What is Fedora Commons, and Why Should You Care? Cole Hudson and Graham Hukill

WARNING: Both "Fedora Commons" and "Fedora" will be used interchangeably over the course of this presentation.

Roadmap Where We Are Why We Chose Fedora What It's All About Why You Should Care Which Way ? by Brave Heart. CC BY- NC-ND art/ /sizes/l/in/photostream/

Our Current Progress

by Ksayer1. CC BY-SA /sizes/l/in/photostream/

By bibliovox. CC BY- NC-SA / /sizes/l/i n/photostream/

What is Fedora Commons?

Fedora Commons is.... Flexible Extensible Digital Object Repository Architecture

Binary Image File (jpeg) Image Metadata ("picture 1") Ingest into Fedora Commons (splits metadata and data) Fedora Commons image ("picture 1", jpeg)

University of Chicago's Mansueto Library image URL:

OAIS model image URL:

Preservation birds of a feather image URL:

some technical details...

Fedora Commons is a "system“ objects and their datastreams are the building blocks of Fedora RDF statements are used to describe relationships between objects APIs are relied on heavily for ingesting, managing, and accessing items

Fedora Commons is a "system“ objects and their datastreams are the building blocks of Fedora RDF statements are used to describe relationships between objects APIs are relied on heavily for ingesting, managing, and accessing items

Fedora Commons is a "system" Access APIs *MySQL Mulgara RDF Database Tomcat Web Server Management APIs binary files Metadata Objects Fedora Application Web Admin Graphical Interface Web Admin Graphical Interface

Fedora Commons is a "system" image URL:

Fedora Commons is a "system“ objects and their datastreams are the building blocks of Fedora RDF statements are used to describe relationships between objects APIs are relied on heavily for ingesting, managing, and accessing items

INTERLUDE: objects basic atomistic building block of Fedora represents an intellectual or conceptual "item" aggregates files and pieces that make up "item" fun fact: a collection of images might is often an object too objects are stored as FOXML files: "Fedora Object XML" anatomy of a Fedora object

INTERLUDE: datastreams original tiff (ORIGINAL ) thumbnail (THUMB) access copy (ACCESS) RDF Statements (RELS-EXT) Dublin Core (DC) MODS (MODS) PID:: cfai:EB01a045

INTERLUDE: datastreams URL:

INTERLUDE: datastreams URL:

Fedora Commons is a "system“ objects and their datastreams are the building blocks of Fedora RDF statements are used to describe relationships between objects APIs are relied on heavily for ingesting, managing, and accessing items

RDF: Resource Description Framework "RDF is intended for situations in which this information needs to be processed by applications, rather than being only displayed to people." -RDF primerRDF primer

Diary of an RDF triple In computer speak... subject = predicate = object = In human speak... The ebook object, "Sketches and Scraps", is a member of the Collection "Ramsey". "Sketches and Scraps" "Ramsey" isMemberOfCollection

RDF query example Query: select ?object from where ?object Reponse: info:fedora/cfai:EB02a046 info:fedora/cfai:EB02a034 info:fedora/cfai:EB01a072 info:fedora/cfai:EB02a028 info:fedora/cfai:EB01a066 etc.....

they get complex quickly... image URL:

Fedora Commons is a "system“ objects and their datastreams are the building blocks of Fedora RDF statements are used to describe relationships between objects APIs are relied on heavily for ingesting, managing, and accessing items

API: "Application Programming Interface" preferred way of interacting with Fedora API-M MethodsAPI-A Methods addDatastream addRelationship compareDatastreamChecksum export getDatastream getDatastreamHistory getDatastreams getNextPID getObjectXML getRelationships ingest modifyDatastream modifyObject purgeDatastream purgeObject purgeRelationship setDatastreamState setDatastreamVersionable Validate describeRepository findObjects getDatastreamDissemination getDissemination getObjectHistory getObjectProfile listDatastreams listMethods resumeFindObjects

Fedora API example: ingest command: curl -i -u fedoraAdmin:fedoraAdmin -X POST -H "Content-Type: text/xml" --data-binary response: HTTP/ Created Server: Apache-Coyote/1.1 Set-Cookie: JSESSIONID=DB77E40CD554EB EDD9CF3CC5A; Path=/fedora Location: Content-Type: text/plain Transfer-Encoding: chunked Date: Sun, 03 Mar :49:01 GMT

Fedora API example: retrieval Remember this datastream? That's an API call! URL:

All together now! An ebook... WSU ebook imagesthumbsHTML IMAGE_ # THUMB _# HTML_# altoXM L altoXML _# fullbook PDF HTML isMemberOfCollection collection: Ramsey model: WSUebook hasContentModel isMemberOfCollection

Aaannnd...Why Should You Care?

It's free as in puppies, not as in beer.

It's library centric. Image by Phil Bradley. CC BY-NC-SA sizes/l/in/photostream/

OAI RDF Dublin Core It supports this stuff API Interfaces Digital Preservation

Most Importantly Though digital collections aren't getting less complex, only more. And we need software that can handle it.

Hurdles / Lessons Learned content modeling & unique identifiers cross-domain requests creation of FOXML ingest files comfort with RDF installation-more difficult than it first seems changing our approach multiple times understanding key concepts

Thank You! Questions? Slides will be available at