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.
DST Leadership News
In March, David Dahl was appointed Associate Dean for Digital Services and Technologies. David had been serving as Interim Associate Dean since May 2021 and joined the Libraries in 2015 as Director of Consortial Library Applications Support. Says David, “I am thrilled and honored to have the opportunity to work with the talented individuals in DST as we work to expand and enhance the library experience for UMD researchers and learners.”
Historic Maryland Newspapers Project
The Historic Maryland Newspapers Project’s fifth grant phase continues with several batches in process with our vendor and Project Manager, Pam coordinating with the Library of Congress on some rework issues. Student Assistants, Alexis and Bridget, along with new DCMR student assistant, Brendan Reicherter began content research on the newspapers selected for this phase to be used for the title essays that will go onto the Chronicling America website. Information about the publisher, editor, city of publication, types of news stories covered by the paper and the audience is helpful to share with users. Here is an example of a title view in Chronicling America with an accompanying title essay for the Montgomery County sentinel published in Rockville. The students continued with metadata collation for the Jewish Times as well.
This month’s, National Digital Newspaper Program #ChronAmParty on Twitter highlighted #fashionplates from the newspapers. See more Maryland history on our social media platforms @HistoricMDNews!
Digitization Activities
Digitization continues for the CLIR AFL-CIO “Advancing Workers Rights in the American South” grant project UMD Libraries is collaborating on with Georgia State University. Pam continues to coordinate with colleagues in Special Collections as well as our two vendors to ensure the prioritized materials are captured in this project. The digitized video files have been received from the vendor, and new DCMR Student Assistant, Brendan has completed his training and done the QR for these files. The vendor has completed approximately 23,000 pages of the manuscript materials and will be sending a first batch of digital files for review early next month.
In the Hornbake Digitization Center, Digitization Assistants Charlotte, Dan, Ethan, Gabrielle, and Jordan continue to scan the Ian MacKaye Fanzine collection. They have finished (digitizing, post-processing, and qc’ing) two boxes of materials. Jordan and Dan are working on finishing the last box, they have less than 50 folders left. Digitization Assistant Brianna continues to conduct post-processing on the remaining box.
Charlotte, Gabrielle, and Alex continue to work on digitizing materials for the Rising Up Exhibit which will be put up later this year. Brianna, Charlotte, Ethan, and Alex completed the last of the re-digitization of the Mayo Oral History collection. We are currently working to update metadata for this collection. Once we have done so, we will begin loading to Avalon. Charlotte, Gabrielle, and Alex downloaded an additional 115 files from Sharestream for the Avalon migration.
Digital Programs and Initiatives
Avalon Migration Project Update
DPI is entering the final stages of the Avalon migration project, with work happening on many fronts.
- Josh Westgard and SSDR are coordinating closely to transcode and stage in Avalon 10,600 audiovisual items that are currently accessed through Fedora 2. This is a resource-intensive activity that requires active monitoring, rapid troubleshooting, and collaborative problem-solving across the entire technical implementation team. We anticipate this work will be completed in a few weeks.
- DPI GA Cara DeCusatis has been working with curators to provide 1:1 instruction on Avalon as part of the final preparation for launch. If you’re a member of the curatorial team and would like to schedule a session with her, please do reach out!
- Cara and Kate Dohe have also been transitioning Hornbake Digitization Center personnel into Avalon, supporting workflow development, coordination across partnering work groups, collecting feedback and providing any additional training and documentation. We anticipate initial content loaded by HDC personnel will be ready to publish soon!
PSA About Digital Collections Links!
Do you or your patrons link to content in UMD’s Digital Collections from LibGuides, web pages, Canvas modules, or other resources? Please ensure you are using the handle provided in the item record, rather than a direct URL (for example, something that looks like digital.lib.umd.edu/PIDNumber is a direct URL; something that looks like hdl.handle.net/prefix/suffix is a handle). Handles are a persistent URI service similar to DOIs, and we use the service to ensure long-term access to content in our digital repositories.
Using handles is always a best practice, and extra important ahead of the Avalon migration–once we fully migrate and publish A/V materials, the handles will automatically send users to the item in Avalon, with no additional work on your side. Links that use the legacy direct URL will not work as expected once the migration is complete. Please reach out to DPI if you or your patrons need any assistance with finding a digital collection item’s handle, or have questions about updating links in your content–we’d be happy to help.
Software Development
Releases
Grouper – SSDR has been using the campus Grouper instance to help centralize group management for multiple applications. Operationalize the use of Grouper for broader usage in the Libraries, especially within DST. Completed setup of Grouper administrators and documentation, conducted Grouper administrator training, and setup USS HelpDesk to maintain Drupal Website roles.
Kubernetes – Completed migration of Archelon into the Kubernetes cluster.
