Skills Needed to Implement/Maintain a Repository

[Cecily Walker]

Hi everyone, long-time lurker here. 

I recently stepped into a new position at Vancouver Public Library as the project manager for our Islandora implementation. It has been a slow-going process for a number of reasons, most which have to do with lack of experience with Islandora/Drupal development and resources being unavailable because they're working on other projects. 

I've been asked to put together a skills gap analysis as part of the project documentation. I thought I'd turn to the group and ask: what are the skills needed for a successful Islandora implementation? I'm specifically interested in front-end and back-end development skills, but soft skills are equally as important when collaborating on a project across departments. 

Thanks for giving this some thought and for adding your responses. 

Cecily Walker

Systems Project Manager

Vancouver Public Library

[Kelsey]

Hi Cecily,

This may not be as technical an answer as you might be hoping for, but as someone who was thrown in the deep end, now working from inside the gap, I thought I might weigh in. I came from a pretty basic library background with some experience managing CMSs and creating simple webpages and I understood fundamentally what xml was and how it worked. I've had to learn how to work with xpath and xslt in order to manage and troubleshoot metadata creation/edits, as well as solr searches. I'm currently in the process of training someone to work with me and I've found it really difficult to explain the abstract - how the "ecosystem" works, fedora datastreams, rdf, etc.

 

But, what I've found most challenging so far in my case is that there is a separation of knowledge between technical (server set up, installations, etc) and metadata skillsets. I have someone helping me with the back-end aspects who is super smart and competent, but doesn't really work with metadata standards or any other library stuff for that matter. I don't have server access- so it's challenging to work through and communicate metadata issues/solr configuration problems. There is definitely a disconnect going on there (guess that's a soft skills issue).

 

You also might check out some presentations from the 2015 conference - http://islandora.ca/camps/conference2015/schedule - there are some presentations geared towards beginners that might illuminate required skills a little more clearly.

 

Hope this is somewhat helpful...

Regards,

Kelsey

[Diego Pino]

Hi Cecily, 

I would start with metadata understanding. My experience tells me that you should always manage the most valuable asset for your end users (which most of the time are Librarians and/or other preservation professionals). For how the world moves, XML and XSLT(path, etc) are not enough today. RDF is a must, Linked data and SPARQL also.

Under the same understanding, end users are the most important asset (yeah, it's not really metadata!), Solr knowledge is also a need. From how things work, to what/how stuff is stored in an index. Basically because users do two basic actions: Search + Look. (plus ingesting of course) and if those things don't work you get frustration.

Since Islandora is based on Drupal and Drupal is php, and since learning a new CMS is far less challenging that learning to code a new language, some basic/medium PHP knowledge is also required.

I don't think there are many people out there that manage the whole Stack as per se. Fedora is not that easy to learn without getting your hands onto installing it, which means a mix of hard and soft skills, from basic Unix management, Some services knowledge (Apache 2, Tomcat, Solr already mentioned), installing stuff, etc + being able to learn independently (research), which leads to good communication skills to interact with the community forums. Most people dismiss the importance of reading + failing an retrying . I have learned a lot from just browsing through the code, watching how the different modules interact, changed, evolved in time and even more by making stuff fail.

And finally, internal communication skills. Like being able to ask end users for their needs, helping them to find solutions and transferring those needs to technical actions and back. 

Repositories are as complex as the information you wan't to preserve, and i personally think many soft skills lead to better adoption of hard skills, not the other way.

Not a formal definition, but if i where looking for someone, i would put as many efforts as possible to find someone as flexible enough and communicative enough to jump into technical learning that also has some love for preservation.

Cheers

Diego

[Cecily Walker]

This is very helpful, Kelsey. Thank you for your input!

[Cecily Walker]

Thanks for your reply, Diego! 

[Donald Moses]

Hi Cecily:

Here are some of my thoughts.  

Using the Islandora VM to learn about Drupal and Fedora

• Downloading and running the Islandora VM so that you can test, model and explore locally before you apply changes to a production environment.
• Troubleshooting using various logfiles (Drupal, Fedora, Solr, GSearch).
• Ability to navigate the Drupal CMS.
• Applying Drupal's roles and permissions.
• Extending Drupal by downloading and configuring Drupal modules and libraries.
  
• Configuring Islandora through the Drupal UI (modules, helper utilities, viewers).
  

Git

• Using Git to help manage code/documentation/workflow.

Understanding your metadata use cases and thinking about how they integrates with search, browse facets, sorting, and display in the Islandora framework.  Tools I use everyday include:

• MODS Guidelines - http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/userguide/generalapp.html
  
• Oxygen XML Editor - especially useful when developing or working with a new schema.  I typically create the ideal record I want to have in that tool then recreate those elements in the XML Form Builder. I use Oxygen to validate XML, to run XML through transformation scenarios, to grab XPATHs of elements.
• XML Form Builder - Create/edit/troubleshoot forms. 
• Solr - understand how to configure the Islandora Solr options. More importantly be able to have a snoop through Solr to get an understanding of how your content is getting indexed. eg. http://localhost:8080/solr/collection1/select?q=PID%3Aislandora%5C%3Aroot&wt=xml&indent=true
• Learning about and apply simple patterns for searching the triplestore http://localhost:8080/fedora/risearch

Community

• Having an awareness of the work being done in the community (what modules have been or are being developed).
• Reporting bugs or other issues.
• Helping with the work that needs to be done (and there's a lot of it).
• Participating in Interest Groups.
  

Learn

• Willingness to keep learning.

Best,

Donald

[Cecily Walker]

Thank you for this, Donald! It's very useful. 

Cheers,

Cecily