UCLDC Project (July 2013 - September 2015) Summary and Documents

This page presents a summary of work completed during the UCLDC implementation project, July 2013 - September 2015, plus key "historic" pages and information.

Background

The UCLDC Project resulted from several years of planning across the UC Libraries. The planning process began in 2009 with the cross-campus Digital Libraries Services Task Force (DLSTF), which articulated a vision. A subsequent task force (DLSTF2) continued the work of scoping a digital collection service and formulating a plan for how to get there. Finally, Next Generation Technical Services (NGTS) Power of Three Group One (POT1) coordinated several “lightning teams” focused on various aspects of implementation. Two lightning teams in particular most directly shaped the direction of the service and the technologies implemented: LT1A (which drafted requirements for a systemwide DAMS), and LT1C (which put forth a technical model and selected Nuxeo as the "first step towards a systemwide digital asset management system strategy").

Team

The UCLDC project team comprised staff members at CDL and UC Berkeley's Research IT unit. See complete list. The project team reported to SAG2 and obtained additional input from a Project Stakeholders Group. Many campus collaborators also worked on aspects of the project such as the migration and harvest of collections, and provided constant feedback and ideas. Thank you to everyone who helped us realize the vision of building a shared service for managing, aggregating, and surfacing digital collections.

Timeline and Deliverables

The UCLDC Implementation Project began in the summer of 2013, and concluded in September 2015 with the public launch of the Calisphere BETA site. 

Key project deliverables included the following:

• DAMS: Configuration, customization, deployment, and support of a shared digital asset management system accessible via Shibboleth–plus, development of a self-serve batch file upload client
• DAMS-Merritt pipeline: Development of a pipeline from the DAMS into Merritt, to eliminate redundant workflows
• Aggregation and discovery infrastructure: Development of a harvest infrastructure for aggregating collections and exposing them on Calisphere and the Digital Public Library of America
• Calisphere: Design and development of a next-generation, user-friendly public access interface to the aggregation
• API: an openly available API for the use of libraries and partners to create custom interfaces to collections in the aggregation

Source code for all of the above is available at the UCLDC github repository.

For a detailed list of lightning team 1A requirements met by the project, please click here to download.

Content by the Numbers

The project resulted in the successful migration of many collections into the DAMS, as well as a significant growth in the amount of content aggregated and shared with the public.

• 38 collections in the shared DAMS at time of project completion (and more added on an ongoing basis)
  
• 607 total UC Libraries collections aggregated in Calisphere, 51 of which had not previously been aggregated
• More than 400,000 total objects on Calisphere, a 70% increase in content over the previous site (which includes content from the UC Libraries as well as from the Los Angeles and San Francisco Public Libraries, respectively)
  

Releases and Reports

Project development work was staged as a series of releases (approximately quarterly); releases were named after UC campus mascots/nicknames.

Workspaces charted out the plan, and release notes summarized the work completed. Status reports were provided to SAG2 at first according to project sprints and later monthly or as requested.