The Fascinator is an Apache Solr front end to the Fedora commons repository. This project is funded by ARROW, as part of the mini project scheme. The Fascinator is written in Java. It drops into the Tomcat server that comes with Fedora. The goal of the project is to create a simple interface to Fedora that uses a single technology - that's Solr - to handle all browsing, searching and security. This contrasts with solutions that use RDF for browsing by 'collection', XACML for security and a text indexer for fulltext search, and in some cases relational database tables as well. We wanted to see if taking out some of these layers makes for a fast application which is easy to configure. So far so good.

The Fascinator can:

• Create one or more web portals for a Fedora 3 repository
• Ingest content from other sources into Fedora 3 using OAI-PMH, a direct connection to Fedora 2 or via the experimental OAI-ORE
• Provide simple efficient access control to Fedora repositories
• It is Open Source (GPL)

Robertson Library is releasing the their Fedora-Drupal module Islandora as opensource. There is a Islandora project hosted by Fedora Commons here. The Islandora module allows Drupal users to view and manage digital objects stored in Fedora. There is a demo Amazon ec2 image running here http://ec2-75-101-195-219.compute-1.amazonaws.com/. The ami has both Drupal and Fedora installed.  The disk space available to for this image is limited.  If you use Amazon's EBS you could get upto a terabyte of space.  There is also a S3 adapter written for Fedora that could be used. If you have an Amazon AWS account you can launch your own version of the image. The public image name is ami-e9d23680. Once the image is started you will have to login to the newly created image using ssh and start Fedora. To start Fedora cd to /usr/local/fedora/tomcat/bin and type ./startup.sh. This will start Tomcat which will bring up the Fedora web application. You will then be able to use a browser to view your new ami instance by browsing to the ami's public DNS address. We have created a google group to act as a mailing list for the Islandora module.  You can send email here islandora@googlegroups.com or visit here http://groups.google.com/group/islandora.

Blacklight is an open source OPAC (online public access catalog). That means libraries (or anyone else) can use it to allow people to search and browse their collections online. Blacklight uses Solr to index and search, and it has a highly configurable Ruby on Rails front-end. Currently, Blacklight can index, search, and provide faceted browsing for MaRC records and several kinds of XML documents, including TEI, EAD, and GDMS. Blacklight was developed at the University of Virginia Library and is made public under an Apache 2.0 license.

A next generation library catalog written in ruby, using solr as the underlying search engine. All you have to do is export your marc records, index them with the scripts provided, start up ruby on rails, and you're on your way to faceted browsing bliss.

RubyFedora provides a set of Ruby gems for creating and managing objects in the Fedora Repository Architecture (http://fedora-commons.org). RubyFedora was created by, and is maintained by Mediashelf (http://yourmediashelf.com)

Fez is a web front-end management system for Fedora that is developed in PHP. This work is part of UQ eScholarship Project and the Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories. Fez functionality includes:

• Web-based browsing and searching
• Semi-advanced searching
• Complex security model with shibboleth support
• Automatic image resizing/thumbnailing
• Dublin Core, MODS, PREMIS

Flori is a web front-end for Fedora Commons, specialized in managing learning objects and their meta data. Key features include virtual repositories and flexible meta data schema's.

VALET for ETDs is a customizable, web-based interface to Fedora. It allows remote users to submit content into a VITAL or FEDORA digital object repository. VALET for ETDs features include:

• Handling of any file format
• Configurable metadata entry
• Staged submission process whereby any number of review stages can be integrated
• Authorization of edit, delete, or approval for submitted content prior to ingest

ELATED is a lightweight, general-purpose application for managing digital files. ELATED is built on top of the Fedora Repository system, and can be used as a digital assets management system, an institutional repository, or to meet other collection archiving, publishing and searching needs.

• Dublin Core metadata entry and search
• Custom metadata by collection
• Automatic previews for images
• Collections with simple editorial workflow
• Indexing and searching of content (e.g. text in MS Word or PDF document)
• User feedback, enabled by collection
• Select and import existing Fedora objects

The Visual Understanding Environment (VUE) project provides faculty and students with flexible tools to successfully integrate digital resources into their teaching and learning. Using VUE's concept mapping interface, faculty and students design customized semantic networks of digital resources drawing from digital libraries, local files and the Web.

• Visual environment for structuring, presenting, and sharing digital info
• OKI-compliant software bridge for connecting to FEDORA repositories
• Concept mapping interface
• View and exchange content maps online

Muradora is designed to be a turnkey web front-end for Fedora focusing on flexible access control (see DRAMA). It is being developed as part of the DRAMA project. Muradora is built in Java using the Spring Framework (with Struts 2), and makes heavy use of AJAX technologies to provide a richer and more dynamic user interface.
Its functionality includes:

• Browsing and Searching (full-text)
• Self submission and publishing interface
• Support for Shibboleth authentication
• Tree view of user-defined collections (based on user's own RDF ontology)
• Authorization based on XACML but with an easy intuitive access control GUI (no need for any raw XACML editing by the end user)
• Flexible metadata (DC, MODS, etc...) input based on XForms standard (utilizing Orbeon XForm server side engine so no browser plugins are required).
• Utilizing DRAMA middleware components (see below) for better management of policies and consistent access control across many GUIs talking to a single Fedora server

In 2006 the ARROW (Australian Research Repositories Online to the World) Project funded two mini‐projects at the University of South Australia, namely ARROW Batch Utilities and ARROW Batch edit tool to solve the issue of batch metadata editing. The combined outcome of this work resulted in the creation of web based, open source PHP application called FABULOUS (Fedora ARROW Batch Utility with Lots of User Services). FABULOUS reduces time required to manage repository content by enabling modifications to user selected sets of objects and data streams. Fabulous functionality includes:

• Batch activate datastreams
• Batch de-activate datastreams
• Link batches of content files to existing metadata
• Edit batches of metadata files
• Plus more..

Features

• ARCHmedia MetaFramework for developing Fedora based applications
• Compliant Fedora 2.2
• High level framework
• Full object oriented
• Facilities to deal with collections
• Spring Framework based

The DRAMA project aims to re-factor Fedora authorization into middleware components that can be plugged on top of an existing Fedora (2.2) deployment. It offers the following features:

• Extended XACML Engine: We extended the Sun XACML engine to utilize an XML database (DB XML from Oracle) for the policy stores. There is a web interfaces for the update and editing of the XACML policies in the database. For a given XACML request, the XACML PDP can now quickly query the database using XPATH to find the list applicable policies (<10ms to match and evaluate through a set of 10000 policies). Finally, XACML requests and responses can be sent as web services call to/from the PDP. These extensions to the XACML engine can be utilized by any XACML based application, not just Fedora.

• XACML PEP for Fedora: We developed Axis handlers to intercept API-A and API-M calls between the client and Fedora to enforce authorization based on XACML policies. The handlers can intercept requests perform authorization on that as well as intercept the response from Fedora and enforce authorization policies on the response back to the client. For the REST interface of Fedora, we developed servlet filters to perform the same function. Both the Axis handlers and the servlet filters utilize the same instance of the XACML engine (see above) hence a single Fedora repository can now have a consistent access control regardless of how one access it. This allows a single Fedora repository to support multiple GUI interfaces.

• Federated Authentication and Identity Management: We developed modules (DAR and ASM) that can be deployed with Fedora to enable Shibboleth (as well as local LDAP) authentication for any web GUI talking to a Fedora repository; all without the need to change any Fedora code.