Alouette Toolkit (Digital Collection Builder)

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Note

This is historical documentation that refers to the development of the Digital Collecton Builder. This page was first created in September of 2008, and its content was last updated in February 2010. Its contents were migrated to the new AtoM wiki on July 13, 2015: no changes have been made to the original content, though some formatting may have been changed for greater readability, or to account for differences in styles between the two wikis. Dead external links may also have been removed. Otherwise, the content itself has not been altered.

Project Status

Note: the development work has been completed (May 2009) and the 1.0.7 release of the software was launched in June 2009 and re-branded as the Canadiana.org Digital Collection Builder. See the project website for the most current information.

Background

As the lead developers of the ICA-AtoM open source archival description application, Artefactual Systems has been collaborating with Canadiana.org's Alouette Toolkit Project since June 2007.

Both projects decided to create the Qubit open information management toolkit as a common, underlying platform for development of their respective applications. Having common project objectives and almost identical functional requirements, both ICA-AtoM and the Alouette Toolkit are now simply themed versions of the Qubit Toolkit.

Since the summer of 2007 Artefactual Systems has continued to grow Qubit's project infrastructure, development team, and software feature set. The current version of Qubit (1.0.3) contains approximately 70-80% of the features envisioned for the first release of the Alouette Toolkit. Artefactual will complete development on Alouette specific requirements to provide a first public release of the Toolkit by winter 2009. SFU Library is acting as the administrative and technical liaison for this phase of development.

Partners

• Canadiana.org
• SFU Library
• BC Electronic Library Network
• UBC Irving K. Barber Learning Centre
• Artefactual Systems

Project Tasks

1. MODS & Dublin core templates
   1. Qubit core crosswalk
   2. data-entry templates
   3. output templates
   4. XML import/export profiles
2. Theming/Menuing module
   1. create a Wordpress-style theming directory structure
   2. provide a Drupal-style theming user interface for administrators
   3. build navigation menus from database values
   4. allow adminstrators to configure menu options
3. Multi-page digital content handling
   1. upload multi-page images
   2. provide a browsing user interface
4. Alouette Metadata Toolkit distro
   1. Alouette theming (logo, terminology, default templates, menu structure, etc.)
   2. Create web installer for Alouette distro