University of Virginia Library

The University of Virginia Library applies Fedora to the task of reimagining the use of digital objects for scholarly pursuits

The University of Virginia Library is attempting to solve four problems with their Fedora implementation: management of complex objects that are organized in potentially multiple hierarchical structures; management of highly disparate data types and their preservation requirements; building virtual collections by recording and identifying relationships between objects in the repository; and the collection of born-digital faculty projects that incorporate new and reused materials into new scholarly contexts. Fedora was chosen because it was architected to facilitate handling of complex objects.

UVa is using Fedora to build a digital asset management system for their locally digitized collections and a discovery service that integrates with the repository by calling disseminators underneath the interface to present the objects and exploit their associated behaviors. The UVa repository uses Cocoon as its XML pipeline and XPAT for indexing.

User interfaces created by developers at UVa Library include three full text search interfaces (including browsing capability) for the three current collection typesart and architecture images, EAD finding aids, and TEI electronic text; and an overarching cross-collection metadata search that does discovery across all three collection types. The interface also provides tools to support the use of the collectionsthe Digital Object Collector Tool and ImageViewer, which allow users to collect and interact with the images in the repository, whether art and architecture images or page images from texts or manuscripts. An ImageViewer behavior is associated with every image object, and the Collector Tool takes advantage of various object disseminators to present varying image views or metadata. The Collector Tool will gradually become a more generic personal collection building tool for all types of objects in the repository.

The challenges faced in the UVa implementation included developing cross collection access for multiple types of content and figuring out how to make those results understandable; identification and definition of standard content models, which turned out to be an aid in interface development for the repository; and revision of metadata and media file standards and the migration of files to meet those standards.