BCAD Architecture

2009 British Cartoon Archive

Projects

A project to digitise and catalogue the Carl Giles Archive to current international standards and to redevelop the BCA website to significantly increase its accessibility and usability.

A project to generalise the BCAD infrastructure and standards and then demonstrate the applicability of the architecture by using it to make the enhanced digital content from three collections available on the web: Tom Webster sporting cartoons, Muggeridge windmills and watermills and the Renfew Archaeological photos of the Orkney Islands.

Verdi

BCAD

OverviewFeature BCAD VERDI

Everything except hi-res images freely accessible

Hi-res images available after Shibboleth authentication to partner institutions and Kent staff

Automated creation of images for web use and distribution

Images securely stored in central disk array – mirrored and backed up (1)

Medium res images can be viewed via zoom technology

Catalogued in system capable of exporting (2) Calm Modes/Calm

Metadata searchable and mapped to Dublin Core 13+ fields 7 standard fields (3)

Records with no images can be searched and displayed

Automatic image delivery with facets (thumb, record, zoom)(1) Verdi and BCAD have funded large disk arrays which can make some space available for other collections. This will need to be monitored and, where possible, digitisation project funding should try to add capacity to the storage array.

(2) Frequency and manual vs automated will depend on the system.

(3) 6 Mandatory ISAD(g) fields (easily mapped to Dublin Core) plus description: Unique reference number, title, date, level, Extent/physical description, name of creator(s), description

Overview of architecture

Website

Data handling systems

Image upload and resize

scripts

Archive management

Web users

Staff

Image repository

Image delivery

(1)

Simple / advanced search

(2)

Results with thumbnails

(3)

Record view with metadata

(4)

Zoom functionality

Or in a more visual way…

Website – (1) Search form (Advanced search)

Website – (2) Results with thumbnails

Website – (3) Record view with metadata

Website – (4) Zoom functionality

Image-related possibilities

Searching across collections and content (e.g. flat website content, book catalogues, digital repositories)

Security (images could be restricted to internal use, to other HE/FEs etc)

Exposing the full archival hierarchy Grouping and sharing images /creating lists of favourites Virtual exhibitions Data sharing/harvesting Additional metadata and related facets

The following have been implemented within the BCAD project and, while outside of the scope of VERDI, are possible with small amounts of development.

Website-related possibilities

Inclusion of questionnaires, comments and other Web 2.0 functionality

Single sign-on User roles and management E-commerce functionality (including buying images) Searching and displaying additional metadata and facets Creating facets to static website content Multi-site capabilities WYSIWYG content editing

Drupal was the CMS selected for the BCAD project and has now been selected as the University CMS solution. It is very powerful, extensible, and well-supported. Possible extensions include:

Website

Data handling systems

Drupal communicates with data handling systems Fedora and Solr.

Solr - Search engine, stores limited metadata for search results.

Faceted searching a strong feature of Solr.

Fedora is a digital repository, storing full record details.

Data between two systems originates from the same source.

Catalogue

(e.g. Calm / Modes)

Solr

(for searching)

Fedora

(for displaying record)

Export from catalogue system

Example of a Solr XML object for BCAD

Archive management

Digital image

(medium resolution)

Catalogue system (e.g.

Calm / Modes)

Enter and maintain:

Access to all versions of

images• Public metadata

• Internal

To demonstrate our catalogue system…

The cataloguing process

Manual process

administrative metadata

Demonstration of a record in Calm

See accompanying set of video files.

Archive managementThe image process

Archival master scanned

Archival master

enhanced(if required)

Copy both to disk array

Automated batch process of images (thumb, med, zoom)

To demonstrate our image processing system…

Manual process

Demonstration of image batch and zoomify batch process

See accompanying set of video files.

To conclude…

A demo clip of the website in action. Questions.

Website demonstration

See accompanying set of video files.