Stew of the Month, December 2020, January 2021

Welcome to a new issue of Stew of the Month, a monthly blog from Digital Services and Technologies (DST) at the University of Maryland Libraries. This blog provides news and updates from the DST Division. We welcome comments, feedback and ideas for improving our products and services.

Digitization Activities

Historic Maryland Newspapers Project

As Phase 4 wraps up for the Historic Maryland Newspapers Project (HMNP), we’re moving ahead on Phase 5. Co-Directors, Doug and Robin, and Project Manager, Pam, reviewed discussion notes and survey results from the HMNP Selection Advisory Board and made the final Phase 5 title list. We’ll begin picking up these titles from our content partners throughout the state to start the digitization process for Phase 5.

Outreach for the project and Maryland newspaper content continued through the National Digital Newspaper Program’s monthly #ChronAmParty: December was #TimelessToys and January was #NationalHobbyMonth. Pam was a guest speaker in the UMD iSchool’s “Arrangement, Description, and Access for Archives” course in December sharing about digitization of archival materials and the newspaper project being an example of a large-scale digitization project.

Check out issues from 1877 to 1900 of our most recent title added to Chronicling America – The Republican of Oakland, MD. More issues will be coming soon! Also, see the latest HMNP blog posts by our student assistants on the UMD Libraries’ Special Collections and University Archives blog: “Holiday Festivities in the Newspapers” and “Searching Digitized Newspapers in Chronicling America.” And don’t forget to follow us on all our social media channels – @HistoricMDNews!

Other Digitization Activities

Robin spent the majority of December and January preparing for and training new assistants on elements of digitization production so DCMR can continue to provide services to the Libraries.

Juana Godinez continued her work on the disc transfer project for Library Media Services collections. She also provided assistance in researching a/v captioning and transcription projects, which Robin will use in later research projects in the spring semester.

Assistant Jane Sonneman continued to make progress digitizing items selected for the SCUA Voting Rights Act (VRA) exhibit in December. Robin uploaded the volumes that were completed to the Internet Archive so that SCUA can link to the full volumes for their online exhibit; the remaining volumes will be uploaded in February. Jane also fulfilled new digitization requests for SCPA. Jane left the digitization center for a field study opportunity.

Assistant Alexis Woolford continued to fulfill requests for existing files for remote patrons and to perform quality control checks on the work performed by Jane. Alexis continued working in January on post-production and QC projects, primarily on the Ian MacKaye fanzine project for SCPA.

Assistant Caroline Ackiewicz continued her field study work, auditing past files on our production server and flagging folders for ingest/archive prep or deletion (if they were already ingested/archived or were intended to be temporary files not for ingest). She has continued working in DCMR past her field study for the spring semester. She is working remotely, primarily on post-production and QC projects for the VRA exhibit and the MacKaye fanzine projects.

Assistant Joana Stillwell began working for DCMR in January. She has been trained on production and QC of still image formats and will be working in the Hornbake Digitization Center 10 hours/week in the springe semester working on new production for projects and requests. She has completed work on the VRA exhibit, the MacKaye fanzine project, and has started work on the Baker’s Journal newspaper project.

Digital  Programs and Initiatives

Digital Preservation

In December/January, Josh Westgard continued to focus on revamping Libraries’ digital preservation procedures, including beginning to process the assets that accumulated over the course of last year’s mass data migration to AWS.  There are currently 47 hard drives of content in the queues for deposit to APTrust and AWS, and new workflows are being devised to manage the processing and transfer of such a large amount of data in the context of remote work. This work is happening under the umbrella of the Libraries’ strategic initiative, “Drive to DX” (i.e. Digital Transformation), an outline of which was presented to LMG in January.

Data Services

Dave finalized a draft roadmap for building a shared data services model as part of the Libraries strategic planning. This document highlights how data services expertise is distributed throughout the Libraries and presents a vision for how these services can reinforce one another.

With Jodi Coalter and Leigh Dunewood, Dave has been developing a new workshop for equity in data management and research design. These forthcoming workshops will be delivered to selected GEMSTONE honors teams. The first workshop in the series is scheduled for early March.

Avalon Progress Update

The Avalon implementation team continues progress towards a planned production release of the new AV media repository this spring. Testing workflows and upload procedures for new content is underway in the internal test environment, and DPI anticipates beginning test ingest of select files from the Lerman Dance Archive project in the coming weeks. 

Software Development

Releases

Libraries’ Website – Released the new Search All feature offering a Bento style of search.

Kubernetes – Migrated these applications to the Kubernetes cluster:

• Libi Staff Blog
• Hippo Websites and CMS
• MD-SOAR
• Workstation Tracking
• Autonumber
• Student Applications

Under Development

WHCA Pool Reports Collection – Preparing the content and interface updates for a production launch of the website.

Avalon – Upgraded to version 7.2.0 and configured the dropbox and batch upload features.

Exhibits Website – Working on a new exhibits.lib.umd.edu website to house the SCPA and SCUA online exhibits. This supports the migration of the Libraries’ Website to Drupal.

Kubernetes – Continued work on migrating applications to the Kubernetes cluster: Fedora w/ Plastron and REDCap.

USMAI (University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions) Library Consortium

USMAI (University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions) Library Consortium
The CLAS team responded to 152 Aleph Rx submissions and 28 e-resource requests from across the consortium’s libraries in December and January.

COVID-19 Support

CLAS continues to be available to respond to your support requests. Please use our regular support channels if you need any assistance.

Application Upgrades

CLAS completed a number of upgrades in December and January to keep USMAI applications running on supported software versions:

• Aleph v23: Completed on Sunday, January 31st. While there are not any major changes to functionality, the upgrade puts the consortium in good position for sustained use of Aleph, minimizing the need for disruptive maintenance during the ILS migration project.
• USMAI Member Portal: The Portal was upgraded to Confluence v7 on Wednesday, January 27th. There are no major changes in functionality in this version.
• EZproxy v7.0.16: Completed on Thursday, December 16th. The upgrade positions us for a future upgrade this Spring to v7.1. After August 2021 previous versions of EZproxy will no longer be supported by OCLC.

Upcoming Work

Here are a couple of items to look forward to hearing more about in the coming months:

• Data Warehouse additions: Work is nearing completion to add more acquisition attributes to our “Collections (Current)” reporting topic.
• New Ticketing System: Internal planning and investigation continue on this initiative to consolidate and improve the system for making service requests. Once procurement has completed, expect to hear more about this.

Conferences

Robin taught the online workshop “Project Management Fundamentals for GLAM Institutions” for Lyrasis on January 28, 2021. Lyrasis will offer the workshop again later in the summer.

Stew of the Month, November 2020

Welcome to a new issue of Stew of the Month, a monthly blog from Digital Services and Technologies (DST) at the University of Maryland Libraries. This blog provides news and updates from the DST Division. We welcome comments, feedback and ideas for improving our products and services.

Digitization Activities

Historic Maryland Newspapers Project

Library of Congress has accepted another batch for the newspaper project and quality review continues on the few remaining batches for HMNP Phase 4. Title selection is being finalized for Phase 5 with the HMNP Advisory Board. November’s National Digital Newspaper Program #ChronAmParty shared puzzles, games, and coloring pages from the historic newspapers on Twitter for #NovemberDistractions. Here’s a puzzle example from HMNP!

Pam gave an HMNP update during the lightning talk session at the Maryland History and Culture Collaborative virtual meeting co-hosted by UMD Libraries and Columbia Maryland Archives on November 9. Additionally, she shared about searching in Chronicling America and using newspapers as primary sources in historical research with future social studies teachers in HMNP Advisory Board Member and UMD College of Education Professor Lisa Eaker’s course on November 12.

See this month’s HMNP post on UMD’s Special Collections and University Archives blog: “It’s the Holiday Season: Shopping and Advertisements in Historic Maryland Newspapers” written by Sarah McKenna, HMNP Student Assistant. Follow us on Instagram (@HistoricMDNews) to see more HMNP newspaper content!

The Library of Congress shared access statistics for July 2019-June 2020 for Maryland newspapers and users from Maryland. The statistics mirrored overall Chronicling America statistics, which saw a notable increase in February/March which remained high until May/June. Maryland newspapers saw a huge spike in March of 212,480 pages used (which then went down to ~70K pages used in April).

Robin and Pam also worked with Jane Zhu in the Business Office to get the vendor contracts finalized for Phase 5 microfilm duplication and digitization.

