Marcus Barnes, Simon Fraser University, June 2, 2012 Drupal with CONTENTdm Digital Collections

Marcus Barnes, Simon Fraser University, June 2, 2012

Drupal with CONTENTdm Digital Collections

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Outline

• Overview and Introduction: Drupal in Libraries and CONTENTdm

• CONTENTdm Integration Modules

• Tutorial Demo: Getting started with the CONTENTdm Integration Modules

• Closing Remarks with Q/A.

Drupal in Libraries

• Used by many libraries • Rich API• Thousands of ‘contrib’ modules• Ease of integrating with other systems• Thriving Drupal library community

• http://drupalib.interoperating.info• http://groups.drupal.org/libraries• drupal4lib email list

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Bottom Line: Drupal offers the flexibility and control necessary for a library website while leveraging the power of an active open source community.

CONTENTdm

• CONTENTdm: “digital collection management software that allows for the upload, description, management and access of digital collections.”1 (Product offering of the Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (OCLC) [a non-profit membership cooperative.]

• Complex issues involved with digital collections – CONTENTdm is a vertical application that helps better manage these issues into the workflow.

• Windows client especially useful for enforcing business rules and quality control during the digitization and uploading stages of a project.

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CONTENTdm Windows Client:Editing an Uploaded Item

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CONTENTdm Windows Client:Adding Multiple Compound Objects

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Overview of the CONTENTdm modules

• “A set of modules that allows users to search, browse and view CONTENTdm 6.x collections from within a Drupal website”

• Hosted at http://drupal.org/project/contentdm• Design principles

– Modularity– Extensibility– Ease of customization

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Out of the box

• Basic search module• Viewers for image, PDF, media, compound

items, URL, and plain text items• Hierarchical document browser• Custom queries module, for prebuilt search

results• A 'scopes' module, which defines subsets of

CONTENTdm collections for searching and browsing

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Technical architecture

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CONTENTdm API

Drupal

search

Result 1Result 2Result 3Result 4Result 5

Query

Results

Display

Get / createDrupalnode

Determineviewer

TitleCreatorDescription

CommentsTags

Renderoutput

CONTENTdm Web Services API

• The Web Services API makes the CONTENTdm PHP API available through a REST interface

• SFU developed this API during the Multicultural Canada project, in partnership with Athabasca University

• Rationale: We needed to run the MCC website on a different web server than CONTENTdm was running on.– The PHP API was only available if you ran your

application (e.g., Drupal) on the same web server as CONTENTdm

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CONTENTdm API details

• Released by OCLC as part of CONTENTdm 6.x

• REST calls mirror CONTENTdm 5.x PHP API functions– E.g., dmGetCollectionList, dmQuery,

dmGetItemInfo

• Response from CONTENTdm is returned in either XML or JSON

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CONTENTdm API REST URLs

• Generic form– http://CdmServer.com:port/dmwebsetrvices/

index.php?q=function/param1/param2/format/help/log

• Specific example– http://content.lib.sfu.ca:81/dmwebservices/

index.php?q=dmQuery/all/subjec^canada^all^and/title!subjec/title/50/1/0/0/0/0/json

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• Sites that run the modules:

– Multicultural Canada (SFU)

– Denver Public Library

– Komagata Maru Journey (SFU)

– Chinese Canadian Stories (UBC)

CONTENTdm Integration Modules

CONTENTdm REST API:Typical Use Pattern

1. dmQuery– Searches CONTENTdm and returns a result list

2. dmGetItemInfo– Returns metadata, filename, and full text for the

designated item

3. dmGetCompoundObjectInfo– If the item is compound, returns a list of all its

children and its hierarchical structure

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CONTENTdm API: Applications

• CONTENTdm Integration modules for Drupal– http://drupal.org/project/contentdm

• Canadiana.org Metadata Exporter

• LOCKSS-friendly front end to CONTENTdm

• SFU Multisearch also uses the API to query CONTENTdm

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Chinese Head Tax search

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Komagata Maru passenger list entry

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Google Docs Viewer integration

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Demo

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Assumptions:

•You know how to install an instance of Drupal 6.

•You have access to a CONTENTdm Server.

Future plans

• Migration to Drupal 7• Better synchronizing of updated / reloaded

items in CONTENTdm• Integration of more media viewers

– HTML5 media– PDFObject

• Integrate new features of the CONTENTdm APIs as they become available– Catcher

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Closing Remarks

• http://drupal.org/project/contentdm• Contributors:

– Mark Jordan: markj (Project Creator & Leader)– Marcus Barnes: M.E.B. (forthcoming)– Andy Laken: laken (CONTENTdm Organic Groups integration)

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A special thank you to the Simon Fraser University Library and the Library Systems group for their encouragement and support on this and other projects.

Resources

• Putting content online: a practical guide for libraries by Mark Jordan (Oxford: Chandos, 2006)

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