Welcome to a new issue of Stew of the Month, a monthly blog from the Digital Services and Technologies (DST) division at the University of Maryland Libraries. This blog provides news and updates from DST. We welcome comments, feedback, and ideas for improving our products and services.
Digital Collections
Historic Maryland Newspapers Project
The Historic Maryland Newspapers Project continues work on Phase 5 of the grant. We have received the digital files from our content partner, Salisbury University, for work on three families of titles from Maryland’s Eastern Shore. HMNP Assistants Alexis Woolford and Bridget Jamison are organizing these files and continuing copyright research on all of the Phase 5 newspaper titles. Find us on social media @HistoricMdNews and check out our instagram post from National Taffy Day!
Digitization Activities
The Hornbake Digitization Center (HDC) continues to work on an AV inventory. The purpose of this project is to inventory, assess, repair, and deaccession equipment. Charlotte Conant, Dan Isaacson, Ethan Lewis, Gabrielle Puglisi, and Alex Trim are currently wrapping up inventorying and labeling all the equipment.
Digital Programs and Initiatives
Advancing Workers’ Rights
DPI’s Kee-Young Moon and Joshua Westgard collaborated with developers from SSDR to scope out several improvements and new features for the Archelon repository (materials in this system are available publicly at digital.lib.umd.edu). These improvements are required for our partnership in the Advancing Workers’ Rights digitization project. The project’s main deliverable is a collection of historical records relating to issues of race and labor in the 20th century. This collection needs to be harvestable by the Digital Library of Georgia, which is serving as the host of a unified project collection, drawing on the materials held by the project partners in their local repositories. In order to create this unified collection, DLG will use the Open Archives Initiative, Protocol for Metadata Harvesting, or OAI-PMH, to scan the contributing repositories for relevant materials, and create a search interface for users. DPI is leading an effort to implement an OAI-PMH endpoint. In addition, we are adding support for handle identifiers (a form of “permalink”, i.e. a URI that serves as a permanent redirect to a web resource, even if that resource moves to a new home on the web), and for publicly downloadable file resources attached to repository objects (up until now, we only had direct download in our staff-facing interface, such that all downloads had to be mediated by Libraries’ staff). While we are implementing these improvements for the project, the features themselves will be useful for all collections in our repository. These improvements are scheduled to be in place before the end of the summer when this newly digitized collection will be made available to researchers worldwide.
Digital Collections Public Interface
Amy Swackhamer is working in parallel on another piece of the Digital Collections puzzle, namely the migration of the public interface from the Hippo/Bloomreach platform into Drupal, which is now the main Libraries’ website CMS. While on the surface the public interface is relatively simple, the wide variety of content types and metadata profiles for the various collections housed in our digital platform complicate the process of creating a unified and sustainable interface. This new version of the public interface will also support the download of PDF versions of folders of documents scanned for the Advancing Workers’ Rights project described above, and the new search results lists will include thumbnails.
White House Correspondents’ Association Pool Reports
June also saw the rollout rollout of a revised website for the WHCA Pool Reports collection. Amy Swackhamer led the rollout, collaborating with developer Jeremy Gottwig from SSDR, and working with the subject specialist project lead, who developed the content for the site. The new website replaces the “demonstration” site that was created to support the initial launch of the collection, and offers a number of new features, including a news feed, feature stories and reporter profiles, as well as an additional three months of pool report emails covering the tumultuous period from November 2020 to January 2021.
IT & Facilities Operations
The DST and Facilities Helpdesk receive quite a few requests each month. Below are the number of opened and closed service requests our group received during April 2023.
- Helpdesk: 413 opened, 412 closed
- Facilities: 87 opened, 76 closed
Software Systems and Development
Releases
DRUM – Upgraded to DSpace 7.
Systems – Updated the test vSphere/ESX cluster boot drives; put a hold on the production cluster due to missing RAID controllers for boot drive fault tolerance.
Digital Collections – Updated the Preservation Asset Tracking System (PATSy) database; this completes the initial round of improvements for the Drive to Dx strategic plan action item.
Under Development
Websites – Began laying the groundwork for upgrading to Drupal 10 for all Drupal websites.
Digital Collections – Began work on an OAI-PMH server implementation for metadata harvesting for Archelon.
Digital Collections – Began work on Plastron batch loader updates for Archelon in support of a handle persistence service and content for the Advancing Workers’ Rights project.
Digital Collections – Continued work on the new website implementation in Drupal.
Digital Collections – Contract Research Developer continuing to improve workflows for WHCA Pool Reports Collection in areas such as a) pool report capture and preservation, b) automated selection of pool reports from the email stream, c) automated redaction of sensitive information, d) manual review and update of the selected pool reports, e) automated metadata extraction, and f) improved web archiving of email pool reports.
MD-SOAR – Began upgrade to DSpace 7
Systems – Adding RAID controllers for vSphere/ESX cluster for boot drive fault tolerance.
USMAI (University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions) Library Consortium
3rd-Party Integration Discussions Started – The Core Project Team and USMAI staff met with Ex Libris Onboarding staff to begin our inquiry into what 3rd-party integrations will be completed during our migration. After we review the full list, we will add the required and desired integrations to our plan of work for completion next year.
USMAI Staff attended ELUNA – In early May, Andrew Pace and MD Galvin attended the Ex Libris Users of North America (ELUNA) conference in unseasonably cold Los Angeles. Luckily all the sessions were inside and were to connect with other consortia who have recently migrated to Alma / Primo. We were especially pleased to meet up with those local colleagues in the Washington Research Library Consortium and VIVA, Virginia’s Academic Library Consortium.
Personnel News
Cara Decusatis, DPI Graduate Assistant, successfully defended her thesis, entitled “Stable Science and Fickle Bodies: An Examination of Trust and the Construction of Expertise on R/SkincareAddiction,” in the iSchool’s Master of Human Computer Interaction program on June 6th! Congratulations, Cara!
Congratulations to Hornbake Digitization Assistant, Ethan Lewis on graduating with his MLIS from the UMD iSchool! And we say goodbye to Hornbake Digitization Assistant, Gabrielle Puglisi who completed her work with us this month and wish her the best of luck going forward! Thank you to Gabby and Ethan for all of your work in HDC!
We’re Hiring!
Recruitment has just opened for a Project Manager for IT & Facilities Operations. Come help us execute our vision for vibrant, technology-rich learning spaces in our libraries! Best consideration date is Wednesday, July 5, 2023.
Welcome!
DST is pleased to welcome the following individuals to the Libraries:
- Sherifat (Shola) Bakare began a new role as Desktop Support Technician on May 4th. Shola has worked with the USS team for several years, and we’re thrilled for that to continue in this new role!
- Napoleon Rumingan started as IT Lead Engineer on May 8th. Napoleon had previously worked for the Libraries as a Senior Desktop Technician. Welcome back!
- Javate Joseph started as Facilities Coordinator on May 15th. As evidenced by the number of facilities requests received every month, Javate’s previous facilities experience has been a welcome addition!
Conferences and Presentations
Kee-Young Moon delivered a presentation, “Navigating the world of UMD Digital Collections through a Campus Map,” at the 2023 Libraries’ Research and Innovative Practice Forum, a two-day, internal conference featuring posters, lightning talks, and presentations showcasing some of the innovative work being undertaken by faculty and staff of UMD Libraries. You can take a virtual tour through the history of the UMD Campus via her “UMD Campus History Map” project website.
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