VERS Toolkit

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VERS Toolkit

• Andrew Waugh
• Daniel Wilksch

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What is the toolkit?

• Software to prepare VEOs for transfer to PROV
  from content and metadata supplied by non-VERS
  compliant systems
• Freely available to agencies and vendors under
  terms that are more generous than normal public
  domain license

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Three components

• VEOCreator
• Program that uses templates and data files to
  generate VEOs
• VEOGenerator
• Java code that can be incorporated into VERS
  compliant systems (or used to make other tools)
• ManifestGenerator
• Generates a manifest from a collection of VEOs

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What the toolkit is not

• Effort free
• You need to prepare metadata templates
• Extract metadata and content from source system
• Manage transfer
• An appraisal tool

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VEOCreator

• Program that uses templates and data files to
  generate VEOs

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PROV Wills/probates process
Digitisation
Images (Tiff)
Description file
Images (PDF)
Metadata templates
PFXfile
Wills (PDF)
Control/Metadata file
VEOs
VEOCreator
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To use the VEOCreator

• Prepare templates for the metadata that is the
  same for each record
• Prepare the control file containing the metadata
  that changes (including content)
• Obtain a private key (PFX file)
• Run the software

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Templates
ltnaaSchemeNamegt None
lt/naaSchemeNamegt ltnaaTitleWordsgt
column 5 lt/naaTitleWordsgt
lt/naaTitlegt ltnaaLanguagegt en
lt/naaLanguagegt ltnaaDategt
ltnaaDateTimeCreatedgt date
lt/naaDateTimeCreatedgt

• Contains the metadata that will be the same for
  every VEO produced
• Templates have holes into which the variable
  metadata will be inserted from control/metadata
  file
• VEOCreator does a mail merge to make VEOs

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Templates required

• For Record VEOs
• Record metadata
• Document metadata
• Format metadata (normally already supplied)
• For File VEO
• File metadata

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Control/Metadata file

• Contains the instructions about how to construct
  each VEO, including variable metadata
• Can be generated from Excel spreadsheets, MS
  Access, or prepared by hand
• Can generate simple or complex VEOs

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Simple VEO construction

• Each VEO has one document of one encoding
• Each row in control file builds one VEO

s 00028-P0002-000081-0680.veo 00028-P0002-000081-0
680.pdf 17/997 17/997 2620 28 2137926573 00028-P00
02-000081-0680 2006-01-28 This image was captured
using a digital camera system developed by the
Genealogical Society of Utah. Greyscale TIFF
format images have been saved in PDF format. In
some cases the greyscale palette has been indexed
to 16 or 24 colours.
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PFX file

• Contains the digital signature information
  required to sign the VEO
• Private key
• Public key
• Certificate chain
• PFX is the standard (Windows) representation of
  this information

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Executing VEOCreator

• Run from the command line
• Takes about 3 seconds to generate VEO containing
  a 50-60kB image

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To run toolkit you will need

• Executables (from web site)
• Jave 1.4 runtime
• May be part of standard desktop
• Disc space ?

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Availability of Toolkit

• Can be downloaded from PROV website
• http//www.prov.vic.gov.au/vers/standard/version2.
  htm
• Code can be incorporated into commercial products
  with minimal restrictions

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Questions?