is Spotlight?

Spotlight is software that sits on top of your digital repository and enables librarians,

curators, and other content experts to easily build feature-rich websites that showcase

collections and objects from the repository.

STANFORD UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

Why Spotlight?

Depth and Complexity of Exposure

Simple News or Splash

Page

Feature-Rich Collection Site

LIBRARY SITE (CMS)

CUSTOM SITE DEVELOPMENT

Time and Resources

INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORY/LIBRARY CATALOG

Library Catalog Record

Institutional Repository

Record

Simple Collection/Exhibit Site

What are the options for highlighting, showcasing, or publicizing a collection?

STANFORD UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

Why Spotlight?

STANFORD UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

Why Spotlight?

STANFORD UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

Why Spotlight?

STANFORD UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

Why Spotlight?

STANFORD UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

Why Spotlight?

Depth and Complexity of Exposure

Simple News or Splash

Page

Feature-Rich Collection Site

LIBRARY SITE (CMS)

CUSTOM SITE DEVELOPMENT

Time and Resources

INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORY/LIBRARY CATALOG

Library Catalog Record

Institutional Repository

Record

Simple Collection/Exhibit Site

What are the options for highlighting, showcasing, or publicizing a collection?

STANFORD UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

Why Spotlight?

STANFORD UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

Why Spotlight?

Revs Bassi-Veratti FRDA200,000+ image collection with

image annotation and other community features

672 item archive digitized, tagged, and integrated with an interactive version of the archive finding aid

Combines two foundational research sources: the Archives

Parlementaires and 25,000 images from the BnF

Dedicated collection sites

STANFORD UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

Why Spotlight?

Depth and Complexity of Exposure

Simple News or Splash

Page

Feature-Rich Collection Site

LIBRARY SITE (CMS)

CUSTOM SITE DEVELOPMENT

Time and Resources

INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORY/LIBRARY CATALOG

Library Catalog Record

Institutional Repository

Record

Simple Collection/Exhibit Site

What are the options for highlighting, showcasing, or publicizing a collection?

STANFORD UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

Why Spotlight?

Depth and Complexity of Exposure

Simple News or Splash

Page

Spotlight Exhibit Site

Feature-Rich Collection Site

LIBRARY SITE (CMS)

SELF-SERVICE EXHIBIT CREATION TOOL

CUSTOM SITE DEVELOPMENT

Time and Resources

INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORY/LIBRARY CATALOG

Library Catalog Record

Institutional Repository

Record

Simple Collection/Exhibit Site

What are the options for highlighting, showcasing, or publicizing a collection?

STANFORD UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

Why Spotlight?

Full-featured • Focused website with robust features for highlighting collections

Self-service • Enables curators and librarians to produce high quality exhibits without

programming

Integrated • Interoperates with existing discovery systems and repository infrastructure

Flexible • Enables curators to customize exhibit facets, metadata, feature pages,

visual themes, menu labels, etc.

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Design Process

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User Personas

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User Personas

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Requirements Prioritization

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Requirements Prioritization

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Wireframes

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Development Approach

Spotlight extends Blacklight

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Development Approach

Spotlight extends Blacklight

Spotlight gemBlacklight

Widgets

Rails app

App database

1 Base Rails app 2 App with app-

specific Solr index

3 App with default

Exhibits components

Admin configuration

4 Exhibit app with

customized settings

Curatorediting

5 Exhibit app with

curated content

Field and feature

customizationPage creation End-user

features

Exhibit website

6 Exhibit website

made public

Solr

User management Item discovery

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Demo - Tour of Completed Exhibit

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Demo - How to Create an Exhibit

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Spotlight Roadmap

Phase 2 development starts soon

• Guided paths through feature pages

• Support for more content types

• Selection and indexing tools

• Visual theming

• Repository integration

More exhibits at Stanford

More adopters

More contributors

STANFORD UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

Community-Focused Agile Development

Enable local institution customization and community contributions

• Widget framework, visual themes (soon)

Spotlight gemBlacklight

Widgets

Rails app

App database

1 Base Rails app 2 App with app-

specific Solr index

3 App with default

Exhibits components

Admin configuration

4 Exhibit app with

customized settings

Curatorediting

5 Exhibit app with

curated content

Field and feature

customizationPage creation End-user

features

Exhibit website

6 Exhibit website

made public

Solr

User management Item discovery

STANFORD UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

Community-Focused Agile Development

Code is publicly-available on Github

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Community-Focused Agile Development

Detailed release notes Work tickets

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Interested?

Maps of Africa exhibithttps://exhibits.stanford.edu

Project code repositoryhttps://github.com/sul-dlss/spotlight

More about Blacklighthttp://projectblacklight.org

Feedbackexhibits-feedback@lists.stanford.edu

Spotlight readme on Github

STANFORD UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

Why Not Just Use Omeka?

Integrating with Blacklight provides• More robust discovery environment

• More focus on the object versus the narrative

• Better integration with Hydra applications

• Better leverage of developer skills (keep focus on Ruby, not PHP)