Starting Fresh with Islandora
When last we provided an update about the transition from Islandora 7, we were working with information regarding the early phases of community-led development. If you know anything about the open source world, you know that it can change quite a bit, and now seems like a good time to update you on the project.
Recent Progress:
We’ve had some recent successes with new users: MN Department of Transportation and Minnesota State Law Library and we are currently working with Minneapolis College of Art & Design to migrate from their self-hosted Islandora 7.
- What’s all this business about Islandora 2? I thought it was called Islandora 8! The community named it Islandora 8 because it was a continuation of the original Islandora project. Later, the community decided that given the complete rewrite of the software to take better advantage of the Drupal ecosystem it made more sense to think of this project as Islandora 2.
- Who is working on this project? Why am I hearing from Dani? An outside contractor reviewed PALS operations which indicated that we needed to think differently about staffing to meet member needs. We had a gap in another area of support, and the Islandora support position could be sustained with a .5 position. Our metadata and cataloging expert, Dani Kroon, stepped into the Islandora role as of July 1, 2022. We thank Alex Kent for his dedication to Islandora over the years!
- Weren’t we going to try to establish more of a community within the PALS-supported Islandora group? Yes! And to that end, Dani scheduled a meeting for March 22 where all of the institutions can meet the team. Also, they will hear about the progress of the team, learn about approximate timelines, and talk about what kind of work can be done in advance.
We look forward to the ongoing migration process and can’t wait to see the results of the work!
P.S. Read more about Islandora by PALS here.