Other Digitization Activities

Assistant Jane Sonneman continued to make progress digitizing items selected for the SCUA Voting Rights Act exhibit. She also fulfilled new digitization requests for SCPA. Assistant Alexis Woolford continued to fulfill requests for existing files for remote patrons and to perform quality control checks on the work performed by Jane.

Assistant Caroline Ackiewicz continued her field study work, auditing past files on our production server and flagging folders for ingest/archive prep or deletion (if they were already ingested/archived or were intended to be temporary files not for ingest). She will be continuing in DCMR past her field study next semester.

Digital  Programs and Initiatives

Data Services

Revisions to the Collection Policy for Research Data were approved by CDC/CSAC last week. The policy is now available on Libi as well as the Libraries website (https://www.lib.umd.edu/data/preservation/collection-policy).

David Durden and Milan Budhathoki presented on GIS and Data Services to University Libraries Council. David’s presentation included updates regarding current services and forthcoming work on the Shared Data Services strategic initiative.

Software Development

Under Development

Kubernetes – Continued work on migrating applications to the Kubernetes cluster: Libi Staff Blog, Hippo Websites and CMS, Fedora w/ Plastron, REDCap, MD-SOAR, and miscellaneous PostgreSQL databases.

USMAI (University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions) Library Consortium

USMAI (University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions) Library Consortium
The CLAS team responded to 56 Aleph Rx submissions and 15 e-resource requests from across the consortium’s libraries in November.

COVID-19 Support

CLAS continues to be available to respond to your support requests. Please use our regular support channels if you need any assistance.

Aleph v23 Upgrade

Progress on the upgrade to Aleph v23 continues. The upgrade of our Aleph TEST environment is scheduled for the first week of December and a new TEST client for v23 is now available for USMAI library staff to download and install. Once the TEST upgrade is completed, we’ll be asking staff at all USMAI libraries to do some testing. Your efforts during this stage will help ensure a smooth transition to the new version of Aleph! Please visit the Portal’s v23 project page for the latest information and updates.

New Ticketing System Exploration

CLAS team members completed a speedy and rigorous assessment of an identified product to consolidate the multiple avenues for submitting service requests. The product (which will remain nameless until procurement is completed) meets the critical requirements and offers several beneficial features for staff at USMAI libraries, including integration and a single user account between the Member Portal and ticketing system. While we await the procurement process, CLAS team members are in the early stages of planning the implementation.

Shibboleth Upgrade

The Shibboleth Identify Provider software that enables logins to the OPAC and e-resources for campuses that use barcode logins was upgraded to version 4. Thanks to careful planning by Tiffany and Hans, the upgrade was executed with no noticeable disruption to USMAI library services. With version 3 reaching end of life at the end of December, this upgrade fulfilled our commitment to remain on supported versions of all software that we run – a commitment that certainly keeps us busy!

Conferences

Robin Pike attended the virtual Digital Library Federation (DLF)/Digital Preservation conference from November 9-13. As outgoing Chair of the DLF Project Managers Working Group, she led a discussion session of the working group the next week on November 17.

Stew of the Month, October 2020

Welcome to a new issue of Stew of the Month, a monthly blog from Digital Services and Technologies (DST) at the University of Maryland Libraries. This blog provides news and updates from the DST Division. We welcome comments, feedback and ideas for improving our products and services.

Digitization Activities

Historic Maryland Newspapers Project

Doug, Robin, and Pam hosted a virtual meeting of the Historic Maryland Newspapers Project (HMNP) Selection Advisory Board and other stakeholders for the Phase 5 grant this month. Pam presented an update on the project, and Robin shared the latest on Chronicling America from last month’s NDNP conference. Three of our board members, Maria Day of Maryland State Archives, Mary Mannix of Frederick County Public Library, and Ian Post from the Nabb Center at Salisbury University, gave examples of community building and Chronicling America case studies. Finally, Doug led our discussion on title selection for Phase 5. We’ll follow up with a survey for board members to rank titles, and then narrow down to our 100,000 pages. Production will start early next year for Phase 5 while Phase 4 continues with batch review and is slated to be completed by the end of the year.

Check out this month’s HMNP post on UMD’s Special Collections and University Archives blog, “Spooky Celebrations.” HMNP Student Assistant, Bryanna Bauer, wrote the October blog post about Halloween celebrations in Maryland state over the years as described in the historic newspapers. You can see more newspaper content on HMNPS’s Twitter account: @HistoricMDNews.

Other Digitization Activities

Juana Godinez continued to transfer videos digitized as part of previous years’ course reserves, which will be added to Films@UM next year. She has re-discovered several that relate to current social justice initiatives that will be more discoverable once they are added to Digital Collections.

Assistant Jane Sonneman continued to digitize materials for the Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) Voting Rights Act exhibit, which will be made available in January. She has been focusing on pamphlets and a few books this month, which after digitization, will also be uploaded to the Internet Archive.

Assistant Caroline Ackiewicz has continued to audit the in-house produced files, to clean up files previously ingested and those to be ingested into the new Digital Collections; she is identifying which files or projects need additional metadata or access information for the future ingest.

Due to file access during the pandemic closure, DCMR put a hold on providing preservation-level files to patrons. In October, DCMR has now reopened this ability, at least for files ingested into Digital Collections (since they have been archived), since we now have the capacity to retrieve files from AWS storage. Assistant Alexis Woolford has been busy providing many more requests for existing files as SCUA has opened services to more researchers. She completed 18 requests in October, including one for a preservation file, in addition to 60 requests in September (and 12 in August), with more in the pipeline. She has also been performing QC on the first portion of files returned for the Project Ceres grant project, which is digitizing historic agriculture publications published in Maryland.

Robin has also been working with Joanne Archer (SCUA) on vendor quotes and providing digitization language for a CLIR grant application to describe and digitize AFL-CIO Social Justice Department records.

Digital  Programs and Initiatives

New Users in DRUM

138 new users registered for DRUM between September 1 and October 31.

Software Development

Releases

UMD PACT Website – Drupal 8 website released in production at https://pact.umd.edu/, providing an informational website for the cross-campus working subgroup of the Senate-based University Library Council (ULC) called “UMD PACT” (Publishing, Access, and Contract Terms).

Kubernetes – Migrated these applications to the Kubernetes cluster:

• Caia Integration – Integration middleware which sends items and item requests from Aleph to Caia.
• ArchivesSpace – Archival Collections public, staff, and API interfaces.

REDCap – Upgraded to version 9.5.35 Long Term Support

Libraries’ Website – Updated the SCPA Scores Collection with new data and some improved interface elements.

Under Development

Kubernetes – Continued work on migrating applications to the Kubernetes cluster: Libi Staff Blog, Hippo Websites and CMS, Fedora w/ Plastron, REDCap, MD-SOAR, and miscellaneous PostgreSQL databases.

USMAI (University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions) Library Consortium

The CLAS team responded to 56 Aleph Rx submissions and 22 e-resource requests from across the consortium’s libraries in October.

COVID-19 Support

CLAS continues to be available to respond to your support requests. Please use our regular support channels if you need any assistance.

Restarting Resource Sharing (a.k.a. Status 3)

The second cohort of libraries began participating in USMAI resource sharing in October. Almost all USMAI libraries are now lending and borrowing materials. The current status for each library, along with whether pickup is available only for local patrons or for all USMAI patrons, is available on the Operational and Service Status of USMAI Libraries.

Aleph v23 Upgrade

As previously shared in a blog post on the Member Portal, efforts have begun to upgrade Aleph to version 23. USMAI is currently running version 22. The upgrade will ensure long-term compatibility with external system dependencies during ILS migration activities. The new Aleph version is not expected to introduce new features that will impact local workflows, but it will require review by USMAI library staff before the production upgrade. Currently, CLAS team members have been setting up and reviewing our internal testing environment. Timelines and other important details will be provided on the Aleph v23 Upgrade page in the Portal as the project progresses.

New Ticketing System Exploration

CLAS team members have begun reviewing a ticketing system to consolidate the multiple avenues for submitting service requests to CLAS. High priority requirements have been developed and are being evaluated for the identified solution. If the identified product is determined to be a viable replacement, an implementation plan will be developed to transition current requesting methods into the new system, keeping in mind that the nature of some service requests may change as part of the migration to a new ILS. Stay tuned!

