Reusing repository technology for Cultural Heritage and Special Collections

The University of Auckland and the University of Edinburgh will provide insights regarding the re-use of repository technology for cultural heritage and special collections. With examples of collections and observations on development and deployment of the Skylight application.

The University of Auckland Library maintains a variety of digital collections, including metadata indices, bibliographies and cultural heritage collections. These collections are managed and curated in a single DSpace repository.

The requirement for each collection to have its own distinct look, feel and functionality, loosely coupled to the backend repository, resulted in the development of a new application called Skylight.

The University of Edinburgh’s Library and University Collections holds a diverse range of special collections from Anatomy to Zithers. The desire to adopt one solution to make disparate collections available on a managed platform with their own online identities, led to the adoption of Skylight.

Reusing existing repository technology in these institutions means that staff can continue to use their current repositories, yet apply them to new and expanding numbers of collections. Utilising Solr as both a discovery layer and a metadata source means the dependencies between the UIs and backend repositories are minimised, allowing either technology to be replaced by another.