TDL demos Vireo 1.0.1 and begins testing phase

On Tuesday, February 16, The Texas Digital Library held a demonstration of Vireo 1.0.1, an updated version of its Vireo ETD Management software. Lab instances of the new version will be available for testing by TDL member institutions beginning February 17.

Team members Otto Fox and William Sidney led the presentation of bug fixes and new features at TDL headquarters in Austin. Interested parties were invited to attend either in person or virtually via Adobe Connect. Remote participants from a number of TDL member institutions listened in and shared a view of the presentation screen. Among those participating either remotely or at the meeting site were representatives from Baylor, Texas A&M, Texas State, UT Austin, UT Brownsville/Texas Southmost College, and Texas Tech.

The Vireo Project Team: (back row, from left) Dan Zappone, Dan Galewsky, Alexey Maslov, Scott Phillips, Lance King; (front row, from left) William Sidney, Otto Fox, Jade Lindquist

About Vireo 1.0.1

Vireo is a software application developed by the Texas Digital Library for managing the online submission and administrative workflow for electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs). Changes coming in the new release of Vireo include the following:

• The capability for automated deposit of theses and dissertations into an institutional repository (via SWORD)
• Automated harvesting of ETDs (via OAI-ORE) from member repositories into the TDL Federated Repository
• Full compliance with metadata standards
• User interface enhancements within the Vireo management tool

Additionally, Vireo 1.0.1 will ship with full installation and configuration documentation.

Development on the Vireo 1.0.1 release began in the fall of 2009. TDL software developer Jade Lindquist led the project. Others participating in development included Otto Fox, Dan Galewsky, Scott Phillips, William Sidney, and Dan Zappone, as well as chief technology officer Peter Nürnberg. Alexey Maslov of Texas A&M University Libraries was also a key contributor to the project.

Testing Information

Vireo 1.0.1 will undergo testing by member institutions for two weeks, during which the development team will address any issues that arise. A full release of the new code, with complete documentation, is scheduled for early March.

For testing purposes, a lab instance of Vireo 1.0.1 and an institutional repository (for testing of SWORD deposit) are available for each member institution. A list of URLs for these testing environments can be found on the TDL Wiki at http://wikis.tdl.org/tdl/Vireo/Sprint_1.0.1_Release.

Additionally, a lab instance of a TDL federated repository is available for testing the harvesting of ETDs via OAI-ORE.

Watch the Vireo Demo

For those unable to participate in the live demo, a recording of the Vireo 1.0.1 demo is available at https://meeting.austin.utexas.edu/p68505730/.