User and System Support

Cisco Jabber

With the unexpected timing of the pandemic, many University of Maryland College Park departments and units needed to rally to accommodate staff requests and smooth transition to teleworking. Over the course of the past eight months, USS has researched many applications and software to ease the transition to teleworking. Cisco Jabber, is one such application for Windows and Macs, which allows you to make and receive calls remotely as if you are on campus. Cisco Jabber functions as a virtual phone whether you are connected to the public Internet or to the University of Maryland through a virtual private network (VPN). Cisco Jabber is also available on iOS and Android devices.  The application gives you the ability to make and receive calls as though you are on campus and the number that will be displayed to the caller will be your campus phone number.  It will also allow you to check voicemail from the application.

If you’re interested in using Cisco Jabber, please complete this form and an USS technician will reach out to you. 

MacOS and Windows OS Upgrade

Beginning Monday, January 11, 2021, DIT informed that users with Windows 7 & 8 or macOS running a version below 10.13 will no longer be able to access systems that use CAS authentication. Major university systems that use CAS include UMD Google email, PHR, ELMS, Testudo, Box, and library services.

Microsoft support ended for Windows 7 in January 2020 and for Windows 8 in January 2016. With these operating systems no longer receiving security updates, running them poses computer security risks. Accessing UMD systems via obsolete operating systems in turn increases the risk to data stored on the university systems. 

USS updated most of the work issued PC desktops and laptops to Windows 10. However, there are few work-issued Mac desktops and laptops that needed to be upgraded to the latest version of macOS 10.15.7. USS compiled a list of the users of those remaining systems and sent an email instructing them to upgrade their work-issued computers by Tuesday, December 1st, 2020. 

Stew of the Month, September 2020

Welcome to a new issue of Stew of the Month, a monthly blog from Digital Services and Technologies (DST) at the University of Maryland Libraries. This blog provides news and updates from the DST Division. We welcome comments, feedback and ideas for improving our products and services.

Digitization Activities

Historic Maryland Newspapers Project

Newspaper batch review continues for the Historic Maryland Newspapers Project (HMNP). We have received two more batches from our vendor and our student assistants are performing quality control on those digital files. Both batches are for the Montgomery County Sentinel title, published in Rockville, MD from the mid-19th to mid-20th century. HMNP has started a monthly guest blog post series on UMD’s Special Collections and University Archives blog. Pam McClanahan reported the exciting milestone that Chronicling America has reached 17 million newspaper pages this month in the first blog post in the series. Sharing newspaper content continues on our social media platforms @HistoricMDNews.

Earlier this month, our team attended the virtual National Digital Newspaper Program conference hosted by National Endowment for the Humanities and Library of Congress held annually for all of the participating state newspaper programs to come together to hear updates, share progress, and learn about advances working with digital newspapers. HMNP Co-Director, Robin Pike, and Project Manager, Pam McClanahan, gave a lightning talk titled “Respecting Diverse Communities while Trying to Balance Representation in Chronicling America.” The talk shared the team’s experience working to make the content of under-represented groups a priority while respecting the wishes of these communities and beginning discussions on how to best support local newspapers who are struggling even more now due to the current economic climate during the pandemic.

Other Digitization Activities

The University of Maryland was awarded a Project Ceres grant last year “to support the ongoing preservation and digitization of collections in the field of agriculture.” Project Ceres is a partnership between the Center for Research Libraries, United States Agriculture Information Network, and the Agriculture Network Information Collaborative. Working with Stephanie Ritchie, Agricultural and Natural Resources Librarian, in UMD’s STEM Library, we’re digitizing approximately 40,000 pages of agricultural publications from UMD’s collections primarily on microfilm, but some print as well, which will be uploaded to the Internet Archive and made accessible through the Center for Research Library’s online catalog. Our vendor has completed digitization of the print materials and digitization student assistant, Alexis Woolford, is currently completing quality review of the digital files. Digitization Assistant Jane Sonneman continued working to digitize materials selected for the SCUA Voting Rights Act exhibit; Alexis is performing quality review of these materials, as well. Robin worked with Bryan Draper and Sarah Hesler to conclude review of the FY20 Hebraica digitization project, which was delayed due to digitization delays from Covid closures. Juana Godinez continued to transfer additional films digitized previously for course reserves. She compiled a list of films around topics of social justice and civil rights to share with the IDEA Committee.

Digital  Programs and Initiatives

DPI is currently engaged in planning activities in support of several strategic projects, including the Drive to DX initiative, the Avalon media repository roll-out, and Distributed Data Services. As these plans become more formalized and Libraries leadership provides further direction and guidance, we will begin reaching out to stakeholders across the Libraries for feedback, contributions, and further refinement.

Software Development

Releases

Kubernetes – Completed the initial deployment of our Kubernetes cluster as the container orchestration system for our Docker-based applications.  We also promoted these applications through to production in the Kubernetes cluster:

• Solr Database supporting services for: IRRoC, Gateway to Digitized Maryland Newspapers, Plant Patents Image Database, SCPA Scores Collection, and Top Textbooks
• In Transition
• The search supporting service which supports the Search (Beta) release.

DRUM – Updated our DSpace templates for improved Web Accessibility and Search Engine Optimization.

Under Development

Kubernetes – Continued work on migrating applications to the Kubernetes cluster: Caia Integration, Libi Staff Blog, UMD PACT, ArchivesSpace, Hippo CMS, Fedora w/ Plastron, REDCap, and MD-SOAR.

UMD PACT Website – Completed the switch to SAML for authentication and Grouper for access control. Production release of the PACT website is pending completion of the website content.

Avalon – Setup initial deployment of the Avalon Media System in our test server environment.

Plant Patents Image Database – Migrated the PDF content hosting from the Libraries’ website server into Fedora.

USMAI (University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions) Library Consortium

The CLAS team responded to 138 Aleph Rx submissions and 22 e-resource requests from across the consortium’s libraries in September.

COVID-19 Support

CLAS continues to be available to respond to your support requests. Please use our regular support channels if you need any assistance.

Restarting Resource Sharing (a.k.a. Status 3)

On September 28th, six USMAI libraries restarted their participation in consortial resource sharing. In addition to a fair amount of configuration work, putting this together also required doing some customizations to allow libraries to restrict their locations for pickup by local patrons only. This was a key condition for many libraries to be able to begin sharing resources; many thanks go to Hans for devising a solution to make this happen in Aleph! Setup for the next cohort of libraries will begin in early October.

“No Fines” Policy Implementation

In consultation with USMAI’s Subgroup for Access Services, CLAS updated Aleph tables to zero out overdue and recall fines for all USMAI libraries. Additionally, we have advanced the due dates on currently checked out items as specified by each library. These efforts are part of the implementation of CLD’s decision to waive fines for the remainder of the calendar year.

EAST

As part of the recent decision by 13 USMAI libraries to join the Eastern Academic Scholars’ Trust (EAST) retention program, extracts of eligible items were sent to EAST on September 28th. They will be analyzed in order to determine which items will have retention commitments applied. Linda worked with contacts at the thirteen libraries to create specifications for the extracts, as well as providing reports to help work through individual and group-wide decisions that needed to be made.

Quarter 4 Work Plan

September brings with it the end of the third quarter of the calendar year and planning for the fourth quarter. Here are some of the items we’re preparing to tackle in the final quarter of 2020:

• Aleph v23 upgrade: This will be a “technical upgrade” to ensure support for underlying technologies (and the Aleph software) throughout the ILS migration project.
• Shibboleth IdP upgrade: This will be upgraded to v4 since v3’s support ends soon.
• EZproxy upgrade: This will be upgraded to v7 to ensure compatibility with licensed resources.
• Continuous improvement
  • OPAC: We’ll continue to address identified accessibility issues.
  • Member Portal: The Confluence software will be maintained, and we’ll pursue identified opportunities as capacity allows.
  • Data Warehouse: The Jaspersoft software will be maintained, and we’ll add new data as capacity allows.
• New ticketing system exploration: As identified in LMS feedback sessions, we’ll investigate ticketing system options and work towards implementation/consolidation as the ILS migration timeline allows.

Stew of the Month, August 2020

Welcome to a new issue of Stew of the Month, a monthly blog from Digital Services and Technologies (DST) at the University of Maryland Libraries. This blog provides news and updates from the DST Division. We welcome comments, feedback and ideas for improving our products and services.

