Information Technology

Discovery

In the past quarter, we split our time between a few tasks:

• implementing the dynamic javacript user interface framework, Vue
• Developing the Explore, Focus, and Detail user interfaces
• testing and revising the indexing, particularly focusing on the bibliography records from Sierra
• improving the performance and accuracy of the systems harvesting

For the next quarter we aim to broaden scope of testing within libraries, continuing to revise functionality, indexing & display based on feedback. Our goal is to move into live testing phase, which includes a ‘Beta’ tab in the last position of the libraries page search towards the end of the year.

Website Redesign

We have been moving forward with developing Element Collages, Style Tiles and have been meeting with our Design Advisory Group to help get different viewpoints on our designs. We’ve been further developing the Drupal infrastructure, developing navigation elements including some optional cross-listing elements and getting ready to start moving content from the old system to the new.

For the coming quarter, we are going to finish minimal design and functionality requirements so that we can begin migrating content to new system and making it the information of record (publish). We’re going to refine functionality and design, including people, locations, units & groups. We will also begin implementing design elements into a few new-work projects as they get close to launching.

Digital Collections

We have been implementing the next generation of image functionality in the DC, IIIF Image Manifests and JPEG 2000 support. We are pre-loading the production data now so that we can have it be useable as soon as we deploy.

For the next quarter we’ll be gathering requirements, identifying any changes and begin upgrade of system to newer versions of software – This upgrade project will persist into first quarter 2018.

Rooms Reservation

For the first part of the quarter were able to greatly increase the speed of the existing Study Room Reservation System. The rest of the quarter we worked on an improved user interface, ReRooms, which we are targeting for launch the end of Autumn Semester. So far, we’ve implemented a much better calendar display, URL query parameters, and some natural language processing wizardry. Stay tuned for more details.

Other Projects

For next quarter:

• Develop, Configure and Deploy Room Schedule Display project
• Technical and design aspects of an Admiral Byrd digital exhibit
• Continue migration of legacy digital projects to new hosting

We are very happy to launch the Digital Collections (DC) website at Noon, November 16, 2016.  Visitors to the Image Collections systems will be redirected to the Digital Collections system.  This includes the handles for those items that have them.  The system is ready for viewing, editing, uploading, enjoying. We think that this update will bring improved reliability and some functional improvements that will continue our journey to promote our distinctive collections to our patrons.

What to Expect
We have added Unit information for lists of items that are faceted to that Unit. For example, when you are looking at the Theatre Research Institute‘s works, there will be a prominent display of their information.
We are able to upload pretty much anything that is a computer file, however some file types have special display properties:

• Images will be streamed at a resolution depending on their Rights statement — lower resolution for items believed to be in copyright, higher for those believed to be freely available. None are available for public download and watermarks have been removed.
• All other file types are available for download based on their Public/Ohio State/Private status. This includes audio, video, pdf, word, excel, pretty much anything non-image.
• Audio and video files will have a viewer that allows the user to view the file in their browser.  It isn’t streaming, so a gigantic file will still take a long time to resolve.
• We will be able to upload simple-complex objects.  Stay with me here… Works that have multiple files associated with them (complex) in which the order doesn’t matter(simple).  E.g. the scanned images of the front and back of a postcard, but not the ordered scans of the pages of a book.

Feedback Button
We’ve included a feedback button to make it easy for folks to let us know what we are getting right and what they’d like to see more (or less) of. Please feel free to use it and let us know. If we get collection-related feedback, we’ll be sure to pass that along to curators.

Thanks
This has been a big project for practically everyone involved. Thanks to our development team, our operations team, our partners and stakeholders, and all of our sponsors.  We appreciate the time, effort, interest, and feedback that everyone has provided us over the past several months. We’re looking forward to this being a great tool for the organization.