Regular updates to the tDAR software comprise an integral part of Digital Antiquity’s commitment to digital archaeological data preservation. The “Harris Matrix” release of tDAR (Summer 2012) includes the following primary components:
Discovery:
- Search & Advanced Search: The search and advanced search functionality has been completely redesigned from the ground up to help us with better management and use of data. This includes, a simpler interface, the ability to perform boolean searches, and better tools for limiting large search results. Also, better handling of draft material that have been shared with you.
- A new “Explore” page: this page provides better access to tDAR’s content outside of search — it enables users to browse by keyword, title, or decade, among other fields.
- A re-ordered resource page with better indications of what resource type you are looking at
- Citations on every resource page — all resource pages now have a proper citation listed at the bottom
- You can now search for Collections as well as resources.
- For browsers that have plugins that use the COINS protocol, all resources also have COINS urls available — useful for citations to look it up in a library near you.
- tDAR is now indexing the contents of datasets as well as documents and other file formats
- The core.tdar.org homepage will now feature a random or selected Project or Resource
Management & Creation:
- A redesigned document entry form that better fits with the common flow of transcribing citation information from a document.
- Inheritance has been enabled for more fields including Notes, Related and Comparative Collections, and Identifiers
Data Integration:
- Users can now view ontology mappings for columns when browsing
- The Data Integration screen now has an “auto-select” button for both the Filter Values and Select Columns which auto-selects values or columns shared between all datasets
- Integration mappings can now be applied directly via coding-sheets, and thus re-used for multiple datasets
Other:
- Improved archival metadata is now stored on the filesystem
- Improved page-load performance
- Better management of current system activity