Digitization Activities

Historic Maryland Newspapers Project

The Historic Maryland Newspapers Project (HMNP) continues with quality review of newspaper batches as we receive them from our vendor. An additional two batches have been submitted to the Library of Congress for approval. Also, you can now access all of our digitized issues of the Telegraf (a Czech language title published in Baltimore in the early 20th century) through Chronicling America.

Along with the Maryland State Archives, HMNP hosted a social media campaign to celebrate women’s suffrage in Maryland as this month marked the centennial of the 19th amendment giving women the right to vote. We advertised the campaign to other libraries, archives, and museums and several cultural heritage institutions from throughout the state participated in the week-long campaign by tagging their posts with #MDSuffrage and #MarylandWomenVote. HMNP student assistants, Sarah McKenna and Bryanna Bauer compiled the posts for our participation in the campaign, and you can learn more about it from their blog post on the topic. Follow @HistoricMDNews on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook to see more content from the Maryland historic newspapers.

HMNP Project Manager, Pamela McClanahan, has started to do a data analysis of the Maryland newspapers in Chronicling America including looking at the number of titles, issues, and pages by county and region of the state. She has prepared map data visualizations with this data utilizing Tableau. Pam presented her initial research findings at two conferences this month – the Society of American Archivists Research Forum on August 5 and the Towson Conference for Academic Libraries on August 12. Check out her SAA poster and TCAL Talk to see more about her research and the newspaper collection.

Other Digitization Activities

Robin has sent DCMR reopening plans for Phase 2-3 to the Reopening Taskforce, which are posted to Libi. This is an evolving document and may change if the university changes its reopening schedule. She has focused her time on creating documentation for students coming onsite, changes in workflows to account for staff that is partially onsite and remote, and training new staff.

Juana Godinez has nearly completed the second batch of at-home DVD transfers to add to the Films@UM collection. She is also editing some of the videos to make the viewing/listening experience more enjoyable.

Digitization Assistants Natalia Grajewski, Amanda Scott, and Jane Sonneman completed their review of the FY20 Hebraica, Basketball Film, and Student Newspaper vendor projects; Preservation staff who are examining the physical volumes still have additional work to complete on Hebraica where the volume may have printing irregularities. Natalia, Amanda, and Jane, along with Robin Pike contributed to Archelon testing which resulted in the MVP release by DPI.

Jane continued to go to Hornbake one day/week to complete new digitization requests. Jane is focusing on creating digital files on campus and doing post-production processes at home to expedite what she can digitize and to create a backlog if we need to be 100% remote again. Natalia, Amanda, and Robin fulfilled requests for existing files; with Natalia’s and Amanda’s departures at the end of August, Robin trained Alexis Woolford to do this work. She has also begun performing QC on Jane’s projects.

MLIS graduate student Caroline Ackiewicz began her field study. She will be performing an audit of DCMR’s production server, assessing what files have been ingested into Digital Collections or the Internet Archive and archived and what files should be staged. Due to staff turnover in the past 2.5 years, we need to create a comprehensive list and clear the drive of projects that have already been completed.

Cecilia Franck, Greenbelt Archive Project Digitization Technician began going to campus to digitize the newspapers as part of Phase 2+. This is a community archiving project that DCMR was hired to digitize and upload to the Internet Archive, and is moving on campus from Greenbelt to ensure staff safety. Much like our in-house digitization requests, Cecilia is focusing their hours onsite on digitization and at home on post-production. We have front-loaded the number of hours onsite at the beginning of the semester to hopefully complete digitization more rapidly.

Digital  Programs and Initiatives

Announcing Archelon at UMD Libraries!

DST is pleased to let you know that we’ve crossed an important milestone: Archelon’s “minimum viable product” (MVP) is now completed and available for use by Libraries personnel. Archelon is the staff interface for Fedora, and it’s an important piece in our long term plan to migrate away from Fedora 2 and upgrade our digital library infrastructure. It is essential for our digital asset management and digital preservation programs, and is designed to support the large-scale digital initiatives that UMD has led for the last decade.

New features, next steps, and what this means for digital initiatives at UMD is covered in more detail in this blog post.

We would like to recognize the efforts of a considerable group of stakeholders across the Libraries:

• The implementation team: Peter Eichman, Josh Westgard, Bria Parker, David Steelman, Mohamed Mohideen Abdul Rasheed, Cindy Zhao, Porter Olsen, Kate Dohe, and Ben Wallberg
• Consulting stakeholders and testers: Joanne Archer, Liz Caringola, John Davis, Jennifer Doherty, David Durden, Kana Jenkins, Lae’l Hughes-Watkins, Robin Pike, Amy Wickner, Amy Wasserstom, Jennifer Wachtel, Natalia Grajewski, Mary Scott, Jane Sonneman, and many other former student workers, graduate assistants, and personnel who contributed their time and effort over the years.

New Collection in DRUM

UMD-PRC Reports and Briefs is a collection of reports and briefs created by the University of Maryland Prevention Research Center (UMD-PRC), a CDC-funded research unit in the Behavioral and Community Health Department of the School of Public Health. Technical reports summarize original analyses, research briefs translate academic articles published by UMD-PRC investigators, and policy briefs communicate the implications of proposed or enacted policy based on scientific evidence.

DRUM user registrations from 17 June to 31 August: 98.

Software Development

Releases

Archelon – Released Milestone 6 “Browser-based Item Update”.  This is also the Minimum Viable Product release.

Libraries’ Website – Minor release to provide: a) new Hornbake Library hours entry, and b) remove all target=”_blank” from HTML templates, per Web Accessibility best practice.

Under Development

UMD PACT Website – Continued implementation of a new Drupal based website for UMD PACT (Publishing, Access, and Contract Terms), a subgroup of the University Senate’s University Library Council (ULC).  Work primarily focused on migrating to SAML for authentication and Grouper for access control.

White House Correspondents (WHCA) Association Pool Reports Archive – Completed work on a proof-of-concept Drupal based website for the WHCA Pool Reports Archive.  This archive will initially be populated with current pool reports which are distributed via email and later with older digitized paper pool reports. The content will be stored in our Fedora Content Repository as part of Digital Collections.

Kubernetes – Continued work on migrating applications and setting up the production cluster.

USMAI (University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions) Library Consortium

The CLAS team responded to 103 Aleph Rx submissions and 26 e-resource requests from across the consortium’s libraries in August.

COVID-19 Support

CLAS continues to be available to respond to your support requests. Please use our regular support channels if you need any assistance.

Preparing for Reopenings

We continue to work with USMAI libraries as they begin to make their library collections available again. Eight member libraries reopened access to their collections this month. A few other libraries are set up in Aleph TEST and awaiting testing/review before “going live”. Special kudos go to David Wilt for keeping on top of all of the service requests and configuration changes that go along with this!

We are also tracking which libraries are ready to resume resource sharing in the consortium (a.k.a. “Status 3”). Please visit the Aleph Configurations for Reopening Scenarios page for more details about options for Status 3 and how to indicate that your library is ready.

OPAC Redesign for Accessibility (ORA)

Changes for the redesign of the Aleph OPAC were released in the Aleph LIVE OPAC on August 13th. This set of changes provides a foundation for incremental improvements in the coming years. (We already have a backlog!)

Marcive Authority Control Service Implementation

Reviewers completed the review of Marcive’s sample set of processed records. There were a number of issues identified. These have been shared with Marcive, and Marcive has provided responses/follow-up. The review group and Metadata Subgroup are currently working to formulate next recommended steps. Thank you to all the volunteers who helped review the sample records!

MD-SOAR

We’re pleased to report that CLD has approved an additional 3-year commitment, which will keep MD-SOAR running on DSpace hosted by UMD Libraries through at least the end of fiscal year 2024. MD-SOAR is currently used by 10 academic libraries in Maryland and is available to any USMAI library in need of an institutional repository platform.

User and Systems Support

USS (User Support and Systems) 

The USS team responded and closed 236 Sysaid service requests in the month of August. 

COVID-19 Support

USS continues to provide support to Library employees who are onsite or teleworking. Please continue to submit problems and/or inquiries to lib-helpdesk@umd.edu. Be sure to check our Telework Technology Guidelines and Procedures on Libi weekly for any updates. 

Preparing for Re-openings

Over the last couple of weeks, USS took steps to ensure a smooth transition back into the Libraries and to ensure safe operations during reopening. We have removed several machines from the 1st floor to ensure social distancing. 

