Welcome to a new issue of Stew of the Month, a monthly blog from the Digital Services and Technologies (DST) division at the University of Maryland Libraries. This blog provides news and updates from DST. We welcome comments, feedback, and ideas for improving our products and services.
Digital Programs and Initiatives
As always, the DPI team has been collaborating on improvements to a wide range of Libraries’ digital applications and websites for both internal and external users. Some highlights this month include:
ILS Migration
Ben Bradley is the College Park lead for the ILS migration project that is currently underway as we prepare to move from Aleph (which has been in use here for 20 years) to Alma-Primo. The migration is a complex project that will affect how staff from across the libraries perform many of their core tasks, and therefore requires a great deal of planning and coordination. The team is currently focused on training on the new system and data cleanup tasks in preparation for the migration.
Analytics Platforms Assessment
Amy Swackhamer led a project to evaluate website analytics platforms and determine whether the Libraries should migrate to Google Analytics 4 or adopt a different platform before Google ends their “Universal Analytics” service on July 1. Project participants from across the Libraries evaluated four possible replacement platforms, focusing in particular on the Libraries’ goal of understanding user behavior through the lens of information seeking while at the same time respecting users’ privacy. This goal differs from the focus of many commercial analytics tools on “goal conversion” and search engine optimization (SEO). We hope to be able to announce the outcome of this search soon.
Microsites Migrations
Amy has also been working with SSDR to migrate many of the Libraries’ remaining microsites from the Bloomreach CMS to Drupal. Microsites are small web properties that have some special scope or custom functionality that could not be accommodated in the main website. While the main website migration was completed some time ago, this long tail of boutique content and sites still has to be migrated out of the old platform before it can be shut down, and each of these migrations requires planning, analysis, and testing.
Archelon Improvements
Digital Services Librarian, Kee-Young Moon, Digital Repository Librarian, Josh Westgard, and Graduate Assistant, Cara Decusatis have teamed up with Metadata Librarian, Lisa Shiota in an effort to streamline and “make automatic” the loading of new content into our digital collections systems. Having completed the migration of streaming media content into our Avalon Media System repository last year, DPI is now turning back to Archelon, our repository for image and page-based digital collections content, in an effort to improve the speed and ease with which new content can be added to this system. The team is currently focused on identifying and reporting bugs, improving documentation, and also creating broader awareness of the data errors that can cause ingests to fail, in the hope that these improvements will create a more reliable and productive user experience. We are also working with SSDR on new features, including a service to allow external sites to harvest our metadata via the Open Archives Initiative’s Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH).
Digital Collections Content Loads
As we move forward with Archelon improvements by putting the system through its paces, one positive side effect of the work will be the new collections and content available for users. This month we can report that the second batch of digitized Punk Fanzines was loaded, as was a set of additional pool reports in the White House Correspondents’ Association collection, and a sample of content from the Advancing Workers’ Rights digitization project for testing in advance of the public launch of the collection.
Historic Maryland Newspapers Project
The Historic Maryland Newspapers Project continues work on Phase 5 of the grant. HMNP Co-Director, Pam McClanahan, coordinated with one of our newspaper advisory board members, Ian Post of the Edward H. Nabb Research Center for Delmarva History and Culture at Salisbury University to partner with us on this phase. The Nabb Center will be contributing three newspaper titles from Maryland’s Eastern Shore to the project. HMNP Project Assistants, Alexis Woolford and Bridget Jamison, continue copyright research and documentation for any third party content in the newspapers. Also, find us on social media @HistoricMDNews and check out this post from April 17 – Go Fly a Kite Day!
Digitization Activities
HDC is still working on completing an AV inventory. The purpose of this project is to inventory, assess, repair, and deaccession equipment. Charlotte Conant, Dan Isaacson, Ethan Lewis, Gabrielle Puglisi, and Alex Trim are currently wrapping up inventorying and labeling all the equipment. The next step is to identify equipment for repair and deaccession. HDC is working with Doug McElrath (SCUA) and Terrapin Trader to deaccession equipment.
