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What is Islandora?

Islandora is an open-source software framework designed to help institutions, organizations and their audiences collaboratively manage, and discover digital assets using a best-practices framework. Islandora was originally developed by the University of Prince Edward Island's Robertson Library in 2006. Islandora is now implemented and contributed to by an ever-growing international community.

Built on a base of Drupal , Fedora , and Solr , Islandora releases solution packs which empower users to work with data types (such as image, video, and pdf) and knowledge domains (such as Chemistry and the Digital Humanities). Solution packs also often provide integration with additional viewers, editors, and data processing applications.

Islandora leverages both the expertise of PHP/Java/Python developers, librarians and other information-professionals. Islandora is committed to utilizing open standards for data description and access, as well as high-standards for data stewardship and security over time. Islandora makes it possible to create, edit, discover, view, and manage digital assets. The system strives to strike a balance between extensibility and usability, by providing out-of-the box support for collections, while maintaining an architecture that lends itself to customization to other software and workflows. The heart of Islandora’s data stewardship model is Fedora - if you are a Fedora user, you are still capable of accessing and manipulating objects in Islandora’s underlying Fedora as you would in any Fedora installation. Special consideration for Fedora users is taken in Chapter 7 - Customizing Islandora.

More information about Islandora’s core technologies is provided in this introductory chapter.

Who Uses Islandora?

A list of current installations of Islandora is available at http://islandora.ca/islandora-installations.

Islandora also represents a community-based approach to integrating robust open source software projects together. The Islandora community is comprised of implementers, developers, service companies, and users working as transparently as possible toward better documentation and a better, always open-source, code base. Membership formalizes involvement in the community and community discussion is always active on the developer and administrator/users Google listservs!

Why Would I Use Islandora?

Islandora addresses the following needs:

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Info

Islandora sites are not simple websites! By utilizing Fedora as its repository back-end, sites running Islandora provide the security and sustainability of a more flexible and complex system than what is governed in a series of HTML pages or a regular relational database.

Islandora Core Technologies

Islandora’s core technologies are FedoraCommons repository software, Drupal, and Solr. FedoraCommons Repository Software lends itself to data stewardship via a unique content and relationship modeling framework that preserves the integrity of collections and can be modified to manage any digital asset. This means that Fedora collections are uniquely persistent, no matter what new software lurks around the corner. In the Islandora system, Drupal acts as an interaction layer atop Fedora, enabling users to discover, view, and manage Fedora objects. Drupal is a very popular, module-based system that understands Islandora as a suite of modules. Through Drupal, Islandora users can create content together, and use social-networking to enrich Fedora content.

Solr represents an emerging, and important third application used in Islandora – bringing lightning-fast searching of the Fedora database, including full-text searching of any attached documents. Solr also allows for results to be refined, using faceting techniques to engage users in a process of discovery and exploration.

What are Solution Packs?

Islandora's Solution Packs provide the framework for the ingestion, organization, and display of digital assets in a Fedora repository through a front end Drupal web interface. They are the meat of the Drupal-Islandora-Fedora sandwich. Solution Packs reflect best-practice workflows emerging as a result of the community’s experience dealing with particular types of data, such as large-format images, maps, books, magazines, and individual research articles.

Solution packs combine pre-chosen Content Models, Metadata Forms, and Viewers based on the experience of the Islandora community. Solution packs may be customized to meet the needs of your collection and institution, or used out of the box to create collections. More information about installing and using Islandora Solution Packs is provided later on in this guide. Solution Packs often require additional applications to be installed and configured. An overview of common dependencies is provided in the Dependencies section of Chapter 5 - Islandora Modules.

Solution Packs

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