Before the start of every semester, we re-image all of the TLC loaner laptops including the 6th floor classroom laptops. Last week, a few of us gathered at McKeldin to reimage 136 laptops (PCs and Macs).

Over the last week, we’ve hired 4 new student workers to assist with staffing the First Floor of McKeldin during Phase 3 of reopening. Appropriate training on how to assist patrons, social distancing mandates, procedures on what is expected during the re-opening of McKeldin was done with the student workers and staff.

On the remaining 13 public machines we have on the First Floor, we’ve installed a chat button on the desktops. The chat function allows students and UMD patrons to chat with our USS staff to resolve any issue they may have.

Arrivals/Departures

Natalia Grajewski and Amanda Scott, both Digitization Assistants in DCMR completed their C1 contracts at the end of August. We wish them the best in their job searches!

Caroline Ackiewicz, graduate student in the library program, began her field study for DCMR, which will be one semester.

Announcing Archelon at UMD Libraries

DST is pleased to let you know that we’ve crossed an important milestone: Archelon’s “minimum viable product” (MVP) is now completed and available for use by Libraries personnel.

As some in the Libraries may know, our Digital Collections program uses an open-source repository application called Fedora. What is less commonly known is that we currently run two Fedoras to support Digital Collections–one is our older, end-of-life Fedora 2 repository, and one is the newer Fedora repository intended to replace it (yes, we think this is confusing, too). These Fedora repositories require additional user interfaces for staff outside the technology groups to manage content and metadata within them. Archelon is that interface for Fedora, and it’s an important piece in our long term plan to migrate away from Fedora 2 and upgrade our digital library infrastructure. It is essential for our digital asset management and digital preservation programs, and is designed to support the large-scale digital initiatives that UMD has led for the last decade.

Some of the key features of this repository management system include:

• In-browser metadata editing for existing objects;
• Bulk downloads of files and/or metadata;
• Batch processes that use spreadsheets, like new item ingest and metadata updates;
• Controlled vocabularies derived from ArchivesSpace for data validation;
• Generic repository “Item” modeling that should speed up collection processing and increase throughput, while still allowing for rich descriptions of page-based content.
• Single use “capability URLs” for one-time downloads to fulfill reference requests;

Already, we are using these improvements to load a subset of the Diamondback Photos collection and test the application under real-world circumstances. In the coming weeks, DST will be working with various stakeholders on training, workflow refinement, and documentation needs. We hope to have more announcements of digital collections updates soon. 

Archelon will be used alongside the Avalon Media System, which will be launched at UMD Libraries in 2021. Archelon will be used to manage image-based, paged, and generic file (e.g. data) collections, while Avalon will be used to manage time-based media collections (audio and video). Both Archelon and Avalon are interfaces to manage content stored in Fedora repositories.

Repositories are the cornerstone of UMD Libraries’ digital strategy, and Archelon will allow broader cross-section of stakeholders to be involved directly in content management and content creation. This project is the result of nearly two years of sustained effort by many stakeholders and implementers across our Libraries, who created wireframes and mock-ups, organized project milestones, wrote code, hosted and attended Town Hall meetings, conducted usability studies, sat down for interviews, ran through application testing (so much testing!), and committed to tackling a complex and challenging project together. I would like to extend my genuine gratitude to the following contributors to this project:

• The implementation team: Peter Eichman, Josh Westgard, Bria Parker, David Steelman, Mohamed Mohideen Abdul Rasheed, Cindy Zhao, Porter Olsen, and Ben Wallberg
• Consulting stakeholders and testers: Joanne Archer, Liz Caringola, John Davis, Jennifer Doherty, David Durden, Kana Jenkins, Lae’l Hughes-Watkins, Robin Pike, Amy Wickner, Amy Wasserstom, Jennifer Wachtel, Natalia Grajewski, Mary Scott, Jane Sonneman, and many other former student workers, graduate assistants, and personnel who contributed their time and effort over the years.

We built something exceptional together, and I believe we have taken a huge step in the evolution of our digital library program.

This post was written with contributions from Josh Westgard and Porter Olsen in Digital Programs & Initiatives.

Stew of the Month July, 2020

Welcome to a new issue of Stew of the Month, a monthly blog from Digital Services and Technologies (DST) at the University of Maryland Libraries. This blog provides news and updates from the DST Division. We welcome comments, feedback and ideas for improving our products and services.

Digitization Activities

Historic Maryland Newspapers Project

The Historic Maryland Newspapers Project has been awarded a Phase 5 National Digital Newspaper Program grant by the National Endowment for the Humanities! We’re so excited to continue this project making historic Maryland newspapers freely accessible on Chronicling America through the Library of Congress website. We’re continuing to process the titles from the current phase and will have that completed by the end of the year. In addition, this fall, we’ll begin work on Phase 5 finalizing title selection with our advisory board. Phase 5 will run from September 1, 2020 to August 31, 2022.

In partnership with the Maryland State Archives, we’re hosting a social media campaign the week of August 17th to promote Maryland historic newspapers and celebrate the centennial of the passing of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote. Learn more here if you’d like to join in the campaign to honor women’s suffrage in Maryland. Follow @HistoricMDNews on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook to see our content and watch #MDSuffrage and #MarylandWomenVote to see posts from other organizations across the state!

Other Digitization Activities

Quality review for the digital files for the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange video digitization grant has been completed. Student assistant, Alexis Woolford, continues a literature review for the project and will write a blog post about her experience working on this digitization grant. John Borstel from the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange will continue metadata enhancement for the project, and UMD Libraries staff will begin scholarship and outreach work to share about this large-scale video digitization project. With contributions from John Davis, Steve Henry, and Bria Parker, Robin Pike submitted the mid-grant progress report.

Digitization Assistants continued their review of vendor-produced files for the delayed FY20 projects. Jane Sonneman worked on the Student Newspapers, Natalia Grajewski worked on Hebraica, along with assistance from staff from Preservation and Conservation, and Amanda Scott worked on audiovisual projects including on-demand requests and Basketball Films. The assistants and Pike also provided comments for Archelon testing.

Pike has also been working with Joanne Archer, Amber Kohl, and Doug McElrath to create coordinating Phase 2 and 3 reopening plans for SCUA and DCMR, which are now posted on Libi. Limited DCMR staff will be entering Hornbake to complete digitization requests when necessary in Phase 2 and will be working one at a time on a more regular schedule in Phase 3.

Juana Godinez began work to edit audio digitization procedures while brushing up on the latest version of Adobe Audition and continued to clean up previously-digitized content for Films@UM.

Digital  Programs and Initiatives

Archelon Progress Update

DPI is working closely with SSDR and stakeholders across the Libraries on completion of Milestone 6: Browser-based metadata editing. This milestone is the last substantial requirement  for Archelon’s Minimum Viable Product, and we anticipate this release will be completed in early August. A more formal announcement will follow release.

New Additions to DRUM

The electronic theses and dissertations from the 2020 spring semester are now available in DRUM.

DRUM is also now the home for documents from the iSchool Digital Curation Fellows program. The program is a collaboration with the National Agricultural Library (NAL) to match iSchool students with digital curation research opportunities at NAL.

Software Development

Releases

Archelon – Released Milestone 5 “Batch Import/Export: Binaries”.

CaiaSoft Integration – Caiasoft is a storage management solution that integrates with Aleph, ILLiad, Aeon, and other systems used at UMD. It has replaced the homegrown Severn Library database and should improve efficiency related to intake, delivery, etc. Worked on the middleware integration to support sending hold requests, new items, and item updates from Aleph to CaiaSoft.

Under Development

Archelon – Began implementation of Milestone 6, titled “Browser Based Item Read/Update”.  This is the final milestone to complete the Minimum Viable Product, planned for release in early August.

UMD PACT Website – Continued implementation of a new Drupal based website for UMD PACT (Publishing, Access, and Contract Terms), a subgroup of the University Senate’s University Library Council (ULC).

White House Correspondents (WHCA) Association Pool Reports Archive – Continued work on the Drupal based website for the WHCA Pool Reports Archive.  This archive will initially be populated with current pool reports which are distributed via email and later with older digitized paper pool reports. The content will be stored in our Fedora Content Repository as part of Digital Collections.

