Digital Antiquity is pleased to announce the 14th major release of tDAR named Neolithic. This release focuses on three major areas of the repository: (1) visualization, (2) maps and spatial data, and (3) modularization and infrastructure work. In addition, the development team has improved performance and reliability as well as making a series of smaller enhancements.

Visualizations:

We have redesigned many of tDAR’s graphs and visualizations to be more interactive and appealing. Of note, in the world map which can now be explored and shows break-downs of the different resource-types by country. The graphs on the “explore” page have also be enhanced. Finally, the ontology browser has been updated to better display larger ontologies.

Mapping:

We’ve improved the underlying mapping libraries used in tDAR. These enhancements allow us to cluster mapped search results, improving the interface. We’ve also updated the maps on the resource pages and improved the creation and management of bounding boxes on the resource edit screen.

Completely re-designed data integration tool:
For those unfamiliar with tDAR’s integration tool, it provides a means by which users who have uploaded data sets to tDAR can combine multiple data sets with different schema and coding conventions into a unified, shared data set. 

We’ve redesigned it to simplify the user-interface.

Adding data sets is simpler.
Users can search for data sets that are bookmarked or integrate-able (that is, having one column mapped to an ontology), as well as  by keyword.

It is easier to add integration columns via a drop-down menu.

A new “count” column type that represents count data in data sets.

It’s easier to add a display column.

We’ve added better documentation of the integration in the excel output.

Additional Features:

• Integrations can now be saved and restored.
• We’ve improved support for larger integrations 10+ data sets
• The results of integrations are now sorted by the selected integration columns.

Other Major Features of the release:

• Embargoed files can now be restricted for different periods of time — 6 months, 1 year, two years, and five years.
• Institutions can now have email addresses and be used as contacts.
• The material keywords section now includes free-form material keywords as well as the existing controlled vocabulary.
• Contributors now have access to their view and download statistics for the resources, billing accounts, and collections they own or have administrative rights to. These statistics show the number of views and downloads for resources over time.
• Dedicated web pages have been introduced for keywords for improved browsing.
• Updated “user profile” pages in tDAR.

• tDAR’s OAI-PMH endpoint now supports “sets” which represent each of tDAR’s user-generated collections.
• The tDAR Import APIs now support replacing files and setting the same access restrictions on files as other materials.
• A new Authentication API.
• A number of backend changes to improve long-term sustainability.

We’re proud to announce tDAR’s twelfth production release: Lithic.  This release contains numerous bug fixes, performance enhancements, and security related improvements.  Some specific highlights include:  

• Simplified sign-up, purchase, and download experiences
• A new dashboard where non-contributing users can search and use tDAR more easily
• Various performance and security improvements 
• New “Contact” functionality allows users to request access to a confidential file, suggest a correction, or connect with the record owner for any tDAR record
• Redesigned  Collection edit page to make it simpler to use
• Improved loading speed for image galleries with lots of images
• Improved searching:
• Better relevancy ranking and results for resources in tDAR for a number of cases including Site Codes, pluralization, and multi-word terms
• Collections that may be related to your search are now displayed along with search results
• When viewing search results on a map, hovering your mouse over a result will reveal that resource’s geographic area (for  public resources only)
• Better relevancy ranking when displaying map results

• User Notifications on the dashboard are more personalized and dismissible
• The ability to copy or duplicate existing resources in tDAR 

• Improvements in data integration:
• Simplified filter page for data integration that does not permit filtering of values that do not exist in the selected data
• Users can now auto-select specific columns when integrating resultsUsers can now associate external DOIs with any resource type except projects

Digital Antiquity is proud to announce the release of “Knap,” the latest release of tDAR.  The “Knap” release required the tDAR staff to take a step back and review the entire application from a number of major perspectives including, performance, security, data storage, and user-experience.  Much of this work helps to establish features that will be available in future releases for you to enjoy.

 We focused on a number of major areas of the code including:

• Improved application security
• Clearer error messages, and better in-form validation
• Increased performance of the entire web-application (faster searches and page loading)
• Better display on mobile  devices
• Ability to add ORCID Identifiers to your user account
• Improved results for auto-completes with many results, especially when searching for people
• Improved validation and error messages for bulk uploads.
• Bulk uploads now support data sets
• Resources can now inherit individual and institutional roles from projects
• File Descriptions are now printed on cover-pages, which may be useful for redaction notes
• Display of new and popular items on the explore page
• The user-registration page was simplified
• Pagination options were added for the column metadata screen
• Table and column relationships are display for MS Access Databases
• Fixed parsing issues with converted OWL ontologies, now maintaining import order, and improving duplicate checking