The Digital Delivery System (“Player) for the Wellcome Library

Online Information 2012

Robert Kiley, Head of Digital Services, Wellcome Library, UK

Tom Crane, Principal Consultant, Digirati, UK

Overview• Set the Wellcome Library in context

• Describe the problem we set out to solve

• Outline the methodology for developing the “Player”

• Demonstrate the “Player”

The Wellcome Trust & Library• A global charitable foundation, that seeks to supporting the

brightest minds in biomedical research and the medical humanities

• Annual research spend of around £650m

• Wellcome Library, part of the Wellcome Trust

• Collections of books, manuscripts, archives, films and pictures on the history of medicine from the earliest times to the present day.

• Provide insight and information to anyone seeking to understand medicine and its role in society, past and present

Wellcome Library

Wellcome Digital Library pilot: 2010-2013

Genetics and its Modern Foundations• A new online resource for everyone interested in the history

of human and animal health

Aims• digitise key library holdings - relating to a major Trust

challenge area

• build sustainable/expandable mechanism – foundation stone for WDL

• digitise important third party content – linked to theme

• use innovative content and tools – to encourage discovery and use

• explore commercial partnerships – enhance access to non-theme material

Digitised content (in progress)• 1m pages of archival materials (incl. those held elsewhere)

• 2,000 books related to genetics research (750k pages)

• 14,000 early printed books (until 2015) [5m pages]

• 7,000 Medical Officer of Health reports (500k pages)

•…a lot of content (for a pilot)

WDL systems: key principles

• Integrate digital content with analogue content

• Use existing Library systems

• Encore - the Library’s discovery platform

• Sierra - the Library’s LMS (for authentication)

• Safety Deposit Box - Digital Asset Management system

• Use JP2K image format and METS

• Need to develop system to “play” digital content, which integrates with these systems (the “Digital Delivery System – DDS)…but didn’t know how such a system would work

Developing the DDS: our approach• Issued an ITT inviting Suppliers to bid to develop a technical

specification for the DDS

• Awarded fixed price contract to two suppliers to develop a technical specification

• Appointed Digirati to build the DDS

• Digirati developers were located in Library, and built the system on Library servers

• “Informal” agile project management – fortnightly meetings, showing progress of “Player”

• Highly effective way of running a complex IT project

What the Player does: simplified• User finds record in Catalogue with link to “View Online”

• Using unique record ID, the DDS system retrieves the METS file

• METS file holds:• (some) descriptive metadata• ID’s for all the individual page images • Access conditions

• METS files converted to JSON and the Player “reads” JSON file to determine what to play (book, video audio), and what access conditions to apply.

• Digital objects retrieved by DAM (or cache)

• In case of books/archives, using IIP image server, images converted from JP2 to JPEG

Digitisation Workflow

DDS

METS

cat record: b18021013

b18021013.xml

library.wellcome.ac.uk/player/b12345678

Digital AssetManagement System

Request dataabout b18021013

ServeJSON data

Tilerequest

Serve JPG tilegenerated from JP2

Read METS Read JP2, Audio, Video

Demonstration• Artwork – to demonstrate zooming capabilities

• Book – to demonstrate key functionality of the Player

• Navigation• Thumbnails• Downloads• Bookmarks• Embed

• Archive – to demonstrate integration with authentication system and how specific pages can be restricted

• Video

• Multiple manifestation – to demonstrate how multi-volumes works are handles

UI of the Player• Early decision taken to use deep-zoom tile approach

• Using Seadragon as the “canvas”to render deep zoom images

• Using IIPImage as the Image Serverto generate tiles from JP2 sourceson the fly

• Generating tiles in advance is not scalable or efficient

• Took view to build own player, though following in the footsteps of others (e.g. Library of Congress, Internet Archive, Newton papers etc)

Next steps• WDL goes live tomorrow (21st Nov 2012) – soft launch

• Accessible at http://library.wellcome.ac.uk

• Measure how Player is used, how Wellcome network copes with traffic, and feedback from users

• Full launch – with more content and more functionality (e.g. search within) on 4th March 2013

• Make the Player open source and provide some funding to support this• Ambition is that the WDL Player becomes the de facto system

for rendering digital content held by libraries and other cultural heritage organizations