What is the Canadiana.org Digital Collection Builder (DCB)?

The Digital Collection Builder (DCB) is an open-source software tool that makes it simple for libraries, archives, and other heritage organizations to provide access to their unique digitized collections; it brings their collections together with other Canadian online resources for Canadians and the world. The DCB greatly facilitates even the smallest institution’s ability to describe its digital content in a structured way so that it can be discovered through the Canadiana.org or other search portals. Canadiana.org released the DCB in 2009, and it has these features:

  • One instance of the Collection Builder can support multiple collections, and can be themed to reflect a local institution’s branding;
  • The Collection Builder supports leading metadata formats including Dublin Core, MODS, and EAD and common document formats such as still images, video, and basic multipage documents;
  • The end user interface offers a robust hierarchy browser for navigating within structured documents;
  • The Collection Builder supports the OAI metadata harvesting protocol, and features easy exporting of metadata for use in the Canadiana Portal.

The Digital Collection Builder uses the same technology as many other popular open source applications such as Wordpress and Drupal, specifically PHP and MySQL. It can run in a wide variety of server environments. Any institution that can host PHP and MySQL is able to host the DCB. Institutions unable to support that required infrastructure can choose to run the DCB on a commercial web hosting service. Once the DCB is running, ongoing administration simply requires someone willing to perform basic configuration tasks.

Background

Canadiana.org believes it is vital to have a Canadian vision to provide enduring digital access of our cultural and scientific heritage in its bilingual and multicultural variety to our citizens and to the world. Canadiana.org members organize pan-Canadian collaboration to increase Canadian competitiveness in global knowledge economy, economic growth through investment in the digital industry and job creation in Canada’s Digital Infrastructure. The Digital Collection Builder is a tangible result of this experience, and the DCB will remain an open-source application to encourage libraries and other heritage institutions to make their unique collections available to the world.

Funding to develop the
Digital Collection Builder

The DCB was developed through the generous funding of the Canadian Heritage Canadian Culture Online (CCO) strategy, together with investment and in-kind contributions from other partners. In 2007, Canadian Heritage funded $203,485 of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries - AlouetteCanada DCB project. Additional funding was provided by a group of BC libraries and by Canadiana.org; in-kind development was undertaken by several CARL libraries. CARL is the leadership organization for the Canadian research library community. The Association’s members are the 27 major academic research libraries across Canada plus Library and Archives Canada, the Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (CISTI) and the Library of Parliament. CARL member libraries contain the backbone of Canada’s intellectual holdings in all disciplines, with an annual expenditure of over seven hundred million dollars ($737,730,000), monograph holdings of over 85 million items and over 1.2 million journals.