First public release of Document Library

3 may 2006 - Infrae has just released the first public version of Document Library (1.1b).

Document Library is a document management application intended for the tracking of large amounts of documents in an organization. Document Library is open source. It is also open data: the contents of Document Library can be harvested using the standard OAI-PMH protocol and integrated with other applications. Integration with the Silva CMS using this technology is provided.

What is the Document Library?

Organizations deal with numerous documents, such as word processor documents and PDFs. These documents often reside on someone's computer and are not network accessible. Versions of documents are hard to track - the same document may be passed around using email in multiple versions over time. In large organizations it therefore becomes important to structure the flow of documents and present them in a common format. This is typically done using a document management system. Document Library is one such document management system.

Information in the Document Library can be accessed using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH), meaning that besides being open source, the Document Library is also a good example of an open data application. Because it is open data, the Document Library is easier to integrate with other applications, such as the Silva CMS or any other application capable of OAI-PMH harvesting.

Features of the Document Library include:

• Automatic conversion service: using OpenOffice, the Document Library can convert Word documents into PDFs and plain text, PDFs into plain text. The plain text version is important in that it allows for full-text indexing of document contents, and also makes documents more accessible to people with disabilities.
• Publication workflow: documents only become available for harvesting and download after a review process.
• Delegation of control: reviewers ("librarians") can be assigned to particular sections.
• Dynamic access: authors have automatic access to all the documents that list them as an author.
• Versions: multiple versions of the same document can coexist, one public and one under preparation.
• Email reminder functionality: users receive emails of the progress of the document through the workflow.
• OAI-PMH data provider: allows other systems to harvest document metadata using standard protocol.
• Integration with Silva CMS (using OAI-PMH).
• Fast upload and download integration with Apache using Tramline.
• Easy overview screens for librarians.
• Smart file upload user interface: files need to be uploaded only once even if rest of form needs to be amended.
• Document Library is built using the powerful Zope 3 application server platform.

Download

The Document Library application can be downloaded from
https://infrae.com/download/documentlibrary.

Contact

FMI contact Martijn Faassen, faassen at infrae com, +31 10 243 7051.