Fedora Commons: Introduction and Update

1. Fedora Commons:Introduction and Update Swedish National Library June 24, 2008

2. The Flexible Extensible Digital Repository Architecture • A repository management system • A foundation for many information management applications • Designed to make data “durable” over the long term • A set of abstractions that can be used to represent different kinds of data

3. The Fedora Project • Developed at Cornell under an NSF grant • UVA Library re-interpreted the architecture and created the first practical implementation • 3 year project funded in 2001 by Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to create open-source system • Another 3 years of development funded by Mellon in 2004

4. Fedora Commons, Inc. • 501-(c)3 private, non-profit company • 4-year project funded by Moore Foundation to become self-sustaining • Continuing software development • Moving towards community-based software development • Establishing “solution councils” for the development of solution bundles.

5. The world we work in… Data Curation, Linking, Publishing Scholarly and Scientific Collections Preservation and Archiving Education, Knowledge Spaces blog and wiki and more …

6. 127 Current Known Users • Consortia – 5 • Corporations – 12 • Government agencies – 2 • IT- Related Institutions – 6 • Medical Centers and Libraries – 4 • Museums and Cultural Organizations – 4 • National Libraries and Archives – 16 • Professional Societies – 2 • Publishing - 4 • Research Groups and Projects – 11 • Semantic and Virtual Library Projects - 6 • University Libraries and Archives - 55

7. 7 Known Vendors and Integrators: • Acuity Unlimited • Atos Origin, France • CARE Affiliates • Fitz Karlsrhue • MediaShelf, LLC • Sun Microsystems • VTLS

9. A data object is one unit of content.

10. Datastream Types • Inline XML : content in the FoXML object • Managed Content : content is managed by the repository • Externally Referenced: URL of remote content is in the FoXML object • Re-directed Referenced: external but content is not disseminated through Fedora

11. Datastream Characteristics • Can have any number and multiple types in the same object • Versioned automatically by default • Checksums automatically by default • Formal identifier • Alternate identifiers • Audit trail maintained about all datastream actions

12. Relationships Among Objects • Describes adjacency relationships among objects • RDF data of the form: PID – typeOfRelationship – relatedObjectPID • Can used to assemble aggregations of objects • Can build graphs of relationships to feed into user interfaces

13. Optional Object Behaviors • Data objects can have different views or transformations • Sets of abstract behaviors that different kinds of objects can subscribe to • Corresponding sets of services that specific objects can execute • The business logic is hidden behind an abstraction

15. Content Models • Create classes of data objects • Expressed as Cmodel objects • A Cmodel object defines the number and types of data streams for objects of that class • A Cmodel object binds to service object to enable appropriate behaviors to be inherited by data objects

16. Persistent ID (PID) Persistent ID (PID) Metadata System System Metadata Datastreams Datastreams Service Definition Metadata Persistent ID (PID) System Metadata Persistent ID (PID) Datastreams RDF data Service Binding Metadata (WSDL) System Metadata Datastreams Service Definition Object service subscription Cmodel Object service contract data contract Data Objects Web Service Service Mechanism Object

17. A behavior call has the form: Object PID + BDef Name + Method Name • Other components include: • Parameter values used by the method • Datetime stamp for earlier version

18. Object Representing Aggregations • Creating parent objects for complex resources • Representing explicit collections • Representing implicit collection • Creating digital surrogates for physical entities

19. The Fedora Service Framework GSearch OAI Simple JMS Fedora Repository Service DirIngest Preserve These are the core servivce components we distribute.

20. Solution Councils • Community group that creates and maintains the vision for solution bundle in an area • Led by a “champion” • Small group that gets things done • Gathers resources to create software for solution • Coordinates development with the FC Architecture Council

21. Solution Areas • Preservation and Archiving – Ron Jantz, from Rutgers • Data Curation – Sayeed Choudry, from Johns Hopkins University • Publishing – Rich Cave, from PLOS • Integration Services – Matt Zumwalt from MediaShelf, LLC

22. Other Possible Community Groups • Other software development groups • News and Publications Outreach group that works with our Communications Director • Issue/advocacy groups that work on standards important to the community

23. Collaboration Discussion with DSpace • Conversation has just begun • DSpace will experiment with Fedora in Google Summer of Code, 2008 • Possibilites: • Dspace 2.0 expresses data model using Fedora objects (Dspace could be the “reference” IR solution bundle) • Shared development of services used by both • Sharing administration • ????

24. http://www.fedora-commons.org/