Hydra Page Turner Interest Group

Scope & Objectives

During the second half of 2014 it became apparent that there were a number of Hydra Partners and Users interested in developing page turner capability for their Hydra heads; some, with an urgent need, have already gone on to do so. This Interest Group is aimed primarily at those institutions who have been able to take a more leisurely approach and are still considering their options.

Whereas a year ago one might have been forgiven for thinking that the JavaScript Internet Archive Page Turner was the application of choice, the emergence of the IIIF Presentation API specification has significantly changed the landscape. A number of presentation tools have developed, or are developing, a version conformant with the new API specification. Thus, if an institution's Hydra head offered an IIIF Presentation endpoint, there would be a choice of tools (amongst them page turners) that could be layered over the top of it.

The team developing the new Fedora Common Data Model (formerly Hydra::Works) have noted that it would be relatively easy to make their gem offer such an interface. However, many people will not be using the FCDM in the foreseeable future and this Interest Group is aimed at them. No two Hydra heads are likely to take exactly the same approach to structuring their Fedora objects or to exactly what might be found in their Solr index. The purpose of this group, therefore, is to determine if it looks possible to design a "shim", an abstraction layer, to place over a Hydra stack such that it offers an IIIF Presentation API to the outside world but which, facing in the other direction, can gather the required information from a local Hydra that may be unique in nature, perhaps by offering some sort of configuration mechanism that points to where necessary data can be found and which offers default values for any mandatory data which the repository does not have.

It is hoped that the IG will agree on a way forward and that a Working Group could then be formed to develop the necessary software.

The IG will also investigate common patterns of object/relationship modeling and page sequence representation in Fedora/Solr currently in use by participating institutions. Examples of current practices will be made available, and the IG may choose to issue a set of recommendations and/or best practices for modeling a sequence of page images (or other objects) within the Hydra framework.

Outputs

Interest Group final report

See also items 2-4 of the resources section in the right-hand column

Meeting Times & Communication Channels

The Interest Group is currently dormant having published the report above.

Members

At least three organizations must be represented in an interest group. Anyone may be part of an interest group with or without a CLA, as there are no deliverables from the group.