December 20, 2011

Introduction

Islandora combines and harnesses the power of the Drupal content management system and the FedoraCommons Repository software to create a robust digital asset management system that can be used to meet the short and long-term requirements of collaborative digital data stewardship.

Islandora 11.3.0 is installed at http://sandbox.islandora.ca/ (username: admin password: islandora), and a Virtual Machine Image with this code will available for download from the download page by the end of the week. 

Documentation

The latest documentation can be found at the Islandora Wiki.

New and Changed Features

To test-drive a live demo of the new Islandora release, complete with the new features listed
below, please visit http://sandbox.islandora.ca.

Collection Manager

The Collection Manager is now a separate, optional module. However, in most cases you will want to enable this module in order to perform important functions, such as creating and managing collections.

Batch Ingest

The Batch Ingest tool is a separate, optional module. This tool, which was originally added in Islandora 11.2, allows you to upload a ZIP file containing a number of audio, basic image, large image, or PDF files. These files may optionally include associated XML metadata files - if you choose not to include such files, basic metadata records will be created using the filenames as titles. Each object created via batch ingest will have both DC and MODS Datastreams.

Book Module

The book module has been expanded to include book and page management functions. You can access the book management options under the ‘Manage This Book’ tab. The following functions are available:

• Collection Membership: You can associate this book with additional collections. If the book is a member of more than one collection you can delete additional associations one at a time until the book belongs to only a single collection.
• View Metadata: This fieldset displays the available DC metadata for the book.
• Update Derived Datastreams: Here, you can refresh the OCR process for the book, reprocess the pages to create a new set of derived images, or regenerate the PDF for the entire book.
• Manage Current Datastreams: This fieldset allows you to view and manage the Datastreams associated with the book object.
• Permanently Delete This Book: Finally, you can delete the book and all associated pages.

You can access the page management functions by first clicking the new ‘Pages’ tab while viewing a book object; this will display thumbnails of each page. Click on an individual page to view it, then click the Manage This Page Object tab to bring up a list of page management functions:

• View Metadata: This fieldset displays the available metadata for the page (in most cases this will be brief).
• Update Derived Datastreams: Here, you can refresh the OCR process for this particular page and/or reprocess the page to create a new set of derived images.
• Manage Current Datastreams: This fieldset allows you to view and manage the Datastreams associated with this particular page.
• Add Additional Datastreams: You can manually add relevant Datastreams by using the functions in this fieldset.
• Permanently Delete This Page: Finally, you can delete the page itself, while leaving the rest of the book intact.

Namespaces

The default collections created by the Solution Packs now all use the ‘islandora’ namespace. If you are upgrading from the Islandora 11.2 release, this will create a new Book Collection with the PID ‘islandora:bookCollection’. Your old collections will not be affected in any way by the new collection.

Solr

Our Solr interface has some new features for developers.

We now have an optional sort field - the default Solr sort field is ‘score’; this is normally the best choice, but it can now be overridden by any stored, unique, untokenized field (except Date). If you wish to sort by date, use a copyfield in your schema to create a string.

Snippets may now be selected in the Solr admin interface. The default list view will not return snippets if a suitable field is selected. If you’d like to harvest snippets for a custom view you’ll find the snippets results within the ‘highlighting’ array of the response object.

Of interest to developers - we now trigger module_invoke_all from the IslandoraSolrQueryProcessor, allowing your configuration module to make any customization to your query before its run against the solr’s lucene index. Params and filters can be added or removed at this stage.  

Bug Fixes

Where possible, bug-fixes have been linked to the corresponding JIRA ticket. These tickets, along with many others, can be found in the Islandora Duraspace JIRA:

