The Rutgers Workflow Management System: Migrating a Digital Object Management Utility to Open Source

This paper examines the development, architecture, and future plans for the Workflow Management System, a digital object management utility developed by Rutgers University Libraries (RUL) to create and catalog digital objects for repository ingest and access. The Workflow Management System (WMS) was created to solve two particular problems: a front-end utility for the Fedora open source repository platform and a vehicle for a flexible, extensible metadata architecture, to serve the information needs of a large university and its collaborators. RUL developed an application that meets its needs for digital information management and has described the capabilities of the application in papers and presentations, which generated considerable interest among other organizations interested in using the WMS, particularly as a vehicle to utilize the innovative metadata architecture. The Library of Congress contracted with Rutgers University Libraries (RUL) to develop the WMS as a bibliographic utility for its Moving Image Collections project. The next phase of development for the WMS shifted to a re-engineering of the WMS as an open source application. This paper discusses the design and architecture of the WMS, its’ re-engineering for open source release, remaining issues to be addressed before application release, and future development plans for the WMS.