Digital Antiquity is continually committed to improving digital archaeological data preservation. The Balk release of tDAR (Fall 2010) was focused on file storage and management. It was designed primarily around the need to store and manage images within the tDAR repository. Improvements and additions to the software include:
- Migrated the internal filestore to a PairTree model (based on the CDL spec). This model allows for a clear organization of the tDAR file-store and grouping of related materials.
- Enabled versioning of files within tDAR
- Migrated deleted records from actual deletion to a “flag” to allow for preservation of files and metadata for deleted items; also enabled the ability to save records in draft form before publishing.
- Enabled a generic file processing workflow that supports handling of archival, working, and temporary files
- Used above infrastructure to develop support for processing images within tDAR
- Enabled searching within the contents of PDFs
- Added support for processing files on a separate server, if needed
- Redesigned the user’s main page within tDAR to list recent actions
- Enhanced searching to support multi-lingual terms
- Redesigned the main tDAR page to show a map of records, as well as a graph of records by type
- Redesigned the data-integration process to simplify common user workflows
- Performed a review of the support of embargoed and confidential data, added additional enhancements including the automatic obfuscation of site coordinates that may be too specific
- Implemented additional auto-complete services throughout the integration process to improve performance and simplify data entry.