Fedora
Fedora provides the back-end foundation for institutional repository systems responsible for managing and preserving all types of digital content.
Provider
Fedora Commons / DuraSpace
Licensing and cost
Apache 2.0 – free.
Development Activity
Version 3.5 was released August 18th, 2011.
Development is ongoing.
Platform and interoperability
Fedora is written in Java, and was tested under Linux, Solaris, Windows, and Mac OS X.
Functional Notes
The Fedora digital object model consists of a persistent identifier, an XML document for object properties, and a number of datastreams, which contain either the content or its metadata. Each object can assert relationships to any number of other objects; The XML files contain information such as an audit trail of actions that have affected the object and policies about the object; as long as these files, along with the content itself, are backed up properly, they can reconstruct an entire running instance of the repository without relying on any external software.
While the Fedora Repository is capable of operating as a standalone content server, it is really designed for use with other software. Authoring or ingest applications, search engines, workflow management, and security components such as user identity management must be incorporated through other software.
Documentation and user support
The Fedora Commons community is extensive, with active user and developer mailing lists; DuraSpace also hosts a Fedora wiki, which includes tutorials, user and installation guides, and other resources.
The Fedora site also links to a number of registered service providers, which offer assistance with design, installation, and implementation.
Usability
Fedora provides a web-based Administrator GUI for low-level object editing; however, users can only interact with the repository using APIs for management, access, search, and queries; Usability is thus entirely dependent on the interfaces that the system administrator has developed to integrate with the APIs; The Fedora wiki includes a registry of community-developed software that provides these kinds of interfaces.
Expertise required
Installation and configuration require deep system administration knowledge, as well as expertise in XML and interface design.
Standards compliance
Fedora supports OAI-PMH (and by extension, Dublin Core), and also provides support for RDF.
Influence and take-up
The Fedora Commons Registry lists nearly 200 organisations with Fedora instances, from broadcast services such as WGBH, to government agencies such as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to academic archives such as Oxford University.
