Implementation team
Since our last report, COLD has created a new ScholarWorks Implementation Team, led by David, which has replaced the earlier SWAT Team. Over the next few months, this group will help oversee the initial implementation and migration to the new ScholarWorks, as well as provide a recommendation to COLD on a long-term governance structure to support both ScholarWorks and future digital library systems.
A number of new task forces have sprung up from the Implementation Team, including a Pilot group and a Campus Project Manager group, which are discussed below. A task force devoted to UI and accessibility has also just been organized.
Migration and implementation plan
The Implementation Team recently approved the new Migration and Implementation Plan for ScholarWorks, which breaks up the project into separate implementation and data migration projects, allowing campuses to use the new system ahead of having all of their historical submissions from DSpace, Islandora (Moss Landing), or Symposia (Long Beach) migrated to the new system. The Project Calendar includes tasks and estimated dates for both parts of the project.
Pilot project
In order to ‘road test’ the new ScholarWorks, we are running a pilot with Dominguez Hills, Fullerton, and Sacramento. This initial phase of the implementation is slated to run through May, and will include testing of a variety of different aspects of the system, including submissions, approval workflows, embargoes, and uploading different file types. Kevin and David will provide some initial training to the pilot campuses who will, in turn, help develop documentation for the new system.
Campus project managers
In addition to the pilot group, each campus has identified a local campus project manager. This group will meet bi-weekly (separately and then together with the existing monthly ScholarWorks open forum) to go over project updates, tasks, and due dates. They will be responsible for helping to move along tasks that require local campus involvement, including authentication, responses to any surveys, and any other tasks set by the CO, Implementation Team, or task forces.
Hyrax & AWS upgrades
In preparation for the pilot, we’ve upgraded ScholarWorks to Hyrax 2.4.1. We were previously on version 2.1. This upgrade includes a number of bug fixes as well as accessibility improvements, minor enhancements to the upload and approval process, and an upgrade to the IIIF media viewer.
We’ve also recently made some changes to our Amazon Web Services environment, including a new Elastic File System (EFS) option that we believe will cut down on long-term storage costs.
Metadata
New metadata schemas are in place for ScholarWorks, including those for ETDs, faculty publications, and research datasets. The Metadata Interest Group, led by Lauren Magnuson and Kevin, did an outstanding job in putting together these initial recommendations throughout the winter, which were recently approved by the Implementation Team. We’ll no doubt be making adjustments to the metadata schemas over time, but this initial set should serve us well for the early phases of the project.
We’ve also now put in place the controlled vocabularies for colleges and departments for each campus. Thanks to everyone for getting those to us! This will allow students and faculty to assign their work to the correct department during upload, in turn allowing end-users to limit their searches to specific campus colleges or departments.
Authentication
We’ve started work on authentication for the new system. All of the necessary components to support Shibboleth are in place in ScholarWorks, and the ScholarWorks Service Provider (SP) has been registered with InCommon. The necessary documentation is on Confluence. Campuses now just need to make a minor change to their Shibboleth Identity Provider (IdP) configuration to complete the authentication process. Campuses running other IdPs, such as Okta, will need to take some additional steps to complete this work. The campus project managers are currently following up with their local identity management contacts to help move this work along, and David will be fielding any questions that arise.