MacKenzie Smith
Research Director
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
At the CNI Fall 2010 Membership Meeting, a new project was presented that proposed to create a new version of the popular Exhibit open source software for organizing, publishing and navigating linked data on the Web. The plan was to use funding from the Library of Congress to redesign and redevelop Exhibit as a more scalable, flexible, and modular platform that supports both small, personal collections as well as large, institutional ones, while keeping the current simplicity of use… no programming required. The key goals for the new platform:
• Robustness and scalability: robust, scalable software for managing and publishing very large collections of any type of data (and metadata), with a seamless mechanism to convert from small to large collections, and with similar processes for user interface specification
• Modularity: a means to embed Exhibits in separate software, systems and Web pages, and an API to allow it to be used in a variety of existing Web sites and with a variety of existing Web services, under a methodology called Linking Curated Data
• Extensibility: support for developers wishing to extend the platform with new views, widgets and facets
• Community infrastructure: support for the users, and an open source software developer community surrounding Exhibit
This presentation will include a demonstration of the new platform, Exhibit 3.0, including small and large collections and the skills and support expectations for each. Using the tool with Google Refine to edit data, and how it can be integrated into other platforms (e.g. Recollection) to improve the user experience will be demonstrated. There will also be discussion about how organizations are using the new tool, and what is being implemented to support both users and the developers who are key to Exhibit’s future development as open source software.