This Is AuburnAUrora

Testing VuFind as a Collection Index for AlabamaMosaic

Date

2014-06-13

Author

Coates, Midge
Goslin, Jeremy
Bellanger, Clint
Coates, Mildred

Abstract

In 2005, the Network of Alabama Academic Libraries launched AlabamaMosaic: a consortial collection of Alabama cultural heritage materials digitized by 21 member partners. At present, all partners use OCLC’s CONTENTdm content management system (CMS) software for their AlabamaMosaic collections, and the project uses OCLC’s Multi-Site Server (MSS) software to index these. Recently, partner institutions have been exploring alternative CMS software for their digital collections. But these non-CONTENTdm collections cannot be included in AlabamaMosaic if the project is using the MSS indexing software. VuFind is an open-source next-generation catalog software created at Villanova University. Records for items in a digital collection can be created in VuFind using OAI metadata harvesting. XML output from OAI harvesting feeds is transformed into index records using a software tool and transform files customized for each collection. Like MSS, VuFind allows searching across all indexed collections. However, facets then allow the search results to be browsed by institution, collection, author, and/or subject term. Collections in CONTENTdm, dSpace, and Acumen have been harvested into the AlabamaMosaic VuFind test index.