Project Description CollectionSpace is a collaboration that brings together a variety of cultural and academic institutions with the common goal of developing and deploying an open-source, web-based software application for the description, management, and dissemination of museum collections information. This report includes an update on the project team's activities for August and September. The next update will be released Friday, October 2nd Updates are emailed to the Announcements <http://wiki.collectionspace.org/display/collectionspace/Mailing+Lists> list and posted to the project wiki <http://wiki.collectionspace.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=65575> and website <http://www.collectionspace.org> the first Friday of every month. Releases 0.2 and 0.3 The team is working on integration of the user interface, application, and services layers for Release 0.2. Due in mid-September, the release will incorporate several new features, including the ability to log in to the system and create and edit intake records. The team is also looking ahead to Release 0.3, which will include: an expansion of the ID service to include the automatic provision of sequential numbers; the first version of the vocabulary service, which will provide access to controlled lists; and support for acquisition. Design The design team has finalized the system's overall information architecture and page layout. Fixed navigation/information elements can be seen at the top and right of the below wireframe. The cataloging screen seen here includes a number of novel widgets designed to decrease (to the extent possible) the pain of data entry, including the ability to expand/contract information blocks, visual cues to field type, and rapid sub-number generation. With overall design finalized, the designers are now focusing their attention on the development of user interfaces for collections information management workflows such as assigning roles and permissions, and adding terms to a controlled vocabulary. Development Services The service team has now deployed initial services for CollectionObject, ID generation, Intake, Relations (to associate any two records in a kind of relationship), and Authentication. APIs and deployment instructions for each of these services are available on the project wiki. In addition, the team has worked to expand the services infrastructure for schema extensions, designed services infrastructure support for multi-tenancy, designed the services model for Vocabularies and related functionality, and laid the groundwork for local custom deployments at the Hearst Museum of Anthropology and Jepson Herbaria. The services team has also worked with the project's system administrator to deploy a continuous build integration system. The system is currently undergoing testing with the services team, and will eventually expand to include the work of the application and user interface teams. Application For the past several months, the application development team has been working on the application layer's ability to store multiple record types with flexible schemas. This allows new record types to be added rapidly, and fields to be changed and rearranged with minimal effort. These changes will allow museums to develop configurable screens, and also prevents the user interface development team stalling on application layer issues and vice versa. In the same vein, the application developers have been working on an abstraction which decouples the progress of the services layer from the application layer, removing the need to develop in lock-step with one another. User Interface This summer, the focus of the user interface (UI) development team has been architecture: implementing navigation and data entry screens, and creating UI layer framework code intended to simplify the process of developing user interfaces. User Interface Specification The goal of the User Interface Specification (UISpec) is to build a comprehensive API for communication between the application and user interface in a way that enables museums to customize and adapt the user interface to suit the unique requirements of their collection. The UISpec describes the desired user interface and its relationship to the data model. It identifies the different elements to be presented on screen, and specifies which piece of data is to be displayed and edited in each. Because each installation of CollectionSpace will be unique, the data fields and user interface elements on each screen cannot be pre-configured into the software itself. The UISpec will be generated by the application Layer from a master XML document that will be customized by the institution for their particular needs. The UI team has been defining and refining the form of the UISpec, adding the capability to represent repeated sets of data, and the ability to specify the type of user interface element. The UISpec will continue to evolve as more functionality is added to CollectionSpace. Data Context The Data Context is a core piece of infrastructure for communicating collections data between client and server, ensuring that it is available as a service across the whole application layer. During this quarter, the UI team worked on the design and implementation of the Data Context, which provides the UI Layer with customizable communication with the Application Layer. The UI layer communicates with the application layer using RESTful URLs. The Data Context centralizes and controls the creation of these URLs based on the portion of the data model being handled and the institution's particular implementation parameters. Use of the Data Context will be central to all communication between the UI Layer and the application layer. ___________________________________________ MEGAN FORBES COLLECTION INFORMATION AND ACCESS MANAGER MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE 35 AVE AT 37 ST, ASTORIA, NY 11106 TEL 718.784.4520 DIRECT 718.777.6834 FAX 718.784.4681 MOVINGIMAGE.US