The LAKE Experience

Stefano Cossu, Director of Application Services, the Art Institute of ChicagoKevin Ford, Senior Software Architect, the Art Institute of Chicago

Museums and The Web 2017—Cleveland OH, April 22nd 2017

A Voyage Into Unknown Museum DAM Waters(And Back)

Rise & Decline of City–States

● Home-grown software

● Home-grown cataloging practices

● Proprietary vocabularies and authority lists

● Department-specific file & metadata stores

Not So Long Ago:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cinta_muraria_di_Palmanova.jpg

Perfect for a self-contained system

Rise & Decline of City–States

Suddenly:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:16th_century_Portuguese_Spanish_trade_routes.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ralamb_Sipahi.jpg

Rise & Decline of City–States

● Data fragmentation

● Changing cataloging practices

● Integration is a challenge (if

ever possible)

● Data preserwhat?

● Spreadsheet infestation

Hence:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MS_Ghent_-_Battle_of_Tewkesbury.jpg

Here We Go

● Clear separation of purposes

● Emphasis on communication channels

● As little custom code as possible

Alright then:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ship%27s_limited_channel_effects_(Blockage_Effects)_NT.PNG

Here We Go

● Collection Management

● Digital Asset Management

● Preservation

● Image ordering, production and delivery

● Publishing to Web, trusted parties and other channels

We Will Integrate:

Here We Go

● Images (pretty and ugly)

● Interpretive media

● Curatorial and Registration paperwork

● Conservation documents

● Institutional archives

● And much more...

We Will Store:

● Works (Objects)

● Agents

● Places

● Exhibitions

● Transactions

● Shipments

Related To:

Here We Go

And Qualify Relationships:

Here We Go

Here We Go

● LAKEshore → DAMS (Hydra)● Combine → ETL (custom Python code)● LAKE repo → Institutional repository (Fedora)● Geneva → Event framework (Apache Camel)● Indices → Solr, triplestore (Blazegraph)● LPM → LAKE Public Mirror (Fedora + Solr

+ IIIF server)

Resulting in:

Whither LAKE?

● Research & Design learning curve

Completely new concepts

Completely new technologies

For Starters:

● Implementation issues

Alpha software

Upstream development timeline

Legacy systems grumbling

Followed By:

Whither LAKE?

● Data Mapping (empathy please)

Decades of changing conventions

● Data migration

285K images, 50Tb

Scaling: tiny issues become huge

Performance & monitoring

On the Side:

● After full-institutional release

Long-term sustainability

Adoption management

Scheduling digitization projects

For Dessert:

Whither LAKE?

Whither LAKE?

● Beneficial only in complex setups

● Deployment templates are imperative

● Find tools to monitor systems collectively

● Adapt layout from ongoing monitoring

Distributed Architecture: Lessons Learned

Whither LAKE?

Whither LAKE?

● Necessary with complex workflows

● Beautiful when it works

● Use tools to monitor the path of messages

● Users too must understand UX implications

Asynchronous Architecture: Lessons Learned

Was It Worth It?

YES BUT

Was It Worth It?

Yes:

● Deeper understanding of our data & systems

● It's working! (>600K resources in production)

● Achieved better data quality and access

● It is expandable

Was It Worth It?

But:

● (Significant) specialized skills required

● Still a lot of work to do

● Long-term payoff → Hard to sell

Was It Worth It?

But, Yes?

● Long-term advantages are just beginning to show

● LAKE is open source

● Container technology can simplify adoption

● Anyone interested?

Thank You

Stefano Cossu scossu@artic.edu @industrievisiveKevin Ford kford1@artic.edu @3windmills

https://github.com/aic-collections/aicdams-lakeshore/