The Digital Assets Repository (DAR) is an eco-system of components developed by

the International School of Information Science (ISIS) at the Bibliotheca

Alexandrina (BA) to create an institutional repository maintaining the Library’s

digital collections. DAR consists of four main modules: DAF (Digital Assets

Factory) a flexible management for the digitization workflow, DAM (Digital

Assets Metadata) a metadata management system based on METS with Fedora

inside supporting synchronization with external sources, a Digital Assets

Publishing layer (DAP) providing a Restful API for building applications on top of

the repository and DAK (Digital Assets Keeper) a storage layer responsible for

caching, versioning and load balancing.

DAR: Institutional Repository Integration in Action

DAF

Derivatives

transformation

Repository Discovery

LayerDerivatives

Core Files Preservation

Quality

Collection / SET

DAM DAK

Storage

Full Text Index

Ingest

Ingestion

Plugins

Application

Synchronization

Publishing Layer (DAP)

· APIs

· Viewers as building

blocks

· Index and Search

· Database

Bibliotheca Alexandrina Website: http://www.bibalex.org/

International School of Information Science: http://www.bibalex.org/isis/

DAF

· Flexible workflow definition, including QA and

redirects

· Different paths for different media types

· Plug-in based; Integrates with other enterprise

tools , ILS and software used for digitization

· Automated and human phases with reporting

· Automated integrity checks at each step of the

workflow

· Automated ingestion into the repository and

archiving

· Available for download at

http://wiki.bibalex.org/DAFWiki

Metadata Management

· The object is described in METS.

· MODS is used for books, 3D objects,

monuments, images …etc.

· Fedora as a metadata registry

· Flexible XML metadata templates and dynamic

forms: Users see human readable field names

with the assistance of authority lists and metadata

is translated into MODs

· Edit/Review workflow

· Synchronization Templates for synchronizing

metadata with backend administration

applications

· Synchronization with ILS (e.g. VTLS), external

DBs or repositories.

Application Integration

· REST based API to allow for automated

application integration

· Applications have access to sets of objects

· Application queries the API for updated items

within its accessible sets of objects

· Updates can be in metadata or content

· The API replies with new or updated objects

within the specified period

· The application loads the updated object

metadata or content

· More advanced features can be built on top of the

API. (e.g. Print on Demand integration)

DAR Books

· Social Features:

§ Rating and comments

§ Create your own bookshelves

§ Embedding and sharing: Facebook, ...etc.

· Annotations

§ Sticky Notes

§ Highlight and underline

§ More to come…

· Morphological full text search (5 languages)

· Search results highlighting

· Embeddable book viewer, can be added to any

webpage.

· Faceted Search

Copyright and Access Module

· Centralized Access Right module

· Takes into consideration the number of copies

allowed for dissemination

· Can define exceptions to override rules (e.g.

prevent a certain object from being displayed)

· Defines rights to certain operations (e.g. view,

print, …etc) based on the application requesting

access

Digital Assets Repository DAR: http://dar.bibalex.org/

Digital Assets Factory DAF: http://wiki.bibalex.org/DAFWiki/

Integrating

applications on top of the Repository

Book viewer with annotations, social

features and faceted search.

Flexible metadata entry templates per

application

DAR Architecture

DAR Detailed Architecture

Metadata Tool (forms)

Born DigitalIngestion plugin

from other sourcesApplication Backend

Discovery layer

View Object

AIP

(A

rch

iva

l In

form

atio

n

Pa

cka

ge

)

Application Logic

Print On Demand (POD)

Book Viewer

Photo Viewer

METS STORE INTERFACE

Adm

in

Too

lA

uthe

ntic

atio

n

SS

O

WorkflowCopyright & Access

Edit

Fedora

(Metadata Registry)Triple Store

Identifiers

UUID

Handle

Search Metadata

+

Full text

Storage Layer

Simple Search Advanced Search

DAF Ingestion Module

Search View

Authority Lookup

Applications

Ing

est R

ep

osito

ry

Syn

ch

ron

iza

tio

n

La

ye

r

Aut

hent

icat

ion

Security

METSfiles

Search IndexMapping

TemplatesTemplateBuilder

Cache Versioning

Load Balancing

Core Files

Derivatives

Streaming

De

riva

tive

s

Online Archive(OnA)

File

Sto

rage

Inde

x

(Sol

r)

REST

RE

ST

REST

RE

ST

General Applications

List of Object Identifiers

Object retrieval

Requests certain objects

Application requests file updates for certain sets

List of Object Identifiers

Metadata retrieval

Get metadata of objects

Application requests the metadata updates for certain sets

Authentication

ILS Synchronization Tool

Archive Collections

e.g. Nasser ...etc.

Flexible control over

digitization workflow

Youssef Mikhail, Noha Adly, Magdy [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

Bibliotheca Alexandrina , 2011

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