Under Development
Website Redesign Project – Continued work on theme and functionality enhancements for the new Drupal site; Continue work on a Drupal implementation of Bento Search All interface.
Avalon – Continued to support preparation of data for ingest into Avalon and tuning the ingest workload.
DRUM – Began work on upgrading to DSpace 7.
Workstation Tracking – Began work on migrating this application from the Grails platform to Ruby on Rails.
Kubernetes – Begin working with USS on upgrade to Kubernetes version 1.23.
USMAI (University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions) Library Consortium
The CLAS team responded to 90 service requests from across the consortium’s libraries in April.
Support Highlights
The following are a few highlights from our recent support activities:
CLAS continues to be available to respond to your support requests.
ILS Migration Project
CLAS continued to support USMAI’s pre-selection data cleanup activities. Linda Seguin held Drop-in Office Hours on most Thursdays. While those office hours are ending, appointments can still be made to consult on data cleanup activities. See the Pre-Selection Data Cleanup Priorities Portal page for details.
Select CLAS team members continue to participate in the evaluation of proposals received through the RFP process.
Data Warehouse
Reporting Environment Upgrade and Migration
A major version upgrade, and migration to Kubernetes, of the DW Reporting Environment (a.k.a. “Jaspersoft”) was completed on April 12th. A few adjustments were made to the applications resource allocations after the upgrade, and the system is now stable and ready to run your reports!
User Systems and Support
Patch Manager Plus
Over the years, we’ve managed the patching of our computers and servers. In December 2021, we researched a more sophisticated application to do patching. We began to test Patch Manager Plus on the Libraries’ computers. Patch Manager Plus comes with a dashboard that offers a simplified view of what systems need patching, outdated applications, and critical patches required. It gives you a birds-eye view of patches that are needed and systems that have been successfully patched.
Patch Manager Plus was implemented on May 3rd, 2022 on all staff computers. This week, we received an email warning from campus IT security advising that all systems and servers are updated continually to ward off vulnerabilities and attacks. After receiving the email, it reinforced our duty to deploy Patch Manager Plus to all Library systems.
Patch Manager Plus, an all-around patching solution, offers automated patch deployment for Windows, macOS, and Linux endpoints and patching support for 950+ third-party updates across 850+ third-party applications.
We use the On-Prem solution, meaning that the Patch Manager Plus will be installed on our server in our data center, and all data will be on our server only. We intend to use the product to help us patch Operating Systems and third-party apps on Windows and macOS computers. Some third-party apps include Adobe Acrobat DC, Google Chrome, Java, Microsoft Office, Zoom, and many more. Not only will it patch operating systems and applications it will also detect missing patches on computers. It allows peace of mind knowing that our systems are updated and in compliance. Since we started using the software last week, we have installed over 323 patches to date and we are working to have all systems that are not fully patched up to date as soon as possible.
LastPass
At the beginning of this year, University of Maryland College Park campus faculty, staff, and students were required to take the security training “Defend Your Shell.” USS researched many applications and tools to safely manage passwords during this period. At the end of our research, we found that LastPass is the best option to safeguard passwords against vulnerabilities.
LastPass is a password management tool – it simplifies your online life by remembering your passwords. Using LastPass to manage your logins, it’s easy to have a solid and unique password for every online account and improve your online security posture.
With LastPass, you no longer have to use the same password for various sites or accounts. You no longer have to write down passwords on little pieces of paper. Instead, LastPass can create and manage passwords for you. You also no longer have to store passwords in your browser. In addition, LastPass uses the same encryption algorithm that the U.S. Government uses for top-secret data. As a result, your encrypted data is unreadable to LastPass and everyone else without the Master Password.
If University of Maryland College Park Libraries staff and faculty are interested in LastPass, please send an email to lib-helpdesk@umd.edu.
Staffing
In April, DCMR welcomed iSchool student, Brendan Reicherter (MLIS candidate) to assist with digitization projects for the department.
Conferences and Presentations
Ben Bradley presented two sessions at the Maryland Library Association in Cambridge, MD May 4-6th. They are:
- Bradley, Benjamin. (May 2022). Linked, Controlled Folksonomy as Reparative Taxonomy. Presentation given at the MLA/DLA 2022 conference. Cambridge, MD. http://hdl.handle.net/1903/28607
- Bradley, Benjamin. (May, 2022). Reevaluating the University of Maryland’s Urban Information Specialist Program. Presentation given at the MLA/DLA 2022 conference. Cambridge, MD. http://hdl.handle.net/1903/28601.
Kate Dohe presented a lightning talk titled “Burn Your Trello Boards” at the virtual Conference on Academic Library Management on April 26th. The recording of the talk is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ED8LwUwqEHc
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