Technical Infrastructure

What powers the IQDA site?

The front-end of our site is powered by Drupal and Fez, which we have customized to meet our needs. The back-end is powered by Fedora Commons, a general-purpose and open-source digital repository. We chose this selection of software, after careful consideration, as a replacement to the ad-hoc software that we were previously using. This is all part of an ongoing effort at the IQDA to provide our data under one easy to navigate site. The software is being run on a virtual GNU/Linux server located at our dedicated hosting facility in our offices on the campus of the National University of Ireland, Maynooth.

Why Drupal?

We are using Drupal as the main home-page for our site. We chose it because of its modular design. This is important as it allows us to quickly add new features, such as blogs, with little difficulty. Our decision to use Drupal was also influenced by the wide-user base, excellent support available and its well-known robustness. We have made a few changes to Drupal so that it is able to talk to Fez. This allows users to float between the two front-ends without having to login for a second time. Our changes also allows for users to log out of both Drupal and Fez with a single click. This is an important feature of our tight security policy, which we are using to keep the archive safe. One of our primary goals was to ensure that only those who should be able, are the only people who are able to access any restricted content. We are using the Austin Sub-theme with a slight change to the style-sheet so that it uses the IQDA colour scheme but still maintains Austin's clean layout.

Why Fedora Commons?

Fedora has many advantages. Firstly, it is open-source. We try to use as much open-source software as possible because of the stability that is associated with it. Open-source also generally means that the software is economical, a lot of the time being free - like Fedora. Fedora is also general purpose, allowing just about any type of digital object to be stored and it can also preserve relationships with other objects. The Fedora website has plenty of documentation available online and for download. It also has a section about various front-end projects, such as Elated and Fez.

Why Fez?

Initially, we tested three front-ends for Fedora: Islandora (A Drupal plugin), Elated and Fez. We settled on Fez after weighting up the pros and cons. Fez has an excellent management system that allows great control over the objects that we will be storing. One key advantage was the ability to set access controls over each individual uploaded file. For example, if we are uploading many files that belong to one project and some of those files require a greater level of restriction than others - then it is possible to specify this. Fez was started as a project by the University of Queensland, Australia. The project is now on Sourceforge with different organisations across the globe pitching in to offer their help. Their help has given us a kick-start at times when we had difficulties during the modification process.
We modified Fez to try create a seamless integration with Drupal. We changed it so it shares registration data and user-session data. We also changed the appearance to make it look like the Drupal theme we are using.

Need more information?

If you are an organisation beginning a similar project and would like more technical details then please contact us by email. We will be happy to answer your questions.

Keith Ó Dúlaigh - Web Developer for IQDA/NIRSA

Life History and Social Change Sound Files

Sound-files from the Life History Project were prepared by  Linda O'Keeffe using CUBASE. Linda O Keeffe is a sound artist currently pursuing a PhD within the Department of sociology Maynooth, her working title is, How I See What I Hear.  She has exhibited internationally and in Ireland where she  lives.  She presented a paper at the Audiomostly conference October 2009 examining new methods for designing sound in gaming and has contributed a chapter to book on game sounds, to be published August 2010. She can be contacted via www.lindaokeeffe.com