Before and After

Here are some pictures illustrating the change we're undertaking in our digital collections infrastructure. The second diagram, "After', relates to Mike's post/picture. This first one, though, reflects our current situation: different workflow, management, and access schemes depending on the content type. Not too surprising, given that most DL platforms want to 'own' their content. If you have content they can't handle, you need to get another platform. Fortunately, things have evolved in a good direction, giving us the opportunity to unify content and manage it coherently in one place, and build integrated access. That's the second diagram:

This parallels large parts of Mike's diagram, with the center "Repository" here corresponding to Mike's "IR". Most of the services along the right edge correspond to the "CISR". The big Repository will use Fedora, and the access services will likely be built with Solr/Lucene and other plugin services like user comments, etc. Federation with external repositories happens at the bottom of the picture, either using the repository or just being indexed together with local content. We're prototyping this architecture for the Technology Enhanced Learning grant with the School of Human Ecology and the Vet Med department.