This page describes work completed on the mPach project so far.
February 2015
The mPach project has been put on hold indefinitely as HathiTrust and the University of Michigan reevaluate needs and opportunities in digital publishing that have emerged since Michigan began the mPach project in 2011. mPach was conceived as a suite of tools to enable direct publishing of open access journals into HathiTrust’s preservation and access environment. Michigan remains strongly committed to providing robust long-term preservation and access services for digital publications, and HathiTrust remains strongly committed to supporting a variety of formats of textual publications, including born-digital and newly published materials. Michigan and HathiTrust are reconsidering how best to meet these goals, and have determined that the particular suite of tools and workflows envisioned for mPach do not align with current needs and trajectories. HathiTrust will be providing updates as planning for support of born-digital and other types of textual materials moves forward.
February 2014
University of Michigan staff began to migrate the Prepper module of mPach to a new Ruby/Rails development environment (a full list of mPach modules is available at http://www.lib.umich.edu/mpach). Staff added an mPach article to the HathiTrust test repository, and began to evaluate additional tools for converting articles into JATS XML that might be incorporated into the Norm component of Prepper.
January 2014
University of Michigan staff made changes to HathiTrust indexing mechanisms to support JATS XML and prepared a poster on mPach to present at the Library Publishing Forum 2014.
December 2013
University of Michigan staff continued to develop strategies for processing bibliographic metadata for mPach articles, and to scope services to be offered by Michigan Publishing using the mPach platform. See http://www.hathitrust.org/mpach for more information.
November 2013
University of Michigan staff began scoping services to be offered by Michigan Publishing using the mPach platform, and considering arrangements that will need to be made to support use by HathiTrust member institutions or other organizations. To clarify the relationships between various parties potentially using mPach, the list of modules has been revised to separate Submitter from Prepper, and the diagram of the major parts of mPach has been revised to show that Submitter (the mechanism that does final validation before submitting content to HathiTrust) will be operated by Michigan Publishing.
October 2013
University of Michigan staff presented on mPach at RCDL’2013, at the Impromptu JATS Users Group Meeting, and locally at the University of Michigan.
September 2013
Staff at the University of Michigan defined the preservation levels to be associated with content submitted through mPach. Integrated and supplemental materials that meet existing HathiTrust specifications will be preserved at the bit level with format migration. Materials that do not meet specifications will be preserved at the bit level only. Staff continued development of Norm, adding support to convert OpenDocument (“ODT”) files to JATS XML and improving support for Unicode.
August 2013
Staff at the University of Michigan prepared presentations on mPach to be delivered at the RCDL’2013 and JATS-Con 2013 conferences. Staff refined workflows for enabling other institutions to use mPach and discussed challenges associated with rendering TeX that occurs within JATS articles. More information about the mPach project can be found at http://www.hathitrust.org/mpach.
July 2013
Staff at the University of Michigan refined plans for storing data that will enable linking between records for individual articles in the HathiTrust catalog, the fulltext view of articles in the HathiTrust PageTurner, a journal-level record for articles in the HathiTrust catalog, and information about the journal in the HathiTrust Collection Builder application. Staff also made improvements to the structure of the METS metadata files that will accompany mPach articles, and to capabilities to render full-text articles in HTML, PDF, and EPUB.
June 2013
University of Michigan staff presented on mPach’s publication and preservation model in separate sessions with staff from the Texas A&M University Library, University Press, and Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP). Michigan and IODP staff discussed possible uses of mPach by IODP. Michigan staff also presented at Stanford University Libraries on the Norm tool for converting DOCX files to JATS XML. The timeline on the mPach project page was updated to show expected dates of completion for major project milestones.
May 2013
University of Michigan staff posted mockups on the mPach website of enhancements to be made to the Collections and PageTurner applications to support journal articles published using mPach. Staff updated the project timeline and prepared to travel to Texas A&M University to present on mPach to staff from the library, university press, and the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, and discuss TAMU’s envisioned use of mPach.
April 2013
University of Michigan staff determined functional requirements for relating journal-level MARC records to article-level MARC records, and journal-level “aboutware”.
