Document Library Announced at EuroPython 2005

11 july 2005 – At the EuroPython 2005 conference Infrae presented a project called the Document Library. Built for the University of Luton to help personnel comply with the UK Freedom of Information Act, the application is Zope 3 based but integrates with Zope CMS’s such as Silva. The talk description follows, and the presentation slides are online.

Talk Description

Infrae has initiated an open source project to build a document management system (DMS) called Document Library. The application provides a centralized and searchable archive for documents and research papers. The Document Library provides its own user interface, but information is also accessible using REST-based summaries. Using OAI-PMH (the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting), Document Library provides for powerful integration with a website, for instance to provide searchable lists of documents available.

The application is built using Zope 3 technologies. The management environment is Zope 3 native. Public listing display is rendered by Silva, running in Zope 2, but any OAI-PMH capable web application or CMS could make use of the same information.

Document Management Needs

The ability to manage large quantities of electronic documents is becoming steadily more important for large organizations. More and more documents become available or are produced in electronic form. New legal requirements for document management are also coming into being, such as the UK Freedom of Information Act.

In contrast with (web) content management systems, document management systems focus on managing documents in an organization produced for purposes other than web publication. A document management system provides check-in, check-out, storage and retrieval of electronic documents, often in the form of word processor files or PDFs. Ongoing maintenance of documents is eased and guided by delegation, workflow, and notification.

Presentation Agenda

The presentation will outline the goals and specification for the archive, demonstrate management of documents for Authors and Librarians, and show public display and search. In the last third of the presentation Infrae's experiences using Zope 3 will be covered.

 

Press contact: Jan-Wijbrand Kolman, jw at infrae com.