Scriblio 2.7 released

Scriblio 2.7 Released

It’s been a long time coming, but it’s finally time to call Scriblio 2.7 stable. It’s available at the WordPress plugins repository and SVN:

What’s new:

  • An internal data model[1] that supports original cataloging of books and archive items and has some semblance to MARC and other formats.
  • That data model also supports the automatic merging of records from multiple sources (or multiple copies of the same record in a single source), allowing you to easily and quickly build union catalogs or asynchronously enrich your catalog from external sources. All the data in the merged record is fully indexed and faceted.
  • A refactored SQL query architecture that better leverages the WP APIs and _should_ enabled better interoperability with other plugins. My first use case for this is making a faceted events calendar by using both Scriblio and Event Calendar 3 on the same site.
  • Internal support for representing the collection in a variety of forms. Only human-readable HTML is implemented now, but DC, RDF, MARC, or others could be easily implemented. Volunteers anybody?
  • Better support for automating the relationship between Scriblio and external ILSs or other systems. The III harvester, for instance, automatically harvests new records, updates previously harvested records, and fetches real-time availability information.

What’s broken:

  • The new data model broke all the harvesters for the previous version. Right now, the only harvester that works is for III. If you are harvesting data from another system, do not upgrade yet.
  • This is a stable release, but it’s not necessarily feature complete. And certain things, like setting good defaults for new installs is not yet really complete.

It’s open source:

  • The software is licensed under the GPL, but it’s also supported by the community. Kelli Bogan and Brett Bonfield both deserve big shout outs for their contributions to the project.
  • The mail list is a great place to ask questions or point out bugs, and there are likely to be a few bugs.

[1] This data model is in two parts: a generic framework for working with structured data in posts (the Meditor) as well as a an implementation of it that works well for books and digital collections (the Marcish form). The Meditor framework can be easily extended with other forms that may be more appropriate to other types of objects.



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