Kubernetes – Completed setting up the Kubernetes test cluster as the container orchestration system for our Docker-based applications.  This cluster will run all of our dev, test, quality assurance, sandbox, and pilot applications.  We will begin migrating applications and setting up the production cluster in August.

USMAI (University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions) Library Consortium

The CLAS team responded to 79 Aleph Rx submissions and 21 e-resource requests from across the consortium’s libraries in July.

COVID-19 Support

CLAS continues to be available to respond to your support requests.

Preparing for Reopenings

We continue to work with USMAI libraries as they begin to make their library collections available again. In July, three member libraries reopened access to their collections using curbside pickup or other special procedures. A few other libraries are set up in Aleph TEST and awaiting testing/review before “going live”. Other USMAI libraries who are planning to reopen access to their collections should review “Aleph Configurations for Reopening Scenarios” and put your request in early; reconfiguring Aleph to accomplish your goals does take some time, and you’ll want to do some testing first.

OPAC Redesign for Accessibility (ORA)

Changes for the redesign of the Aleph OPAC were released in the Aleph TEST OPAC on July 21st. The release in the Aleph LIVE OPAC is planned for Thursday, August 13th. The ORA project’s goals are to improve the accessibility of the OPAC and modernize the user interface. More details can be found in the USMAI Member Portal blog post about the project and its release schedule.

Marcive Authority Control Service Implementation

Significant progress was made on the implementation of Marcive’s Authority Control Service in July. CLAS developers modified the programs that extract and load records from/in Aleph. A full extract of records in Aleph was sent to Marcive for processing. We have received back a sample set, which is currently being reviewed by volunteers from USMAI libraries. The review will be completed on August 7th, at which point feedback on any issues will be sent to Marcive. Once Marcive resolved any issues, they will provide a full set of processed records to load in Aleph. From that point on, new records will be sent monthly for processing. The Marcive service will improve the quality of USMAI’s bibliographic records, creating a better discovery experience for patrons of USMAI libraries.

User and Systems Support

About three years ago, USS initiated the installation of sensors throughout McKeldin. The original intent of the sensors was to monitor traffic in the building.  The sensors would also give us a better account of the occupancy. During the last few months of the pandemic, we realized that knowing the occupancy is more important now than ever. In our current climate we wanted to ensure that we are abiding by the occupancy limits in each phase.  A new sensor was installed in an additional location to improve accuracy of accounting for occupancy in the building. 

Conferences, workshops and professional development

David Durden completed a four week session in the ICPSR Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research. David actively participated in two courses and received a grade equivalency for a third. The ICPSR summer program is offered as a methodological compliment to the data services provided by ICPSR. David will use his new skills to further develop data services for the Libraries and advertise one of the significant benefits of UMD’s membership in ICPSR to the campus community.

Note: This year provided a unique opportunity to participate in the Summer Program as all courses and lectures were moved entirely online instead of in-person in Ann Arbor, MI. Additionally, as institutional members of ICPSR, UMD faculty, staff, and students are eligible to register at a significantly discounted rate.

Kate Dohe (in collaboration with Erin Pappas, University of Virginia), virtually delivered “Delay, Distract, Defer: The Saboteur in the Academic Library” as the keynote presentation for the Virginia Libraries Association’s College and Research Libraries Spring Program on August 5th.

Stew of the Month: June, 2020

Welcome to a new issue of Stew of the Month, a monthly blog from Digital Services and Technologies (DST) at the University of Maryland Libraries. This blog provides news and updates from the DST Division. We welcome comments, feedback and ideas for improving our products and services.

Digitization Activities

Historic Maryland Newspapers Project

Newspaper batch review continues for HMNP. In addition, our final batches of microfilm have been sent to our vendor for digitization including two military base titles, the Hammond Gazette (Civil War era from Point Lookout) and Trench and Camp (WWI era from Ft. Meade), as well as the remaining reels of The Republican (from Garrett County). HMNP student assistants, Sarah and Bryanna, continue work on promoting the project on social media and completing the state-wide digitized newspaper survey. Additionally, we expect to receive more batches for review in the coming weeks.

We are currently working on a no-cost extension for the project to provide additional time for production delays and research using undigitized primary resources for the newspaper title essays.

Other Digitization Activities

For the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange Grant, our student assistant, Alexis, continued digital file review from the videos that our vendor was able to process before shutting down for the pandemic, as well as began work on an annotated bibliography for the scholarship portion of the project. Pam worked with John Davis (SCPA) and our contract worker, John Borstel (of the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange) to get him up and running with access to our digital video files for him to begin metadata enhancement. As our vendor has started a phased reopening, we expect to receive our remaining digital files in July.

Two digitization vendors reopened production operations and we received the files for both batches of the FY20 Hebraica project, the FY20 Student Newspaper project, and the FY20 LMS Vinegar Films project. With so many files to review and decreased staffing, Robin Pike had assistants Natalia Grajewski, Amanda Scott, Jane Sonneman, temporarily cease working on the MacKaye DC Punk fanzine project to pivot to these projects with more immediate deadlines. In June, DCMR also teamed up with Preservation and Conservation to assist on the Hebracia quality control, since we received so much at one time, and sampled quality control of audiovisual derivatives Joshua Westgard produced from preservation files in anticipation for the move to Avalon. Pike trained assistants and staff from Preservation in these projects and new formats and worked with Carla Montori to transfer physical books to Preservation staff to complete Hebraica. She also worked with our audiovisual vendor and USS to directly FTP the derivative files to campus to expedite working on the projects without waiting to transfer files from hard drives without a strong home network connection.

Digital  Programs and Initiatives

Archelon Progress Update

The Archelon application for Fedora 4 is nearing completion of the minimum viable product. Testing, development, and refinement is now underway for the last two milestones–batch ingest functionality and browser-based metadata editing. These two features will make it possible for more people to work on common one-off digital collections maintenance tasks, speed up ingest and processing of digital collections, and will be essential to migrating content from our legacy Fedora 2 repository later in 2020-21. We anticipate the project will be complete as expected in late July.

Porter Olsen is currently coordinating the user testing group for browser-based metadata editing, which is expected to continue throughout July. If you are interested in participating as a tester for the project, please email the DPI reflector for more information and to sign up.

Software Development

Releases

ArchivesSpace – Upgraded to ArchivesSpace 2.7.1 along with UI improvements.

Libi Staff Blog – Added new content search feature using Solr.

Under Development

Archelon – Continued implementation of Milestone 5, titled “Batch Import/Export: Binaries”. Began implementation of Milestone 6, titled “Browser Based Item Read/Update”.

CaiaSoft Integration – Caiasoft is a storage management solution that integrates with Aleph, ILLiad, Aeon, and other systems used at UMD. It will replace the homegrown Severn Library database and should improve efficiency related to intake, delivery, etc. Worked on the middleware integration to support sending hold requests, new items, and item updates from Aleph to CaiaSoft.

UMD PACT Website – Continued implementation of a new Drupal based website for UMD PACT (Publishing, Access, and Contract Terms), a subgroup of the University Senate’s University Library Council (ULC).

White House Correspondents (WHCA) Association Pool Reports Archive – Began work on the Drupal based website for the WHCA Pool Reports Archive.  This archive will initially be populated with current pool reports which are distributed via email and later with older digitized paper pool reports. The content will be stored in our Fedora Content Repository as part of Digital Collections.

Hippo CMS – Working on the upgrade to Hippo CMS version 14; somewhat delayed due to Drupal work.

Kubernetes – Began setting up the new test Kubernetes cluster as the container orchestration system for our Docker-based applications.  This cluster will run all of our dev, test, quality assurance, sandbox, and pilot applications.  Once complete we will be migrating applications and also begin setting up the production cluster.

USMAI (University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions) Library Consortium

The CLAS team responded to 69 Aleph Rx submissions and 10 e-resource requests from across the consortium’s libraries in June.

COVID-19 Support

Even though CLAS is working remotely, we continue to be available to respond to your support requests.

Preparing for Reopenings

Much of our support work in June was dedicated to determine how best to configure Aleph to meet the needs of USMAI libraries as they begin to plan various phases of re-enabling access to their physical collections. Basically, we’re asking Aleph to do the opposite of what we set it up to do! This requires a degree of coordination and uniformity to the ways in which Aleph is configured for each library. To that end, we have created a set of standardized statuses that libraries can use as they make their reopening plans. We believe these provide a good deal of flexibility for libraries to accomplish their reopening goals without having unintended consequences for other USMAI libraries.