March 2013
Staff at the University of Michigan discussed modifications that are planned to be made to the Collection Builder application in order to use it as a means to navigate from articles in a single journal to the journal’s “aboutware” (information about editorial boards, submission policies, etc.). Staff also discussed issues of discovering journal aboutware through the HathiTrust catalog, full-text search and Collection Builder interfaces, and user pathways for navigating between journal-level catalog records, article-level catalog records, and aboutware. More information about mPach is available at http://www.hathitrust.org/mpach.
February 2013
Staff at the University of Michigan made architectural and procedural decisions related to the creation, storage, and revision of “aboutware” (information about editorial boards, submission policies, etc.) for journals deposited via mPach. Staff finalized journal article ingest procedures, and continued discussions about optimal handling of non-textual content that is embedded in articles or submitted as supplementary material. Staff also reviewed and updated the project timeline.
January 2013
Staff at the University of Michigan met to discuss possible changes to the HathiTrust PageTurner, item-level search, and item-level search results to accommodate materials submitted via mPach. Staff began working with sample analytic MARC records and METS objects to determine the scope of anticipated changes. Staff also reviewed the mPach ingest process and discussed workflows for processing issue- and journal-level metadata.
December 2012
Staff at the University of Michigan revised the list of modules for mPach, to reflect recent changes in the planned system architecture. An extensive conceptual workflow for ingest of an mPach Submission Information Package into HathiTrust has been devised and will be finalized soon. Michigan staff finalized plans for modifications to the HathiTrust Data API to support the retrieval via the API of JATS XML, derivative formats, and supplemental materials that may be associated with a JATS XML article.
November 2012
Staff at the University of Michigan continued work on a mockup of changes needed to the PageTurner interface to support navigation of XML-based articles. Staff began to develop functionality to render JATS articles in PDF (for download purposes). Staff also engaged in discussions about the mPach article ingest workflow and proposed modifications to HathiTrust’s Collections feature to facilitate navigation among journal articles.
October 2012
Staff at the University of Michigan completed a prototype of the Prepper module (see a list of all modules), as well as enhancements to PageTurner to display journal articles encoded in JATS XML, in time for a presentation and demo at the 2012 Digital Library Federation Forum.
September 2012
Staff at the University of Michigan created a mockup of PageTurner changes that will be needed to navigate the XML-based journal articles that will be submitted via mPach. Work also continued on modifications to PageTurner to display JATS XML and embedded media and on refinements to the METS specification for mPach Submission Information Packages. Staff completed wireframes and began coding the Dashboard module (see the list of mPach modules for more information). Michigan staff members will present on mPach at the 2012 DLF Forum.
August 2012
The mPach team at the University of Michigan updated the project timeline on the HathiTrust project page. Work continued on modifications to the HathiTrust PageTurner to display JATS XML, and on refinements to the METS specification for mPach Submission Information Packages. Michigan staff made progress on enhancements to the Norm tool (part of content preparation), specifically enhancements to normalize bulleted lists, figures with captions, and tables. Wireframes are nearly complete for the Dashboard module (see the list of mPach modules for more information on mPach modules). Michigan staff will be presenting on mPach at the 2012 DLF Forum.
July 2012
University of Michigan staff completed a diagram of the mPach system architecture, which has been added to the mPach website. Staff also refined the schema for mapping bibliographic data from JATS XML (the format to be used for encoded text) to MARC records, which are required for ingest into HathiTrust. Work continued on wireframes for the Dashboard module (see a description of all modules), on the profile for the METS file that will accompany digital objects in Submission Information Packages, and on rendering XML articles in the HathiTrust PageTurner.
June 2012
University of Michigan staff rewrote the list of modules to be included in mPach, a package of tools Michigan is developing for publishing open access journal content in HathiTrust. Staff divided modules into three categories: Editorial Workflow and Peer Review, Content Preparation, and HathiTrust. Work continues to adapt PageTurner to handle full-text XML content and to develop wireframes for the Dashboard module. Staff began developing code to validate the Submission Information Package.
