The Texas Digital Library has begun to roll out staging versions of Vireo 1.8, while development for a future version of Vireo continues.
In September, the Vireo Development Team concluded active development of Vireo 1.8, a new version the Vireo Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Management System, and began deployment and testing of staging instances of the software for TDL members. Currently, a staging instance is available for testing at UT Austin, and other TDL-hosted instances of the software will be rolled out in the weeks to come.
The TDL is communicating with each member institution individually as staging instances become available for testing. Following a testing period, the TDL will schedule the roll-out of production instances of Vireo 1.8 at the convenience of each institution.
In addition to the roll-out of Vireo 1.8, active development of the next Vireo version is ongoing under the guidance of the Vireo Users Group. Scott Phillips, Senior Lead Software Applications Developer at Texas A&M Libraries, is leading that effort.
Development on Vireo 1.8 was a collaborative effort among TDL members (led by staff from Texas A&M University) and TDL staff, with key contributions coming from developers at the University of Illinois and MIT. The TDL thanks sincerely everyone who has participated in this process and looks forward to continuing and expanding the collaboration on future efforts.
The source code for Vireo 1.8 is available under an open-source license at github.
What’s New in Vireo 1.8
As promised, Vireo 1.8 is a feature clone of the existing Vireo, meaning that it looks and behaves like the previous version. However, the Vireo development group has made a number of improvements to the software that make it more intuitive, flexible, and powerful. The list below is a partial list of these enhancements.
Full documentation about new features in the software is available on the TDL Wiki at https://wikis.tdl.org/tdl/Vireo_1.8.
New publishing, deposit, and export features
- Batch deposit/publish to one or more repositories
- Configure one or more repositories from within the SETTINGS tab
- New export formats and immediate download
More and easier options for customization
- Customizing LIST view
- Editing submission license, submission instructions, email templates, etc.
More available information
- Faculty Review URL
- System Control Panel
- Display of institutional ID
General interface/usability improvements
- “Drag and drop” functionality
- Visual cues for editable fields