EZproxy Now in Data Warehouse!

In case you missed it, there is a new reporting topic in the Data Warehouse. The “EZproxy Sessions Snapshot” reporting topic is now available. Read more about this new reporting topic and the reporting environment’s new UI on the Portal blog.

OPAC Redesign for Accessibility is Coming to Aleph TEST

The initial set of changes to improve the OPAC’s accessibility and modernize the user interface are nearing completion. In July we will be working to deploy this in Aleph TEST for staff to review in preparation for updating the Aleph LIVE OPAC.

Marcive Authority Control Service Implementation

Preparations to implement the new authority control service are underway with the majority of the work expected to happen in July and August. Linda Seguin has been working with the Metadata Subgroup to arrange testing/review by the USMAI cataloging community once we receive the backfile of processed records. We expect to send the backfile in mid-July. As part of this project, we will be refreshing the Aleph TEST database.

User and Systems Support

Social Distancing of Library computers on McKeldin Library 1st and 2nd floors

USS staff have been working hard to make our transition back to campus smooth. They have discussed and devised ideas and processes about how to return TLC laptops, assist staff, and re-image our public area machines. Due to the coronavirus’s nature, we realized our public area computers were too close together. The idea of a reservation system is being discussed to limit the time patrons access computers, and some of the public workstations needed to be removed to adhere to the ordinance of a distance of 6ft or more. 

On July 7th, a group of us gathered wearing our PPE at McKeldin to withdraw several machines on the 1st and 2nd floors, while a few of us continued to work from home to ensure we did not miss any helpdesk tickets that came in. The majority vote was to remove a whole row of machines, and on the next row, withdraw every two workstations. The first floor was a simple task, but the Second Floor proved to be more challenging. Since the Second Floor has workstations located throughout the whole floor and the table designs were different, we had to work in sections to complete this task.  While in the office, we also took the opportunity to complete several service requests for our circulation desk team to go into phase 1 and phase 2.

While there, we decided to complete queued Helpdesk tickets in anticipation of re-opening. We worked with ILL to rearrange their space by moving a printer and scanner to another location. We withdrew two microfilm machines and relocated the KIC (book scanning overhead device away from the other KICs. 

Thanks to ILL and RAS for collaborating with us on this project.

Stew of the Month: May, 2020

Welcome to a new issue of Stew of the Month, a monthly blog from Digital Services and Technologies (DST) at the University of Maryland Libraries. This blog provides news and updates from the DST Division. We welcome comments, feedback and ideas for improving our products and services.

Digitization Activities

Historic Maryland Newspapers Project

While we remain teleworking, our priority has been continuing to review and process newspaper batches, and we’ve just received two more batches to review from our vendor. One batch covers the Montgomery County Sentinel and the other is The Republican of Garrett County. We’ve also been working on some collaborative projects with UMD’s Special Collections and University Archives and one of our HMNP partners, the Maryland State Archives. Student assistants, Sarah and Bryanna, have had the opportunity to research Chronicling America to pull Maryland newspaper content related to early voting in America, African American suffrage, and women’s suffrage for an online exhibit Special Collections will feature later this year. We’re also working on a joint social media campaign with the Maryland State Archives and other historical organizations across the state celebrating the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment in August and researching content for this project as well. Stay tuned on our Twitter account @HistoricMDNews!

Hornbake Digitization Center

Digitization Center students Vanessa Barker, Natalia Grajewski, Amanda Scott, and Jane Sonneman continued to make steady progress in prepping the MacKaye Punk Fanzines files for ingest, completing 214 more fanzines.

Other Digitization Activities

Two primary digitization vendors for FY20 mass-digitization project resumed production, at least in a limited capacity, which has allowed us to restart a few stalled projects including the FY20 Student Newspapers, FY20 Library Media Services Vinegar Films, FY20 Hebraica Books, and the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange grant. Robin has been working with the vendors and USS on alternative methods to deliver files so she and DCMR student assistants can review the files remotely.

Alexis Woolford completed reviewing digitized video assets for the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange grant and began doing research and compiling an annotated bibliography to assist with the scholarship that is required in the grant project plan. She has one more batch of video files to review for this project.

Juana Godinez completed transferring the discs she brought home to work on during campus closure. She is now working to edit videos to make the more viewable, learning Adobe Premiere Pro, to better apply it to digitization production once we are back on-campus, and Adobe Audition, to expand her work into audio production.

Working with Cecilia Franck, student assistant on the Greenbelt Archive Project, a project through Digital Data Services, Robin reloaded failed uploads to the Internet Archive. Cecilia downloaded and post-processed born-digital content from 2002-present and began working with digitized content from 1937-1963 that was digitized for the Historic Maryland Newspapers Project, to also prepare it for ingest to the Internet Archive to make the collection complete for Greenbelters. Robin worked with Cecilia to make plans to batch born-digital content for uploads later in the summer, once they could meet to exchange hard drives.

Digital  Programs and Initiatives

“Intro to Python” Workshop in UMD’s Open Catalogue

David Durden and Lealin Queen designed and implemented a new asynchronous Research Commons workshop for UMD’s Open Catalogue – one of the first four online workshops added to the catalogue this spring. The workshop went live in late May 2020 and current registrations already exceed historical in-person workshop attendance!

This interactive workshop introduces Python-specific tools for manipulating, visualizing, and analyzing data using the matplotlib, Pandas, and NumPy libraries. The course materials assume no prior experience and includes a brief introduction to Python syntax, but the content is focused on data analysis.

To accommodate the asynchronous and interactive components of the workshop, all coding activities utilize Jupyter Notebooks powered by Google Colaboratory. Jupyter Notebooks allow for code, results, rich text, visualizations, and images to be presented in a single web environment. However, Jupyter Notebooks require a supporting computing environment which in this case is Google Drive with the Colaboratory integration. To participate in the workshop, attendees save the provided Jupyter Notebook files to their personal or university Google Drive and then launch a cloud computing session directly from Drive.

Avalon Repository Implementation Update

Looking ahead to the production implementation of Avalon Media System, which is a planned upgrade to our streaming media architecture scheduled to begin development in later 2020, Josh Westgard began preparing the data for migration to the new system.  Digital collections currently holds nearly 10,000 time-based media objects that make up some 80 Terabytes of files. Due to the size of the collection it was determined that preservation master files should be housed in AWS Deep Glacier while Access Masters would be ingested into Avalon for streaming access. Josh worked with USS and SSDR to access the preservation master files remotely and transcode the files in the cloud using the open-source ffmpeg tool.

New Additions to DRUM

Eleven projects from the Gemstone Class of 2020 were recently added to DRUM bringing the total to 142. Check out this important research from UMD undergraduates at http://hdl.handle.net/1903/9070.

We also recently created a table of contents/site index for the Archaeology in Annapolis Collection. Under the direction of Dr. Mark Leone, the collection includes archaeological site reports, technical reports, and dissertations produced by the project from over 40 excavations in the area.

252 new users have registered for DRUM since March 11.

Archelon Updates

Archelon has now passed the fourth major milestone in DST’s minimum viable product development roadmap for the application. Stakeholders across the Libraries attended a town hall on June 2nd to see a demo of the latest feature–batch editing item metadata via a CSV file. This makes it possible for a wider array of library users to enhance and correct descriptive information associated with our digital content, which will avoid processing bottlenecks and improve the user experience quickly and responsively.

The final two development milestones are:

• Milestone 5: Batch import and export of binaries associated with digital content
• Milestone 6: Browser-based item metadata editing

The project is on track for a summer completion date.

Software Development

Releases

Archelon MVP Milestone 4 – Batch Import: Metadata. Provides batch import of metadata for repository objects, through uploaded CSV or Turtle files. Begin planning for Milestones 5 and 6.

Under Development

Archelon – Began implementation of Milestone 5, titled “Batch Import/Export: Binaries”. Began planning for Milestone 6, titled “Browser Based Item Read/Update”.

CaiaSoft Integration – Caiasoft is a storage management solution that integrates with Aleph, ILLiad, Aeon, and other systems used at UMD. It will replace the homegrown Severn Library database and should improve efficiency related to intake, delivery, etc. Worked on the middleware integration to support sending hold requests, new items, and item updates from Aleph to CaiaSoft.  

