MDID Users Group session, Visual Resources Association 32nd annual conference, Milwaukee, WI. Thursday, March 13, 2014. Organizer/Moderator: Grace Barth, James Madison University Presenters: Grace Barth, James Madison University Kevin Hegg, James Madison University Andreas Knab, vrcHost Several institutions have switched to MDID3 in the past year, and we look forward to sharing some of those experiences as well as showcasing new features. In this session we will share updates to MDID3 such as the new ability to share collections between institutions, packaged slideshows, and cataloging improvements. The MDID team will be prepared to discuss software and hardware requirements, installation issues, best practices, system integration, custom application development, and other topics. Andreas Knab from vrcHost will discuss MDID hosting experiences and any upcoming features. This informative session is open to anyone using or interested in MDID. Adequate time for a question and answer period will follow the presentation. Continuing the tradition of a freely shared educational resource, MDID is distributed free of charge under an open source license and is used at many institutions across the United States and around the world. Sponsored by: vrcHost vrcHost specializes in installation, integration, customization, and feature development for the Madison Digital Image Database (MDID) project - an open source digital content management system used at hundreds of institutions worldwide for teaching and scholarship in the visual arts.

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MDID Users Group

2. MDID use at
JMU
Art Education
• Heavily used in Art
Criticism class
• To the right: a student’s
final “art show” for Art
Criticism last semester
Music
• Used to upload and
share audio files of
students practicing

3. Newtown Collection
• Public history prints
and photographs
acquired by art
history professor
• Available to the
public through MDID
• Used for series of
three public talks on
Urban Renewal in
Harrisonburg, VA

4. MDID at Other Schools
 Testimonial from Colorado College
 “Initially, as we began discussions of what database tool
would best fit our needs, we researched many image
database options. MDID3 became our first choice because of
its ease of use, the capacity for it to meet nearly all of our
curatorial and classroom presentation needs, and its cost was
certainly a positive consideration over subscription options.”
–Jan Schalk, Project Manager
 Making installation simpler
 Steve Tatum’s curator wiki

5. Shared Collections
 Shared collections are live!
 Getty Open Content
 Download newest version of MDID3 from GitHub
 Demo by Andreas
 Securing funding from JMU
 Approached School of Art, Design, and Art History and Center
for Instructional Technology for funding
 Secured end-of-year funding split between two departments

7. Experience with helping others
 Lack of documentation
 Lack of server administration experience
 Lack of support from IT department
 Complex installation procedure

8. Efforts to make installation
easier
 Reduce necessary configuration
 Unbundle old libraries
 Reduce external dependencies
 Better step-by-step documentation

10. Architecture
 Collection provider
 No extra configuration necessary
 Just create a user account and password
 Works with any current version of MDID3
 Collection consumer
 Must use latest version of MDID3
 Create a new shared collection by configuring
remote URL, username and password

11. End user experience
 Works like other federated searches
 Flickr
 ARTstor
 Any keyword or faceted search will
trigger a search of remote collections
 Results are displayed on a separate screen

12. Current limitations
 Search result displays thumbnails only
 No pop-up preview dialog
 Metadata fields must be mapped to
Dublin Core at the collection provider for
best results

13. Shared Collections

14. Shared Collections

16. Features sponsored by Archivision
 Work/Image record distinction
 Browse and search by work
 Set master record for work
 Copy metadata between records
 Vocabulary lists
 Integration with Getty Vocabulary Program

17. Migration tool updates
 Better handling of unusual data during
MDID2 to MDID3 migration
 Field cleanup tool

18. Documentation project
 Architecture
 Using Pelican, a site generator
http://blog.getpelican.com/
 Current status
 Very early in development
 How to contribute
 Check out
https://github.com/knabar/mdid-docs

19. Documentation Example

20. Documentation Example

21. Exporting metadata through Solr Admin Interface
http://localhost:8983/solr/demo/select?q=*&c=allcollections:7&rows=5&sort=id+asc
&fl=title_t,identifier_t,creator_t,subject_t&wt=json

22. Sustainability
 Challenges of hiring a programmer
 Who here is using MDID3?
 JMU hired vrcHost to develop “shared collections”
and to fix a number of bugs
 New features and bug fixes pushed back into the open source
repository to benefit entire MDID community
 A good model for other institutions to follow?
 Any interest in Kickstarter-like projects for funding
future development software development?
 Other ideas?