Project Update, January 14, 2021

The project officially began with a kickoff meeting between the discovery garden team and the UConn project team on January 12, 2022.

Project Update, December 1, 2021

We continue to wait for UConn’s purchasing and contracts unit to give final approval to begin work. 

Project Update, November 1, 2021

Our project timeline is on hold while we wait for UConn's purchasing and contracts department to give the final OK to the contract with discoverygarden to implement the system migration.

Project Update, October 1, 2021

We have created a spreadsheet to connect items mentioned in the Final System Analysis Report from dgi to features and activities we are all used to doing in the current CTDA system. Like many spreadsheets it can be hard to read in its current PDF form. But we wanted to get something out there in case people had questions. 

The spreadsheet has a column called "WBS Item" which links the feature on the left with the Item in the Work Breakdown Structure of the Final System Analysis report received from dgi.   If the WBS column says "Core" that means there is no specific WBS activity for this feature, it is part of the standard installation. Another column labeled "Parity or New Feature" explains the nature of the feature and if it is enhancing old i7 feature, or is new to the system altogether. 

Project Update, September 10, 2021

The final analysis report from discoverygarden was approved by the CTDA in the first week of September. This report is now available.  The report is filled with technical language and jargon. We will produce an executive summary of the report written in non technical language in the coming days. 

The Ultra-condensed version is that we are focusing on "feature parity" as a first step for the new system. That means that we are going to ensure that everything you can do now in the CTDA you will be able to do in the new system. This is more difficult than it may seem since the underlying method of data management is much different from how the system currently manages data internally. 

Because of the amount of work we did developing the assessment report and roadmap. We can move directly to implementation, saving months of analysis and planning time. 

The Project

The CTDA is embarking on a major upgrade to its infrastructure to bring you better service and more features. Our current Islandora 7 system was originally installed in 2011 and runs on three core open-source tools: Islandora version 7, Drupal version 7, and FedoraCommons version 3.6. All three of these systems will be discontinued in 2022. We started planning last Summer to migrate to more up-to-date versions of these software applications and wanted to report our progress to date and solicit feedback in some areas.

Current Technology

First, we will be expanding the technology architecture of the CTDA system. The current system, implemented in 2018, was scaled for approximately 50TB and 1.5 million objects. The current CTDA has over two million objects, and we have all been aware of slowdowns in the system, especially in derivative generation on the back end. The new infrastructure will be scaled for a Petabyte-sized system with millions of objects and will have the ability to automatically balance the load of system resources based on demand. We should see significant improvements in system performance and continued good performance as the system grows. We will be working with UConn ITS to implement the new technology infrastructure.

Migration Roadmap

Next, we worked with our software support vendor discoverygarden (dgi) to analyze the current system and create roadmap for migration to the new system that preserves a “one to one” feature set between the two. That is, all current features available in the CTDA will be available in the new system. Some of these features may work a bit differently behind the scenes, and there will be some changes in how certain things are done in the new system. We will develop training programs and documentation in the Resource Center to smooth the transition. Islandora 8 (as it is called) also comes with a host of new features already built-in. 

A few of the new features that are standard in Islandora 8 include:

• A Taxonomy feature that will make metadata management easier, faster, and more responsive.

• A redesigned management interface which will make content management easier to understand. This new interface uses a “common sense” approach to content management without the need to understand obscure things like “RelsExt” datastream terminology and syntax.

• A new “universal media viewer” that supports all types of multi-object content, including books, newspapers, and compound objects in a streamlined interface

• A browser-based, user friendly “batch update” tool, that will allow you to make metadata updates to multiple files at once.

New CTDA Features

Finally, we want to take this opportunity to implement new features in the system to enhance the user and content manager experience. While we have many ideas of our own, we want to hear from you. We’ve created a Islandora 8 wishlist channel in CTDA Slack for you to contribute your wishes. And since this is a “wish” list, don’t worry about how we might do what you are asking, or what it would cost. We just want to hear about it. We hope that this wish list will spark conversation among the membership about what you want to CTDA to become.

Project Timeline Overview
(January 2022)

The project officially began on January 12, 2022 with a kickoff meeting between representatives from discovery garden and the UConn project team. The following list is an high-level overview of the activities in each phase with the approximate date of completion for each phase:

The project will proceed through five phases:

• Implementation Planning (February 1)

  • Finalize the activities of the other planning phases

• Infrastructure and Installation (March 15)

  • Deploy a “sandbox” environment on UConn servers

  • Configure hardware infrastructure with UITS

  • Install Islandora framework and stack components

  • Meet Core Trust Seal requirements

• Presentation Layer Configuration (March 15)

  • Member collection branding

  • Collection limited search

  • Collection search in page header

  • Representative object view configuration

  • Member item branding

  • Paginated item display with interaction

  • Newspaper display and interaction

  • Iterative refinement and theme completion

• Functional management Configuration (July 15)

  • Permissions and access: Groups

  • Media versioning

  • Checksum features

  • Taxonomy updates

  • Content type updates

  • Spreadsheet ingest updates

  • Ingest channel: Eregs

  • Ingest channel: CHS, TMS

  • Ingest channel: Koha

  • Handle service

  • Multipage CVS ingest rows

  • Watermarking (limited)

  • Manuscript content support

  • Bulk application of embargoes

  • Extracted text hit highlighting for paged content

  • IIIF/embedded frames in external web sites (added 1/22)

• Migration (August 23)

  • Migrate I7 repository object metadata and files to new system

  • Maintain fidelity of metadata, digital files, and object relationships

  • Create taxonomies

  • Remap Handles for all repository items

  • Retire outdated domain names

System tuning and testing will begin in late August. After an ingest freeze in September, and transfer of last updated content in October the system is expected to go “live” in November 2022 The new system and the old system (with no updates) will run in parallel for a short time to be determined. Final retirement of the I7 system is expected no later than December 31, 2022.