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FL-Islandora Guide: Home

A guide for FL-Islandora users.

Introduction to FL Islandora 1.0

FL-Islandora is an instance of Islandora provided by the FLVC Library Services  for the benefit of libraries of the State University and Florida College Systems.  A digital library platform, Florida Islandora (FL-Islandora), enables users to create digital collections and make them accessible to the public.  FL-Islandora sites are available free of charge (one per institution) to public universities and community colleges in Florida.  If you would like a FL-Islandora site for your institution, contact help@flvc.org to request more information. 

Islandora is an open source digital library system that builds on other open source systems to provide a repository, ingest mechanisms, display interface and other features for exposing and managing digital content. Some of the applications used by Islandora include Drupal (a content management system used for many websites), Fedora (a general purpose digital repository system), SOLR/Lucene (a search server), Mulgara (an RDF triple store manager) and MariaDB (a relational database manager). See About Islandora for more information.

In FL-Islandora production there is one instance of the Fedora repository, one instance of Drupal, and one instance of Islandora. FL-Islandora makes use of Drupal’s multi-site capability to provide individual websites to each participating institution.  Each site has its own title (e.g. “Florida State University Digital Library”) and customization of the Drupal theme used for web display.

Each site has its own URL in the pattern:

  • [institution-code].digital.flvc.org

e.g.

  • fsu.digital.flvc.org
  • fau.digital.fvc.org

The institution code or namespace is assigned by Florida Library Services at the time of setup and each institutional site has only one (e.g., the Florida State University Digital Library has the namespace “fsu”).

FL Islandora 2.0 Introduction

FL Islandora 2.0 is the next generation of Islandora, a digital content management system, available through the Florida Virtual Campus (FLVC) Digital Services and Open Education Resources unit. FL Islandora 2.0 supports public postsecondary institutions in Florida by providing a high quality, attractive digital library platform that hosts content for viewing by the public or with limited institution access. FL Islandora 2.0 allows an institution to digitize and upload material to the web, and is currently used by 19 state colleges and universities in Florida. Collectively our members provide public access more than 1 million images, texts, theses, dissertations, audio recordings, videos, and other materials, all of which are shared in the Florida Open Academic Library (FOAL). 

Description

  • Provides members ability to acquire and circulate new and existing digital library materials
  • Automatic management of discovery
  • Supports institutional alumni and library donor relationships
  • Many digital collections, which otherwise wouldn’t exist due to funding interruptions from year to year, are available for viewing by the public and campus resources can go into growing and improving and staff rather than into tech maintenance / hosting fees.
  • Is a native Drupal build and connects to Fedora for greater preservation functionality
  • Allows for the easy exposing of content to harvesters for greater visibility
  • Offers flexibility which supports both large and small collections being housed on it
  • Is centered around a community of practice where you can get tips, help, and share your usage