May 2012
University of Michigan staff continued work on modifications to the HathiTrust PageTurner to display JATS XML. Staff began development of wireframes for the Dashboard module and are close to the completion of a specification for mapping JATS metadata elements to MARC fields to create analytic records for journal articles.
April 2012
University of Michigan staff continued work on modifications to the HathiTrust PageTurner to display JATS XML. jPach’s Norm module (see descriptions of all jPach modules) can now extract 15 common components of a journal article, plus embedded media, from a DOCX file and create valid JATS with references to associated media files. A specification for a Submission Information Package for jPach content is nearly complete and will be posted to the jPach website soon. Work has begun on developing wireframes for the Dashboard module. A timeline for the project is available on the HathiTrust jPach project page.
March 2012
Staff of the University of Michigan have given a name to the journal publishing platform Michigan will use in conjunction with HathiTrust: jPach. Information about the platform, including design principles and requirements, and a description of modules is posted on the University of Michigan Library website. The project page on the HathiTrust website now includes a full project timeline.
Michigan staff continue work on generating valid JATS XML from DOCX files, rendering JATS XML files in PageTurner, and creating a METS profile for the jPach Submission Information Package.
February 2012
Staff at Michigan completed the first iteration of a tool that is able to create valid JATS XML from simple DOCX files, and continued development on PageTurner to render JATS XML. Staff clarified the goals of the project to include implementation of a publishing system (allowing management of an editorial workflow) in addition to mechanisms for ingest, display, and discoverability of born-digital journal materials in the HathiTrust repository.
January 2012
MPublishing staff at the University of Michigan Library created a timeline for work through early 2013. Work continued on a process to convert styled Word documents into JATS XML, focusing on extraction of metadata, and on adaptation of the HathiTrust PageTurner application to display JATS XML.
December 2011
Staff at the University of Michigan revised the goal statement for HTPub and plans for system architecture. Staff also began work on establishing a project timeline.
November 2011
Staff in MPublishing began work in November on a tool to convert DOCX files to JATS XML and worked with broader stakeholders at the University of Michigan Library to specify additional design requirements and agree on a set of design principles for HTPub. MPublishing staff also reviewed notes from a session at THATCamp Publishing 2011 dedicated to shared infrastructure for publishing, to consider how such an infrastructure might affect the architecture of HTPub tools, and services that might be offered in the future using those tools.
October 2011
MPublishing staff at the University of Michigan gathered input from colleagues in library-based publishing programs in October as they worked to finalize requirements, architecture, and design principles for the new publishing system, and archival package specifications for the published content. Michigan developers began adapting the HathiTrust PageTurner to display the new content based on initial specifications.
September 2011
A project manager from the University of Michigan joined the team working on HTPub, a two-year project to develop a system that will enable MPublishing at the University of Michigan Library to use HathiTrust as a publishing platform for its journals. The team has refined the project goal and requirements and is formulating design principles, a use case specification, and the system architecture. A full-time software developer has joined MPublishing, focusing on the content ingest and publication management components of this system.
July 2011
The University of Michigan has been examining schema options for representing encoded text journal content in the HathiTrust archival package. An investigation of publisher XML formats has yielded a recommendation to use the Journal Archiving and Interchange Tag Set of JATS (an application of NISO Z39.96) as the XML format for encoded text. UM staff are currently researching Portico’s use of a custom profile of an earlier version of this standard in content normalization.
June 2011
The University of Michigan hired the first of two programmers to work on the HTPub project. Interviews will take place in July for the second opening. Meanwhile, Michigan continued to examine schema options for representing journal content in the HathiTrust archival package, and questions surrounding interoperability of the envisioned HTPub software components with the HathiTrust repository.
May 2011
Michigan filled one of two programmer positions advertised for the new HathiTrust publishing initiative, led by the MPublishing division at the University of Michigan Library. The new hire will start on June 27th. The search continues for the second position.
MPublishing recently hired an intern who will be working over the summer to explore potential archival XML schema solutions for electronic journal content.
April 2011
MPublishing recently hired a summer intern who will be working with Michigan staff to define requirements for archival objects to be published using the system. Michigan is in the process of hiring two full-time positions to support the work of the initiative.