In conjunction with our digitization efforts, Robertson Library is developing a number of innovative software applications for creating and distributing digital collections. All our development efforts use open source tools, with a few notable exceptions. Whenever possible we make our code available to the larger community and are happy to collaborate with others in the development of tools that can benefit a larger community.

Open Source Projects

• Islandora is our primary open source application and is the foundation of most of our work. Islandora combines Drupal (a content management system) with Fedora (a repository management system) to create a highly scalable and functional digital library system. The system includes a custom Drupal module, special servlets for authentication and workflow management as well as numerous scripts and data manipulation programs. The Islandora project is currently hosted via the Fedora Commons website and will be releasing a number of upgraded and addtional modules throughout 2009.
• The Islandora foundation will be ported to a Moodle block in 2009, providing a flexible learning object repository for integration with this increasingly common learning management system.

Development Team

The development team consists of a number of fulltime and contract staff. In addition to the core team members listed below, most of the Robertson Library staff contribute in various ways to the ongoing development of our tools and collections.

• Mark Leggott (University Librarian)
• Melissa Belvadi (Emerging Technologies and Metadata Librarian)
• Dawn Hooper (Data and Research Librarian)
• Simon Lloyd (Special Collections Librarian and University Archivist)
• Paul Pound (Lead Programmer)
• Grant Johnson (Systems Manager)
• Jerrad Gilbert (Systems Support)
• Chris Bulman (Digitization Technician)
• Alexander O'Neill (Programmer)
• Donald Moses (IslandLives Project Coordinator)

Partners

• The Robertson Library systems team has worked with students from the
  Department of Computer Science and Information Technology on the
  development of additional components. For example, the 2007-08 class
  created the Islandora Rule Engine (IRE) that facilitates the
  integration of external applications with the Islandora system. IRE is
  a server-side library that lets a javascript script access and modify
  objects in a Fedora collection. The 2008-09 class is working ona series
  of components linked to the IslandLives project, most having to do with
  TEI mark-up, including a web-based editor for tagging/annotating
  content.
• The Robertson Library is also in active discussion
  with a couple of academic institutions regarding a collaborative
  approach to the islandora and related code.

If you would like to learn more about our open source efforts, or would like to consider colalborating with us on code development, please contact Mark Leggott (902-566-0460, mleggott@upei.ca).