2024-01-16 Avalon User Roundtable Meeting

Owned by Emily Lynema
Last updated: Jan 16, 2024
3 min read

Meeting Time

Tuesday, January 16th at 1 PM EDT

Zoom Link

https://iu.zoom.us/j/84620830059?pwd=bWo3R081M3BtaytFMjZnS0FzQkd2dz09

Agenda/Notes

  • Avalon user survey

  • UMD OAI-PMH demo (Joshua Westgard)

    • https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Gv7-2SrSWwTQ9zZvJ5RPtqyNmHQ3lPDBlARpnAWjA7Y/edit#slide=id.gf27aec70bb_0_24

    • Joint collection in DPLA endpoint (Digital Library of Georgia) with contributions from University of Maryland College Park and Georgia State University as part of a CLIR grant

    • Created a single Python server application to implement OAI-PMH for both Fedora (their paged media repository) and Avalon

      • Repo is available on Github: umd-oaipmh-server

      • Talks to Solr (rather than Fedora) to get sets and provides an API to respond to OAI-PMH requests. Solr more performant than Fedora.

      • also provides an http endpoint for humans to see the OAI-PMH responses

    • Added a note to the records in Avalon to indicate which records in collection should be pulled into the OAI-PMH set.

    • Right now, Avalon exposes any collection as a set by default. If you want to make a special exhibition set that is a sub-group of an Avalon collection, a dev would have to change configuration. Would be nice to be able to select items in the Avalon interface and then create an OAI set so that a developer would not be required.

    • Anyone can go to repository for the Python server and clone/re-use as is.

      • Only bit that is particularly custom to UMD is how to identify sets

    • Need to be able to harvest records in Avalon updated since a given time. Last updated in Solr does not effectively relate to when metadata was last updated. Recommended using updated timestamp of Solr record itself, which is only an issue if you blow away your Solr index and everything will look new to the harvester.

    • They use handle to create permalinks for their Avalon records; when a new record is created in Avalon, they have a process that gets a handle for it. Part of their local customization.

    • Georgia has not harvested AV from UMD yet, but grant project is basically complete otherwise.

  • Updates/questions from other institutions

    • Sruthin: How can editors change access control for an individual item?

      • Editors can only edit items that are unpublished. If an item is published, editors can no longer edit metadata.

      • Josh: UMD customized code to make it possible for editors to edit items that are published b/c they ran into the same problem (or they made editors able to unpublish items). They had lots of things they wanted editors to be able to do.

    • Sruthin: how do you edit the main menu headers/footers? You have to edit the templates; there is not configuration / customization.

    • MSU: resolved issue with Fedora container and ingested first audio item a few days ago. Theming search / browse pages this week. Then working on item record page. No timeline on content ingestion yet, but hoping to have a fully themed Avalon site by the end of the month.

  • Future agenda items?

    • February 12 - MSU demo of theming on their new instance

    • Demo of LTI integration with course management system

    • Potential conversation around upgrade process for institutions that have been using Avalon for awhile (how to handle code customizations, etc.)

    • Bulk metadata editing discussion - what are the needs for this in Avalon? Are there tools in the community that could be re-used to help?

    • Summary of survey responses

Attendees

  • Emily Lynema (Indiana)

  • Jon Cameron (Indiana)

  • Josh Westgard (UMD)

  • Kee-Young Moon (UMD)

  • Jason Coleman (NEC)

  • Sruthin Gaddam (MSU, UX)