University of Maryland Digital Collections

Searchable rich media-across collections

The University of Maryland Libraries began developing its digital repository using Fedora in 2005. Fedora was adopted in order to develop a repository that could express multiple contextual relationships between objects; to incorporate both a strong administrative back-end to enable local digital object management for staff contributing to the repository, as well as a public interface that enables cross-collection searching of digital objects in multiple formats. Currently, there are five cross-searchable collections in the University of Maryland Digital Collections repository, including images, moving images, and full-text (both TEI-encoded texts and EAD-encoded finding aids), with plans to add audio in the next six months. Modules that have been added to our implementation of Fedora include indexing, search, and handle manager. Back-end services include transformation of TEI and EAD to a locally defined metadata scheme (UMDM), management of relationship information, and coordination of video requests via streaming software (Helix).

The University of Maryland Libraries currently use Fedora to provide public access to digitized materials from the collections of the Libraries. The implementation has focused on developing collections of materials that can be accessed through a common interface as well as through individual, boutique collections. Another strong feature of the implementation is the creation of skins for collection design. Several collections, including University AlbUM and Films@UM have been implemented using this concept which allows for creation of contextualized collections using a simplified interface that reuses basic elements for design, browsing, and searching.