Digital Libraries@UC with DSpace/GLAM
Mário Bernardes, Ana Eva Miguéis, Ana Luísa Silva, Bruno Neves · Portuguese National Funding Agency for Science, Research and Technology (RCAAP Project by FCT) · 2019
Coimbra University (UC), one of the oldest universities in Europe (1290), has an important cultural heritage, part of UNESCO World Heritage (2013). In last ten years, part of this heritage has been digitized, originating several digital libraries. By 2012, UCDigitalis platform was released, resulting from a global project for the dissemination of digital contents. Under a common interface, it presents all the digital libraries, from which Almamater (with ancient books, manuscripts, drawings, etc) is the most valuable. The sustainability of the solution and its complex environment led UC to engage on a new approach. With more than ten years of experience in DSpace, we decided to use DSpace-CRIS/GLAM open-source platform to support digital libraries, regarding its architecture and the add-ons available. The aim of the presentation is to share the experience gathered during the implementation of the project, describing the most crucial challenges: data migration, customized curation tasks as well as the use of IIIF for image presentation. We also present the user interface developed on python and using Dspace REST-API and SOLR. The project will continue to be improved with the release of the new DSpace REST-API and the use of a simplified format to upload new documents.