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
STANFORD UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES
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
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)