IT & Facilities Operations
IT Helpdesk and Facilities Requests
The DST and Facilities Helpdesks receive quite a few requests each month. Below are the number of opened and closed service requests our group received during March 2023.
- Helpdesk: 385 opened, 328 closed
- Facilities: 58 opened, 53 closed
Aeon, Ares, ILLiad Deployments
In late February, User and System Services received requests to push out newly released updates for Aeon, Ares, and ILLiad through separate Service Requests. Dwonne Knight, a Senior Desktop Technician in USS was able to follow recorded steps to package, test on various test machines, and then deploy the applications to all staff PCs. Both ILLiad and Aeon software experienced printing failures due to the application that was provided having a fault. As a result, the vendor OCLC was contacted and was able to provide a fix for both applications, which was then sent to all users to implement.
Other ongoing and upcoming projects are :
- Bitlocker encryption on all staff PCs and laptops
- Enhanced security features on public printers
- Collaborating with Campus IT to refresh the network (Wifi connection reliability)
Software Systems and Development
Releases
IRRoC Website – Migrated the Integrated Research Resources on Campus (IRRoC) website from Hippo CMS to Drupal.
Digital Collections – Migrated the IIIF Image Server from Loris to Cantaloupe, deployed in Kubernetes, with improved caching and general performance.
SearchUMD – Completed migrating Libraries’ Website Bento search targets out of SearchUMD into standalone Python Flask applications (ie. microservices).
REDCap – Upgraded to version 13.1.27 LTS.
Under Development
Digital Collections – Continued work on Drive to DX updates to our preservation asset tools for a) improved searching and reporting and b) tracking assets in multiple storage locations, eg AWS and APTrust
Digital Collections – Contract Research Developer continuing to improve workflows for WHCA Pool Reports Collection in areas such as a) pool report capture and preservation, b) automated selection of pool reports from the email stream, c) automated redaction of sensitive information, d) manual review and update of the selected pool reports, e) automated metadata extraction, and f) improved web archiving of email pool reports.
Digital Collections – Continued work on new website implementation in Drupal.
DRUM – Put a 4 week hold on upgrading to DSpace 7, pending testing in the quality assurance environment.
Systems – Continued improving system backups to reduce duplication and improve application stability. Continued improving security by upgrading to recent versions of Apache HTTPD web server.
USMAI (University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions) Library Consortium
ILS Migration Project
Onboarding Started – Following our Onboarding Call in early April, we received our sandbox environment. And now that it is available, Getting to Know Alma training is being completed by members of Core Project Team and the Campus Teams at our seventeen institutions. Our project space in Basecamp was also deployed where the CLAS team and Core Project Team can communicate directly with the vendor about our project.
Post-selection Data Cleanup and Preparation – The cataloging SMT has been leading the way on developing data cleanup projects to complete before the migration kickoff in late August. With the leadership of Jennifer Martin from Salisbury University and Linda Seguin from the CLAS team, they have developed seven projects to work on over the summer!
Development Tasks & Updates
- Developers have begun Alma initial training and reviewing documentation on API and development opportunities.
- Ongoing work to resolve long-standing performance issues with JasperReports v. 8.1.x
- Continued work to resolve identified security vulnerabilities with the Aleph server
- Reviewing and decommissioning old, unused virtual machines
Personnel News
Kate Dohe is on sabbatical from spring to fall 2023, and in her absence Josh Westgard is acting director of Digital Programs and Initiatives.
We’re Hiring!
DST is hiring a UX/UI Designer, best consideration date is May 21, 2023. Come help us make our digital experience useful, usable, and inspiring!
Conferences and Presentations
HMNP team members, Pam McClanahan, Alexis Woolford, and Bridget Jamison, presented the poster, “Researching Historic Newspaper Titles in the Digital Age,” at the virtual Spring Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference (MARAC) April 26 -28.
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