At the recent Society of American Archivists annual conference in San Francisco members of the INDI Team presented a poster session on the project. The presentation included an overview of the project, as well as a discussion of ongoing review and design work.

For more information, please see the poster below:

The INDI Project is pleased to announce the immediate availability of our first phase source code, though Google Code. This release includes all of the functionality seen in the sandbox, including core tools and workflows for appraisal and accessioning.

The code is available for download at http://code.google.com/p/sierra-indi/, with some instructions for installation. Those installing the application should be aware of its dependencies on the Sierra-PHP and Sierra-OS frameworks.

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.

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.