Building flexible workflows with Fedora, the University of York approach

Abstract

In 2008, the University of York embarked on a project to build a multimedia Digital Library underpinned by Fedora Commons. In the long-term, the York Digital Library (YODL) plans to meet not only multimedia requirements, but multi-disciplinary, institutional, multi-user and multiple access control needs. In order to do this, we needed a flexible, scalable approach to fulfil the following three strands of our roadmap: An ‘administrative’ workflow, including metadata creation forms, automatic extraction of metadata and data/resource transformation for images, video, music, audio and text resources to be extensible as new resource types are identified; A self-deposit workflow for non-administrative users to deposit to YODL, White Rose Research Online (WRRO) and other targets as appropriate; Bulk ingest tools and procedures, to include a desktop deposit tool. This paper will outline current and future work at York which builds on Fedora Commons, initially drawing on the Muradora interface and access control layer with a SWORD-enabled simple deposit tool in development and future plans for making this more flexible with Mura-independent applications