Bridges to Hyku: A Multi-Institutional Effort Towards Migration Tooling

The Bridge2Hyku Project, an IMLS National Leadership/Project Grant (LG-70-17-0217-17), is nearing the end of its second phase and has produced a multifaceted migration toolkit for those planning or implementing a digital asset management system migration. The toolkit contains a software toolkit for migration from CONTENTdm to the Hyku repository as well as a website of information on general system migration considerations and practices. The toolkit is comprised of a standalone desktop application to harvest metadata and digital objects from CONTENTdm and a Rails gem that facilitates importing said harvest into a Samvera repository. After Phase I work of information gathering from grant partners, collaboratively developing use cases and toolkit components, the University of Houston partnered with the University of Victoria and Texas Digital Library to conduct a pilot to test and refine the software in the toolkit. During the pilot, several improvements were made to the toolkit applications with an emphasis on better functionality and stability. As a multi-institutional project team, the panel will discuss the different practices and perspectives employed by these three partners throughout Phase 2. University of Houston’s Content Strategist, Lead Repository Developer, and Metadata Services Coordinator will discuss toolkit development and how the Bridge2Hyku project has helped with their own preparations to move to a Samvera-based platform. University of Victoria’s Head of Metadata will discuss institutional customizations of Hyku and lessons learned during migration so far, while Texas Digital Library’s Senior Software Engineer will describe their participation in the pilot and how consortia play a role in migration workflows. The panel members will explore reasons to migrate, why they chose Hyku to pilot, and how the tools developed help in the overall workflow of migration.