DRC Replacement Project

Project goal: Migrate existing DRC content from old DSpace application and shutdown the old platform

Scope:

• Develop a new repository application that can support the current DRC content
• Deploy new application to hosting environment
• Clean up and migrate existing DRC content to new platform
• Sunset the old DSpace platform

Project history:

• March 2020: Task force charged in March 2020
• 2020: Planning, metadata work, and initial application developed
• January - Feb 2021: development sprints
• March - December 2021: pause and regroup

Tentative timeline:

• January 2022: Project restart
• February - May 2022: Develop software
• Summer 2022: Migrate DRC content to new application
• August 2022: Sunset old DRC platform

Current (obsolete) DSpace platform

DRC:

• https://drc.libraries.uc.edu
• Moved from OhioLINK to UC in 2014
• DSpace 1.8.2 (released 2/24/2012)
• Images, audio, PDFs, etc.
• Over 600,000 items
• ~60 collections
• ~9 terabytes of content
• Cincinnati Birth and Death Records: 530,517 items

Reasons for migrating away from current DRC platform:

• DSpace software is old and highly customized - cannot be upgraded
• DSpace software is vulnerable to security issues
• Several features are broken and cannot easily be fixed (image viewer, OAI export, etc.)
• IT@UC is unable to continue supporting the Oracle database
• Interface is outdated

New Samvera platform

New application

• A Samvera-based Hyrax application
• Same underlying application as Scholar@UC

Major features required to support DRC content:

• Handles (preserve the current perma-links)
• Metadata field management (using Allinson Flex)
• GUI-based ingest/export (using Bulkrax)
• Batch editing (round tripping)
• Limiting works to a single collection
• enhanced search and browse
• archival master support
• OAI-PMH

Links and resources

Development:

• Project kanban board
• Issues (features, bugs, etc.)
• Sprints
• Sandbox application (coming soon)

Terminology:

• DSpace: open source digital repository application
  • bitstream: a single file
  • item: group of files related by common metadata
  • collection: a group of related items
  • community: a group of collections or sub-communities
• Samvera: community for developing open source frameworks and solutions for digital collections
  • Hyrax: digital repository engine based on the Samvera framework
  • fileset: a single file and it's technical metadata
  • work: group of files related by common metadata
  • work type: the metadata profile for a work
  • collection: a group of related works and/or collections
  • Allinson Flex: metadata modeling implementation
  • Bulkrax: import/export implementation
• Agile development
  • sprint
  • standup
  • swarm
  • kanban
• GitHub
  • issue