UMD PACT Website – Put on hold the implementation of a new Drupal based website for UMD PACT (Publishing, Access, and Contract Terms), a subgroup of the University Senate’s University Library Council (ULC).

Hippo CMS – Working on the upgrade to Hippo CMS version 14.

Kubernetes – Continued planning and testing for an implementation of Kubernetes as the container orchestration system for our Docker-based applications.  Selected a plain Kubernetes install on RHEL Virtual Machines to implement in our cluster.  We are now making a selection of the backup/recovery strategy before we begin implementing our test cluster.

USMAI (University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions) Library Consortium

The CLAS team responded to 50 Aleph Rx submissions and 36 e-resource requests from across the consortium’s libraries in May.

COVID-19 Support

While the quantity of support requests was slightly lower than is normal for this time of year, the complexity of those requests remain high due to the unique information needs and system configurations during the pandemic. Where possible, we are looking to standardize our solutions so that they can be made available to all USMAI libraries. These will be posted to the Member Portal’s “COVID-19 Continuity of Operations” page as they are developed. In May, CLAS began developing standardized Aleph configurations that USMAI libraries can use as they make their plans to restart physical operations.

EZproxy data is coming to the Data Warehouse!

In May, we began work to load snapshots of EZproxy session counts into the USMAI Data Warehouse. These snapshots were initially put together to assist CLAS in monitoring EZproxy during this period where we expected to (and did!) see increased usage due to remote teaching and learning, but it also has utility in informing individual library’s understanding of usage patterns for off-campus access to e-resources. See the screenshot below for a sneak preview of the type of analysis use can do with this data. We’re working hard to make this available to libraries in June!

Other In-Progress and Upcoming Work

• OPAC Redesign for Accessibility: This work continues behind the scenes. We hope to have this ready for USMAI libraries to review in Aleph TEST in July.
• Aleph Rx Migration: Aleph Rx needs to be moved to a new, more up-to-date server. We’ve moved our development and stage environments with plans for production in the works. Aside from some brief downtime, this migration should be seamless for staff at USMAI libraries.
• Marcive Authority Control Services Implementation: With procurement complete, we have begun planning the implementation of this service.
• Docker Training: DST is working on an initiative to incorporate Docker into our toolset for managing application development. CLAS developers Tiffany and Nima are leading the CLAS team’s entry into this brave new world and have begun strengthening their familiarity with Docker.

Staffing

Congratulations to DCMR students Vanessa Barker, Natalia Grajewski, Liz Holdzkom, and Amanda Scott for graduating! Also, congratulations to Liz for receiving a full-time contract position for the National Agriculture Library, especially in a pandemic!

Conferences, workshops and professional development

Josh Westgard, Kate Dohe, and Joseph Koivisto attended the virtual APTrust Community Meeting on May 28-29.

 

Stew of the month: April 2020

Welcome to a new issue of Stew of the Month, a monthly blog from Digital Services and Technologies (DST) at the University of Maryland Libraries. This blog provides news and updates from the DST Division. We welcome comments, feedback and ideas for improving our products and services.

Digitization Activities

Historic Maryland Newspapers Project

HMNP continues to work on newspaper batches remotely. We’re currently reviewing digital files for our print newspapers – Maryland Suffrage News and Greenbelt Cooperator. Up next, we’ll be looking at some of our foreign language titles including papers in German and Italian. Our student assistants, Sarah and Bryanna, continue to work on promoting the project on social media and completing the state digitized newspaper survey for the grant project.

Hornbake Digitization Center

Digitization Assistants Vanessa Barker, Natalia Grajewski, Amanda Scott, and Jane Sonneman continue to review and create derivative files for the Ian MacKaye fanzine project for Special Collections in Performing Arts. They have completed 205 of 613 fanzines.

Other Digitization Activities

Assistant Alexis Woolford continued the review of files produced for the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange digitization project, a project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. She has nearly completed her review of the first two batches of video files.  The second batch has had some quite unusual artifacts, in addition to the typical temporary tracking problems, or audio or video dropouts due to degradation. Both Robin Pike and Juana Godinez have had to assess issues to determine whether the issues were inherent from creation or degradation or were an artifact of the digitization process; so far all issues are inherent.

Assistant Liz Holdzkom has completed her review of the rework of the FY19 Diamondback project and has progressed to performing fixes in the XML files, correcting misspelled important words in the OCR of titles or mislabeled page numbers in the metadata.

Assistant Cecilia Franck has been making steady progress downloading and post-processing born-digital files of the Greenbelt News Review in a cooperative project with the Greenbelt Archive Project. They have prepared files and metadata from 2002-2019, noting when the PDFs need to have additional pages scanned from the print and which ones are complete, and have begun work preparing PDFs for previously-digitized early issues. All files will be loaded to the Internet Archive.

Juana Godinez continued to copy and make derivatives for files previously created on-demand for Films@UM. She has also been learning Premiere Pro and experimenting with editing some of the footage to make it more watchable for patrons, which will come in handy when we’re able to set up a refreshed video digitization station.

Robin Pike has been working on project administration and planning for current and future projects. She has updated DCMR’s Libi page with information concerning digitization production and an updated work plan. Please watch those spaces as there are developments in the opening of services in the Libraries.

Digital  Programs and Initiatives

Software Development

Under Development

Archelon – continued implementation of MVP Milestone 4 – Batch Import: Metadata. Provides batch import of metadata for repository objects, through uploaded CSV or Turtle files. Begin planning for Milestones 5 and 6.

UMD PACT Website – Begin implementation of a new Drupal based website for UMD PACT (Publishing, Access, and Contract Terms), a subgroup of the University Senate’s University Library Council (ULC).

Continued planning and testing for an implementation of Kubernetes as the container orchestration system for our Docker-based applications.

USMAI (University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions) Library Consortium

The CLAS team responded to 69 Aleph Rx submissions and 52 e-resource requests from across the consortium’s libraries in April.

COVID-19 Support

Changes in USMAI member libraries’ operations has led to a “rebalancing” of the types of requests that CLAS receives.

E-resource Support

As the ticket counts above indicate, e-resource requests have increased dramatically since mid-March as libraries attempt to maximize the resources available to their users remotely. Many thanks go to Ingrid as our point-person for e-resources requests for supporting the increased demand with her usual highly-responsive turnaround time and diligent accuracy. We have expanded our coverage so that additional staff can respond to e-resource requests.

Aleph Support

While Aleph Rx submissions have decreased from their typical levels, the types of requests have changed, with an increase in “non-standard” requests, as libraries look for data and configuration changes that will support their new modes of operation and plans for the months ahead. Requests for reports with patron data have increased as libraries look to get in touch with their users and better understand the status of items in their collections. We will continue to update the Portal’s “COVID-19 Continuity of Operations” page as new reports and configuration procedures are developed.

User and Systems Support

We have been discussing ways to streamline installing and updating approved software on library employees’ assigned computers. The usual way is to have a technician remote into their computers to install or upgrade the requested software, or to request limited admin rights for a period of time.

During the pandemic, we decided to fast track the testing of various software for this purpose to see which one will work best for our environment.  

We tested a new administrator management software called Admin by Request. Admin by Request gives library staff the ability to request permission to install or update the software on the library owned devices they are using without having to send an email or call the helpdesk physically. When the user is ready to install software, they will proceed as usual. Once it gets to the point of where admin access is needed, Admin by request will pop up on the client computer and ask for some more information about what the user wants to do and contact info. Once the staff completes the pop-up, a service request will be created, and a technician will receive an alert to permit the user to install the software. After reviewing the request, a technician can approve or deny the request. Once the request is approved, the staff can proceed with updating or installation of the new software.  For example, if a user is trying to install BoxSync on their computer but needs admin rights. With Admin By Request, it will notify DST Helpdesk that the user needs to install BoxSync, and a technician will approve the request faster than remoting into the user’s computer. Once the request is approved, the user will have 15mins from the time of approval to install the software.

The major benefit of Admin by Request is that it allows for fast response to staff requests for software updates or install. It also gives the technical group the ability to see what needs to be updated and the kinds of software library staff are requesting.

If we notice that a particular software has been requested by many staff, we can easily deploy it to everyone using a different tool. We can also add the software to the approved software list, so in the future, if a Library staff wants to install that particular software, they will not need to ask for admin rights to install it. All of these functions are performed through the management website for Admin by Request.  

Admin by Request eliminates the need for technicians to remote into devices and gives users the autonomy to install and update software.