Islandora is an open source application based on other open source tools. These include the Drupal content management system, Fedora repository software, and SOLR search tool. The heart of the system is Fedora, which can store any digital asset, can support various metadata schemes, and is not dependent on any reading device. Fedora can store data in any digital format including videos, text, audio, and images. In addition, the data doesn’t have to be in Fedora in order for Fedora to manage it.
Drupal is used by many organizations to power their web sites. It is very powerful and can manage many types of content. Having Drupal as the front end makes it easy to integrate Islandora with your web site, and possibly other data sources, to present a uniform interface to your users.
The SOLR search engine is very fast, and provides features such as full-text searching and faceted search. It is used by VuFind and MnPALS Plus.
Islandora is a Drupal module that harnesses the functionality of these other tools to provide a robust application for managing digital assets. Recent enhancements to the software include the ability to do bulk ingests of digital objects, new viewers, functionality to handle research data, and a new form builder. Among the planned features are a mobile app and migration tools from other digital asset management systems. Solution packs, or Sprouts, are packages of specialized modules, applications, and workflows to serve particular content and user needs. Existing and planned solution packs include institutional repository, audio, video, maps, images, digital books, digital newspapers, digital magazines, document management, numeric data, genetics/proteomics, specimen collection, and epidemiology.
