Subject: [CODE4LIB] Who is working on METS Viewer applications

From: Repke de Vries <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:05:59 +0200

Dear Code4Lib Community

read the METS based OpenMIC - OpenWMS announcement (July 9th) with  
great interest.

It points at a need beyond METS creation and that is METS Viewers for  
end users:

who in the CODE4LIB community is working on METS Viewer applications ?

Here is an example of what we mean by that - the DFGViewer:
http://dfg-viewer.de/en/regarding-the-project/

Anyone else ?

Background: the International Institute for Social History [ http:// 
www.iisg.nl ]  has such collections that we are involved with both  
the archiving and library communities.  Metadata issues therefore are  
a mixed bag. Added to that are Permanent Access issues. We are  
looking at METS to tie it all together and at METS Viewers for our  
users to easily navigate and negotiate what 's pulled together in  
these METS containers.

Thanks, Repke de Vries

---

From: Bess Sadler <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 09:50:37 -0400

Hi, Repke,

Many of the digital objects [1] visible through VirgoBeta [2], which  
is an installation of Blacklight [3], are stored as METS. For each  
METS file we index the relevant parts in solr, and we have a  
middleware application that can easily grab relevant bits of it for re- 
purposing, so that we can use our METS data in many places without  
having many places where METS must be understood and interpreted. This  
middleware app is just a set of XSL transformations, held together by  
cocoon, of the form:

http://{URL FOR APP}/{ID OF METS FILE}/{descMeta | adminMeta |  
technicalMeta | rightsMeta | MIX | getParts } (This is from memory, so  
I know I'm leaving out some of our metadata streams and mis-naming  
others.)

We also create a Fedora object for each METS file with externally  
managed datastreams that reference each of the metadata datastreams.  
This is sort of a belt-and-suspenders approach, I realize, and I plan  
to re-examine it as this project progresses.

Then Blacklight has object-class specific views that know how to  
display these various parts (data is drawn from solr for the search  
results, and from the metadata streams for the full record display).

One of the views we're particularly interested in, which we haven't  
yet tackled, is a viewer for our digitized manuscripts. We have  
digitized manuscripts represented as METS files, in the system I've  
described above, but we're still working on displaying these to end  
users. I love what you've created with the DFG Viewer! I hope you  
don't mind if I borrow some of your UI ideas. Nicely done.

Bess

[1] e.g., http://virgobeta.lib.virginia.edu/catalog/uva-lib:414860
[2] http://virgobeta.lib.virginia.edu
[3] http://projectblacklight.org

> users to easily navigate and negotiate what 's pulled together in

Elizabeth (Bess) Sadler
Chief Architect for the Online Library Environment
Box 400129
Alderman Library
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22904

[email-masked]
(434) 243-2305

---

From: Repke de Vries <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 18:07:50 +0200

Hi Bess, dear list

credit where credit 's due !   The DFG Viewer is  not my or IISH's  
achievement but a separate German project:  project partners and  
development history can be found here:
http://dfg-viewer.de/en/regarding-the-project/project-partners/

I will pass on the compliments and what you are working on your self.  
Thanks for that information !

Repke

> Hi, Repke,
...............
> don't mind if I borrow some of your UI ideas. Nicely done.
................
> ......
> ......

---

From: "Riley, Jenn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 18:22:38 -0400

Dear Repke and all,

Several years ago Indiana University released a METS Viewer called METS Navigator: <http://metsnavigator.sourceforge.net/>. We've since done a *ton* of work on it but haven't gotten around to doing another release. Here's something like version 1.1 in action: <http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/metsnav2/imh/navigate.do?oid=VAA4025-097-1&cid=VAA4025-097-1-a01>. We're wrapping up what we're calling version 2.0 in the next few weeks. That version is really a complete overhaul. The two biggest new bits of functionality are a whole/part capability (think journal with issues all displayed together in one tree) and a "pluggable" design where you can stick parts of the display (like just the tree view, or the tree view plus the page images and navigation) into other systems. At the moment we don't have anything stable to point to you that shows this off, but ask again in a week or two and we should!

I'm sorry we don't have a schedule yet for a new os release of the METS Navigator package - as you all know the extra time to do this is significant, and we're pretty buried in too many other competing priorities right now. :-(

Jenn 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
> Repke de Vries
> Sent: Thursday, September 17, 2009 4:06 AM
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: [CODE4LIB] Who is working on METS Viewer applications
> 
> Dear Code4Lib Community
>