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Removing Barriers Project – Development Kickstart

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(Feature photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels)

The next phase of the Hyku for Consortia project is off and running, with a small work sprint based on a backlog of known issues uncovered during our previous grant-funded project.  This work allows us to maintain the momentum we have built in our previous pilot phase, while we start our user research and accessibility review to define the requirements and scope of work for future, more in depth, development phases. Wherever possible we will contribute development back to the Hyku base code, giving others the opportunity to use these features/configuration options in their Hyku repositories.  This sprint is expected to be completed by the end of October, 2021.

Below is a list of items we have in development with Notch8, in what we’re calling “Sprint 0.” These proposed developments will address some metadata and worktype updates and user interface enhancements stemming from issues project staff and pilot participants have reported.  In particular, we are focusing on improving functionality to our Open Educational Resource (OER) worktype (created under our previous grant, specs here) and overall enhancements to functionality that better equip Hyku for use as an OER Repository.  Both PALCI and PALNI have work in progress on respective OER repositories.  

The PALCI OER Repository pilot, funded in part by LSTA and the Office of Commonwealth Libraries,  is envisioned as an opportunity for PALCI and the Affordable Learning PA community to evaluate the costs and value of running a repository for OER materials created by authors from PA institutions. Materials created as part of the new PA GOAL (Grants for Open and Affordable Learning) program will be deposited and made available publicly. In previous grant years, ALPA funds were allocated to support the initial development of Hyku’s OER worktype, so this is a practical continuation of that investment.

PALNI’s PALSave Course Material Repository is currently available in its beta release and will be improved by the developments in sprint 0.  The repository is an online resource to help faculty identify open educational resources (OER) and other zero-cost course materials.  It includes materials selected for use in the PALSave Course Redesign Grants Program, including some new OER created by faculty at PALNI institutions. 

Hyku for Consortia: Reducing Barriers to Adoption Sprint 0

Metadata and Work Type Updates 

Creative Commons (CC) Licence Updates 

  • We will update the selectable CC licences to the most recent versions. 

OER Relation Field 

  • We will implement the relation field for the OER worktype. These will display as hyper-links to related content. 

Updates to Work Types 

  • OER vocabularies will be updated to implement “discipline” correctly, as in the ETD work type. We will also update all work types to make metadata field mappings conformant across them.

User Interface Enhancements 

In-App PDF Viewer 

  • PDFs will be viewable in-app utilizing the Universal Viewer. This feature will be behind a feature flipper so that it can be turned on or off. 

Citation Functionality 

  • We will improve functionality of the Citations feature by discarding the nonfunctional EndNote, Zotero, and Mendeley options and implementing the MLA, APA, and Chicago citation generator.

Improvement to Alphabetical Sort Ability 

  • We will update Solr to push work, collection, and subcollection lists to alphabetical ordering and search options. Any page that lists or browses content should be alphabetical by default, except search results, which should default to Relevance, but include an alphabetical sort option. 

Remove Social Media Buttons 

  • We will remove social media link-out buttons

Hide Related Versions and Items 

  • We will prevent the “Related Versions and Items” section from displaying if there is no related content to display. This includes related adjustment work to all theme templates. 

Remove Depositor’s Name from Homepage Features 

  • We will remove the Depositor name from display across the user facing site. 

Remove Size Field from Collection Pages 

  • Collection pages currently show size in KB, but it is broken and isn’t helpful. We will remove this from the application. 

Improve Cultural Show Page UI 

  • The Cultural show page is configured primarily for image works, which use the IIIF viewer. When works that do not use the image viewer display, some of the elements, especially the Collection metadata table, populate in constrained dimensions that need to be optimized. 

Adjust Justification Display 

  • When Featured Works and Recent Uploads are flipped off, but Featured Researcher is on, collections are justified to the far left of the screen, but featured researcher resets the justification to an odd spacing. Ideally, Browse Collections and Featured Researcher will toggle smoothly. This will require testing and implementation of many conditional situations.

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