Due to the recent economic crisis development of the Integrated Digital Special Collections (INDI) has been suspended. Information about the current status of the project, as well as a discussion of the value of business process management in archival content management systems, can be found in the most recent issue of the Code4Lib Journal.

While planning for Phase II continues, we also been working on making some improvements to INDI prior to its public release. The biggest, and least visible, of these improvements is an upgrade to the frameworks underlying INDI (sierra-php and sierra-os), taking them from PHP 4 to PHP 5. This improvement should make continued development of the system easier, as well as making the application more accessible for modern IT departments. As part of the sierra-php upgrade, INDI also has now integrated Web services. This interface makes INDI accessible through SOAP or REST requests, allowing remote interaction with the system.

Early this month the INDI project team made the INDI Sandbox available so that archivists and others interested in the distributed workflow system could kick the tires and get a feel for how the Integrated Digital Special Collections works. Late last week team members completed the INDI Walkthrough that will guide first time users through the various features available in INDI. This document is available at http://www.lib.byu.edu/indi/indi-walkthrough/ and is meant to be used in conjunction with the INDI Sandbox. It features step by step instructions on how to use INDI Desktop, MyProjects, and MyContacts, as well as detailed instructions for creating appraisal and accession projects. We hope that the walkthrough will make using the INDI Sandbox an easier experience.

In other INDI news, the project team is wrapping up the documentation for INDI Phase I, and once the final bug is fixed and the source code has been appropriately packaged INDI Phase I will be made available to the archival community. Phase I is comprised of INDI Desktop, MyProjects and MyContacts as well as the Apprasial module and the Acquisition and Accession module. Please watch the Downloads page for links to the source code for these items.

With the completion of Phase I the project team is turning its attention to Phase II. Phase II will focus on the creation of the Arrangement and Description module of INDI. This module will gather descriptive data about archival collections and then make that data available for export in a variety of output formats (EAD, EAC, MARCXML, MODS, Dublin Core, etc.). The project team is currently creating the requirements statements that will serve as the basis for programming this module of INDI. The team is also comparing the various standards that will be available for output and working to create a comprehensive data model. This data model is seen as the key to enabling INDI to output the specified formats as well as INDI’s future extensibility.

As we begin wrapping up the first phase of INDI, we put increased emphasis on documenting the application as it exists. While we had hoped to complete our documentation in time for the release of this phase of the project, documentation has also provided us with a chance to step back and orient our new programmer on the development of the system.

This work has included both user and technical documentation, including user guides, walkthroughs, internal help content, and design documentation. However, the most useful part of this effort has been the development of a revised software requirements specification. Our previous version of a requirements document, while adequate at the time, had been surpassed to such a point that it no longer provided a guide for development. At some points, INDI’s programming has been very organic, and under-documented features were added to the application. Returning to documentation has provided us a chance to recapture and redirect the course of development.

While we hope that this process will not significantly delay the release of phase 1, we believe the project overall will be improved due to this work.

The last several months have been pretty hectic for the INDI Development team. Our lead programmer, Jason Read, took another position and left the Harold B. Lee Library in early October. Curtis Thacker was hired as our new programmer shortly before Jason Read left and spent about two weeks working with Jason in an effort to gain a better understanding of the underlying architecture of the INDI system. To help jump start the learning process for Curtis, the INDI team developed a new module for him to build. The new module deals with the processes inherent in the appraisal of archival material. The change in programmers has wreaked havoc on our development schedule and we will be updating it shortly. We plan to release the INDI core tools (MyProjects, MyContacts, INDI Desktop, Administrative Interface) as well as the Accession and Appraisal Modules in early 2008. Another project that Curtis is working on is the development of an INDI sandbox that will be publicly available for interested individuals to examine INDI first hand. We hope to release the sandbox soon. The INDI project team is also working to update the INDI screencast to include information about the Appraisal module.

INDI team members have been busy over the summer working on the data model and workflow for the Arrangement and Description Module as well as testing the Accession module.

The Accession Module of INDI was released in a limited fashion to several students and curators in the L. Tom Perry Special Collections in July 2007. These students and curators used INDI to accession new collections and provided feedback on INDI’s usability. They recommended that contextual help be implemented as soon as practical and the project team began drafting the text for this help to be added to the Accession module. The Accession module of INDI was released to all of the manuscript curators and their students in early August and use of the system has been consistent and very few problems have been reported.

Team members carefully analyzed Describing Archives: A Content Standard, the EAD Schema, Dublin Core and several other national standards in the construction of the data model that will underly the Arrangement and Description Module. They also carefully analyzed the manuscripts Workflow in the L. Tom Perry Special Collections and created a workflow diagram to aid in the creation of the forms that will gather the arrangement and description data. Team members are working to understand the arrangement and description practices of the Wilson Folklore Archives in order to meet the unique descriptive needs of folklore materials through the INDI system.

This week the project team has been creating a webcast to highlight the completed portions of INDI. It can be viewed on the Downloads page of this site under Screencasts.