Planning and System setup for a New Digital Library

Established in 1946 as the American Theological Library Association, Atla is a membership association of librarians and information professionals, and a producer of research tools, committed to advancing the study of religion and theology. Notch8 partnered with Atla to create their new digital library collection of theological documents, images, and other research artifacts. It is a Hyrax application, unique in that it both hosts works and aggregates and displays works hosted in external collections. Notch8 worked with Atla to create a Detailed Server Architecture Plan and Automation. This plan included laying out the initial servers, their failover plans, backup capabilities, and configurations. The process was set up to be repeatable, expandible, and highly documented. The installation included Hydra/Sufia, Fedora, and Solr. Additionally Notch8 researched and provided options for some front end setups for the ATLA team to allow them the functionality that they needed with the user feel they desired. Afterwards Notch8 assisted ATLA with the ingest of images and data to the new system.

Most recently Notch8 created an OAI based importer for harvesting additional assets and collections. Atla has requested that this harvester be turned into a gem and contributed back to the Samvera Community, serving as the foundation for the Bulkrax import/export framework that has been adopted for use in multiple Samvera applications. Other unique features include customized breadcrumbs that tie works housed in multiple collections to the user’s discovery path and modification of “file download” button to function as a link-out to an external collection source.

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