The Open Resource Center of the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe (HfG) has once again been awarded by the Stiftung Innovation in der Hochschullehre (Foundation for Innovation in Higher Education): before the end of this year, the ORC will receive additional funding of € 47,980.80. With these funds, the ORC will be able to develop a complete API for the media archive platform madek (Media Archive of the Arts) and, thanks to this, will create a new, contemporary user interface for the media archive platform of the HfG university community.
The one-year anniversary of the Open Resource Center at the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe can be celebrated with an important milestone: an application by the ORC to expand the existing development project has been approved, allowing one of the most important technical hurdles to be overcome in the immediate coming months. The ORC team would like to thank the Innovation in Higher Education Foundation for this additional support.
The development project aims to build a digital infrastructure and anchor a culture of autonomous documenting and archiving within the HfG. At the heart of the project is a media platform for archiving and publishing. As the evaluation of the ORC has shown, madek is the most suitable software for the media archive platform at the HfG.
madek is an open source software developed at the Zurich University of the Arts (led by an alumna of the HfG) and is used there for the university’s media archive. An innovative aspect of the software is its bottom-up structure, thanks to which all university members receive their own user account and are thus independently responsible for uploading and managing their data. Various interfaces (so-called APIs, Application Programming Interfaces) enable the transfer of data to other systems, as long as these data are provided with the appropriate authorization. Media entries with metadata such as student projects, diploma theses and research papers, videos, games, documentation of events, and so on can be easily shared and published on other platforms.
However, the current madek user interface is outdated, its design and usability does not meet contemporary standards and potentials. Technically, the interface is an integral part of the software. In order to modernize the interface, it must be detached from its monolithic architecture and connected in a modular way via a new API. With the help of the additional funding, such an API can now be developed to accommodate the needs of the HfG archive.
The new development of a complete API by the ORC will have an immediate positive impact on the future security and scalability of the software. Among other things, it will be possible to connect madek to external data sources such as standards and subject databases and to integrate it into the digital infrastructure of the HfG, which is now once again being professionally managed thanks to the fortunate reappointment of the head of the HfG IT department.