• [ISLANDORA-267] - Integrating the new Form Builder
• [ISLANDORA-298] - Solr client giving false negative when detecting Solr URL in CentOS 5.4
• [ISLANDORA-331] - When editing an object using an XML Form Builder Form, the hash is not passed
• [ISLANDORA-346] - Edit metadata datastream produces fatal error
• [ISLANDORA-358] - Collection Objects with special characters in the title create bad URLs
• [ISLANDORA-384] - When the COLLECTION_POLICY lists more than content model, the Form Builder only displays the for associated with the cmodel 1st on the list.
• [ISLANDORA-391] - When adding an additional entry to the Temporal field of the PDF and Image form an error is generated.
• [ISLANDORA-402] - Problems with the Cm associated with the Large Image SP
• [ISLANDORA-408] - Change XML Form Builder to not use symlink for including the extjs library. As it breaks on windows.
• [ISLANDORA-410] - After editing metadata of an object, it returns to "View" tab, but not "Object Details" tab.
• [ISLANDORA-417] - content_model_viewer should not require a content model object to have an ISLANDORACM stream. Most content models that use the Content model viewer do not read the ISLANDORACM at all but still don't function if it doesn't exist..
• [ISLANDORA-418] - Users should not see the option to create a new collection under the 'Add' tab
• [ISLANDORA-419] - Collections Manager module slows authentication process significantly in multisites
• [ISLANDORA-425] - After purging all pages from a book object, the user should be redirected to the description tab of the book object
• [ISLANDORA-427] - Default solution pack collections should all use the 'islandora' namespace
• [ISLANDORA-431] - The 'View Full Size' link for basic images returns a Page not found error
• [ISLANDORA-432] - after deleting an XML Form that has been associated with a content model, the association continues to be listed in the Form Associations
• [ISLANDORA-433] - if you have two different namespaces specified in a COLLECTION_POLICY, the first one is used
• [ISLANDORA-434] - Audio Solution Pack fails to re-install
• [ISLANDORA-435] - Image MODS Form should not be associated with islandora:collectionCModel by default
• [ISLANDORA-436] - Batch Delete produces errors (but still completes successfully)
• [ISLANDORA-437] - Default Solution Pack collections should not use custom thumbnails
• [ISLANDORA-438] - A colon is inserted after the title of newly created book objects
• [ISLANDORA-443] - interface doesn't allow user to go to next page of thumbnails in book solution pack
• [ISLANDORA-445] - Tabbed Fieldsets in XML Forms are not rendering properly in some environments
• [ISLANDORA-451] - Batch ingest for basic images fails to generate image derivatives
• [ISLANDORA-453] - Batch ingest fails to import metadata
• [ISLANDORA-468] - Cannot purge collection object even after all members of the collection have been purged
• [ISLANDORA-469] - Batch ingest of audio, basic image, and PDF with associated MODS XML files causes a colon to appear after the title of each object and the filename to appear as the title in the object view
• [ISLANDORA-470] - Batch ingest fails to create MODS datastream for audio, basic image, and PDF
• [ISLANDORA-471] - Can't save changes to MODS datasteam for files added via batch ingest
• [ISLANDORA-472] - MODS datastream is not created when batch ingesting large images with associated MODS XML files
• [ISLANDORA-474] - After choosing a metadata form to edit the user is returned to the view tab rather than the edit tab (PDF objects only)
• [ISLANDORA-475] - Title field is not saved in the Large Image MODS Form
• [ISLANDORA-476] - PDF 'View Document' link fails on batch ingested PDFs
• [ISLANDORA-480] - ISLANDORA_PDF_SP_MODS_FORM_NAME needs to be removed from the Islandora release

Improvements

• [ISLANDORA-146] - Solr Results Sorting
• [ISLANDORA-164] - Fix alignment of datastream download button
• [ISLANDORA-257] - display the object's title in the <html><head><title> element
• [ISLANDORA-394] - How do we handle the small magnifying glass icon to the side of the metadata that launches gsearch stuff?
• [ISLANDORA-407] - Solr result CSS classes col-first, col-last, row-first, row-last
• [ISLANDORA-413] - Should not be able to purge your root collection
• [ISLANDORA-455] - Versioning Islandora Documentation
• [ISLANDORA-447] - Islandora Batch Ingest module should appear in the Islandora Tools fieldset
• [ISLANDORA-448] - typo after adding child collection
• [ISLANDORA-458] - after a user deletes a page object using the book sp, the user is returned to the object they deleted and it reports an error
• [ISLANDORA-467] - Improvements to the Book Solution Pack Module

Known Issues

• [ISLANDORA-479] - Can’t replace RELS-EXT, DC, or MODS Datastreams under Detailed List of Content
• [ISLANDORA-485] - Adding new fields or tags to a form initiates a file upload

Software Requirements

The following applications should be installed before you begin installing Islandora 11.3:

Drupal 6.22
Fedora 3.4.2
GSearch 2.2
Solr 1.4.1

For more information, please see the online Islandora documentation.  

Contacts

For support, feedback, and bug reports: http://groups.google.com/group/islandora-dev
For user-related issues and information: http://groups.google.com/group/islandora

License

Islandora operates under a GNU license.